News

Roy Haynes, the prolific and proficient jazz drummer who recorded alongside Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Ray Charles, and Sonny Rollins, has died at the age of 99.

Haynes’ daughter Leslie Haynes-Gilmore confirmed her father’s death Tuesday to the Guardian, adding he died following a short illness.

A cutting-edge pioneer in the genre — equally adept at swing and bebop, avant-garde, and fusion — Haynes appeared on countless jazz classics over a career that began in the early 1940s and didn’t wind down until the drummer was in his mid-nineties.

The Boston-born...

Michael Cuscuna, the three-time Grammy winner, Mosaic Records co-founder, historian and archivist who produced hundreds of jazz reissues and studio sessions during his career, has died. He was 75.

Cuscuna died Saturday of cancer at his home in Stamford, Connecticut, Grammy-winning recording artist Billy Vera, a longtime friend, announced.

Cuscuna produced the 1970 album Buddy & the Juniors, featuring Buddy Guy, Junior Wells and Junior Mance, for Vanguard Records, and 1972’s Give It Up, Bonnie Raitt’s lone gold album during her time at Warner Bros.

He produced reissues and studio sessions for Impulse, Atlantic, Arista, Muse, Elektra, Freedom, Novus and virtually the entire Blue Note catalog.

“Plainly stated, Blue Note Records would not exist as it does today without the passion & dedication of Michael Cuscuna,” execs from the label wrote on Instagram.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Blue Note Records (@bluenoterecords)

Readers of Blues & Rhythm magazine know his work in the blues field,...

Iconic actor, musician, and lifelong activist Harry Belafonte has died at the age of 96. The cause, per his longtime spokesman Ken Sunshine, was congestive heart failure.

Belafonte’s singing shaped a musical consciousness for generations of Americans, from traditional folk music and spirituals to Caribbean calypso and protest songs. His acting in films such as “Carmen Jones” and “Odds Against Tomorrow” won praise and helped pave the way for Black performers who would follow. And his activism took him to the front lines of the civil rights movement, where he marched with Martin Luther King Jr., lobbied for the release of an imprisoned Nelson Mandela, and joined other stars to raise money for famine relief on the African continent. Realizing from an early age the power of celebrity to advance social change, Belafonte was among the rare few to have been equally entrenched in the worlds of entertainment and politics with genuine results to spare.

With season 2 of Abbott Elementary now in full swing, Tyler James Williams finds himself back in the network comedy world he started out in. Acting from the age of four, Williams became a star overnight playing a childhood fictional version of Chris Rock on Everybody Hates Chris.

Shifting into adulthood, the actor has gone on to act in everything from animated superhero shows to more edgy HBO comedies. Looking at his filmography, these are Williams's best projects according to user reviews on IMDb.

Let It Shine (2012) - 6.3

A modern retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac, Let It Shine follows Williams as Cyrus DeBarge, a shy choir director who moonlights as a rap lyricist. Due to a misunderstanding, Cyrus stands on the sidelines as his friend Kris takes credit for Cyrus's popular song and as a result gets closer to their shared crush, the singer Roxie.

Related: Top 10 Disney Channel Original Movies From The 2010s,...

George Wein, an impresario of 20th century music who helped found the Newport Jazz and Folk festivals and set the template for gatherings everywhere from Woodstock to the south of France, died Monday.

Wein, 95, died “peacefully in his sleep” in his New York City apartment, said Carolyn McClair, a family spokesperson.

A former jazz club owner and aspiring pianist, Wein launched the Newport Jazz Festival in 1954 under pouring rain and with a lineup for the heavens — Billie Holiday and Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald and Lester Young. Louis Armstrong was there the following year and Duke Ellington made ...

George Wein, an impresario of 20th century music who helped found the Newport Jazz and Folk festivals and set the template for gatherings everywhere from Woodstock to the south of France, died Monday.

Wein, 95, died “peacefully in his sleep” in his New York City apartment, said Carolyn McClair, a family spokesperson.

A former jazz club owner and aspiring pianist, Wein launched the Newport Jazz Festival in 1954 under pouring rain and with a lineup for the heavens — Billie Holiday and Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald and Lester Young. Louis Armstrong was there the following year and Duke Ellington made ...

Bertrand Tavernier’s 1986 musical drama is based on the life of the saxophonist Lester Young, played by the great bebop artist Dexter Gordon as a struggling band man named Dale Turner. Turner’s highs and lows are reflected in the wonderful music on the soundtrack including Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell. Gordon is joined by other real life jazz musicians in a diverse cast including Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter. Martin Scorsese has a small but scintillating part as a crooked club manager.

