#esperanza spaulding

[thegood-byelook]

A fave duet.

[blewnotes]

Jazziversaries October 18th

Chuck Berry (guitar, electric) 1926 :: Happy Jazziversary to Chuck Berry. Charles Edward Anderson “Chuck” Berry is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as “Maybellene” (1955), “Roll Over Beethoven” (1956), “Rock and Roll Music” (1957) and “Johnny B. Goode” (1958), Chuck Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics focusing on teen life and consumerism and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music.

Born into a middle-class family in St. Louis, Missouri, Berry had an interest in music from an early age and gave his first public performance at Sumner High School. While still a high school student he served a prison sentence for armed robbery from 1944 to 1947. On his release, Berry settled into married life and worked at an automobile assembly plant. By early 1953, influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship techniques of blues player T-Bone Walker, he was performing in the evenings with the Johnnie Johnson Trio. His break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955, and met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess of Chess Records. With Chess he recorded “Maybellene” — Berry’s adaptation of the country song “Ida Red” — which sold over a million copies, reaching No. 1 on Billboard’s Rhythm and Blues chart. By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star with several hit records and film appearances to his name as well as a lucrative touring career. He had also established his own St. Louis-based nightclub, called Berry’s Club Bandstand. But in January 1962, Berry was sentenced to three years in prison for offenses under the Mann Act — he had transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines.

After his release in 1963, Berry had several more hits, including “No Particular Place to Go,” “You Never Can Tell,” and “Nadine,” but these did not achieve the same success, or lasting impact, of his 1950s songs, and by the 1970s he was more in demand as a nostalgic live performer, playing his past hits with local backup bands of variable quality. His insistence on being paid in cash led to a jail sentence in 1979 — four months and community service for tax evasion.

Berry was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on its opening in 1986, with the comment that he “laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance.” Berry is included in several Rolling Stone “Greatest of All Time” lists, including being ranked fifth on their 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll included three of Chuck Berry’s songs: “Johnny B. Goode,” “Maybellene,” and “Rock and Roll Music.” Today, at the age of 86, Berry continues to play live.

Esperanza Spalding (bass, acoustic) 1984 :: Many happy jazziversary returns to Esperanza Spalding.

Esperanza Spalding is an American jazz bassist, cellist and singer, who draws upon many genres in her own compositions.

She has won three Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Award for Best New Artist at the 53rd Grammy Awards, making her the first jazz artist to win the award.

When asked in 2008 why she plays the bass instead of some other instrument, Spalding said that it was not a choice, but the bass “had its own arc” and resonated with her. Spalding has said that for her discovering the bass was like “waking up one day and realizing you’re in love with a co-worker”. By the time she randomly picked up the bass in music class and began experimenting with it, she had grown bored with her other instruments. Her band teacher showed her a blues line for the bass that she later used to secure her first gig. After that, she went in to play the bass daily and