The post Round Midnight appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

By 1982, Roy Haynes had been playing drums professionally for close to 40 years. That December, during a concert at the White House with pianist Chick Corea and bassist Miroslav Vitous, he showed that he was still operating on the cutting edge of jazz.

Instead of playing it safe and running through a couple familiar tunes, the group presented an unusual medley, based on a concept documented on its then-recent Ecm album Trio Music. That LP featured a novel structure: half searching free improvisations, half swinging renditions of pieces by Thelonious Monk.

Eve Goldberg looks back on a "can't miss" film production that fell short of expectations:

Paris Blues could have been a hit. It could have been a game-changer. It could have become a classic. Starring Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier as expatriate jazz musicians, this 1961 movie was filmed in Paris, directed by Martin Ritt and written by Walter Bernstein (The Front). All the ingredients for a compelling, top-notch entertainment were in place.

But the movie misses. Despite strong performances, a fascinating milieu, meaty subject matter, gorgeous cinematography, several unforgettable set pieces, and a score by Duke Ellington, the whole is distinctly less than the sum of its parts.

So, what went wrong?

The problem is the script. How the script falters, and why, is perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the film.

Paris Blues is based on a 1957 same-titled novel by Harold Flender. The book tells the story of Eddie Cook,...

For this writer, the quintessential moment of the 2018 Newport Jazz Festival came in transit. A quick stroll on Saturday afternoon took me from the main stage, where Laurie Anderson was wrapping up a set of luminous, exploratory string-trio free improv, to one of the smaller tents, where octogenarian Memphis piano master Harold Mabern, saxophonist Eric Alexander & Co. were busy muscling through a set of exquisite old-school hardbop. The transition was disorienting in the best way possible — an illustration of just how broad this legendary fest’s concept of jazz still is.

Jammin’ the Blues by Gjon Mili. Completed in 1944.

Gjon Mili is primarily known for his work as a photographer, particularly his portraits and experimental use of strobe lighting, much of which appeared in Life magazine.

In the book Norman Granz: The Man Who Used Jazz for Justice, author Tad Hershorn goes into great detail in the making and release of the film. After building a career as a photographer in New York City, Mili was flown to Los Angeles by Warner Bros. to see if he would be a good motion picture director. Mili proposed a jazz film to producer Gordon Hollingshead, which the studio moved forward on. Granz, the subject of Hershorn’s book, is listed as the Technical Director of the film in the opening credits (see below).

Jammin’ the Blues was filmed over four days in September 1944, and released that December. There was some controversy surrounding...

Janis: Little Girl Blue director Amy Berg addresses D.A. Pennebaker with Michael Winship Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

D.A. Pennebaker, joined Janis: Little Girl Blue director, Amy Berg, and Writers Guild of America East President, Michael Winship, at Symphony Space in New York for a discussion that led to Janis Joplin's breakthrough performance in Monterey Pop, Kris Kristofferson singing to Odetta, Cat Power, Bob Dylan, Judd Apatow's family tree, poker with Woody Harrelson, Willie Nelson and Owen Wilson at David Niehaus', John Cooke, Jimi Hendrix, Paul Rothchild, Vincent van Gogh, Lester Young and Billie Holiday.

Amy Berg with Michael Winship: "The accomplishment is in having patience because this has taken me eight years." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Amy Berg, clearly a filmmaker who doesn't shy away from tackling issues of childhood trauma, as she did in her feature film Every Secret Thing, chose Janis Joplin as the subject of her...

Born on August 21, 1904 in Red Bank, New Jersey, William James Basie was taught piano by his mother. At age 20 he moved to Harlem, center of the jazz piano world at that time, and soon began touring with various groups. He first gained fame in Bennie Moten's band, based in Kansas City; when Moten died in 1935, Basie formed his own group incorporating many Moten men.

Columbia Records producer/A&R man John Hammond heard Basie's band on the radio and made the first recordings of the band in 1936, but it was when Basie started recording for Decca in 1937 that he made his most classic records. The three-cd set The Complete Decca Recordings is the crucial documentation of what may have been the hardest-swinging big band, and additionally shows why Lester Young became an icon of the tenor saxophone. Each of the three discs in this set is devoted to one year...

Yusef Lateef, who died on Monday after a bout with prostate cancer, was a devout Muslim who did not like his music to be called jazz because of the supposed indecent origins and connotations of the word (although those origins are still debated). He preferred the self-coined phrase "autophysiopsychic music." Furthermore, his music encompassed an impressively broad range of styles, and the only Grammy he won was in the New Age category -- for a recording of a symphony. Think about those things amid the flood of Lateef obituaries with "jazz" in the headline.

That said, certainly Lateef's own musical origins indisputably revolved around jazz. Growing up in Detroit, a highly fertile musical environment in the 1930s and beyond, Lateef got his first instrument, an $80 Martin alto sax, at age 18. Within a year he was on the road with the 13 Spirits of Swing (arrangements by Milt Buckner).

A Detroit friend,...

Highly individual American drummer, bandleader and jazz visionary who toured with Lena Horne in the 1950s

A hundred years into its evolution, jazz incorporates ethnic and European classical instruments, drum machines and DJs spinning decks. A half-century or so ago, hardware habits were more cut and dried. A jazz big band had trumpets, trombones, saxes and a rhythm section. A small band had a rhythm section, a sax and trumpet, with maybe a guitar or a vibraphone. One that featured a (very quiet) guitarist, a flute or clarinet, a cellist, and a drummer who preferred mallets to sticks seemed like a strange beast in the jazz forest.

But the groups of the American drummer Chico Hamilton, who has died aged 92, did feature such instrumentation and, contrary to the jazz orthodoxies of the 1950s, they were for a time runaway successes. Hamilton led West Coast bands in that decade that came...

New York -- Pianist Herbie Hancock will celebrate the special connection between Turkey and jazz music forged decades ago when the Turkish ambassador opened his residence to white and black musicians at a time when segregation held sway in the U.S. capital.

Hancock, a Unesco Goodwill Ambassador, is organizing a gala concert with jazz stars from around the world on April 30 at the famed Hagia Irene in the outer courtyard of Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, which has been designated the host city for the second annual U.N.-sanctioned International Jazz Day.

"There's an amazing history of the relationship between Turkey and jazz," Hancock told The Associated Press in a telephone interview ahead of Tuesday's official announcement of the 2013 International Jazz Day program.

It began in the `30s and `40s when the two sons of Turkish Ambassador Mehmet Munir Ertegun pursued their passion for jazz by frequenting the capital's...

Everett Frank Sinatra in “Higher and Higher,” 1943.

My new novel “Narrows Gate” is set in the years preceding and immediately following World War II. The town of Narrows Gate, with its waterfront piers, factories and urban grit, sits in the shadow of New York City. It’s a fictional version of Hoboken, New Jersey, where I was born and raised.

You’d be right if you guessed that “Narrows Gate” includes a skinny young blue-eyed Italian-American crooner who rises from...

Supernatural fans got a fun-filled filler episode in “Time After Time”. While the episode was light on action and Leviathan references, the humorous dialogue didn’t skip a beat.

Here are some of our favorite moments in no particular order.

Cartoon Smut

Since Bobby (Jim Beaver) died, Dean (Jensen Ackles) has been obsessed with looking at news clips of Dick Roman (James Patrick Stuart) online. But, do you know one of Dean’s other obsessions? Sam (Jared Padalecki) does. Sam said to Dean that he hoped his big brother was watching “cartoon smut” and not torturing himself with more Dick Roman stalking.

Dean closed down his laptop, hiding the Roman images, and said, “It’s called anime and it’s an art form.”

Solving Problems the old Fashioned Way

How do you figure out where to sleep? You could fight it out. You could flip a coin. Or, you could play Paper,...

Note: Do not read on if you have not seen Season 7, Episode 12 of The CW's "Supernatural," entitled "Time After Time."

The past has never looked so good. After previous treks to the '70s and the Old West, this week "Supernatural" took another leaf out of the "Back to the Future" playbook and sent Dean all the way to 1944, where he got to hunt in a whole new era with old-school G-Man Eliot Ness (played with serious swagger by Nicholas Lea), the founder of The Untouchables. It was an unabashedly fun episode, which allowed the audience to get swept up in Dean's giddy enthusiasm for the time period and the man he was working with.

Gimmicky episodes are a dangerous bet for most shows, and some stray too far towards tongue-in-cheek, wink-wink humor that undermines the conceit of the story. Breaking the fourth wall sometimes has a place, as "Supernatural...

In December of 1957, CBS broadcast a program called "The Sound of Jazz." It featured an all-star lineup of jazz veterans including Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Ben Webster, Roy Eldridge, and Gerry Mulligan. This particular clip is of the singer Jimmy Rushing with Count Basie and his orchestra, playing a supremely swinging version of "I Left My Baby." Soloists include Webster, Basie on piano, trombonist Dickie Wells, Eldridge, and the legendary Coleman Hawkins.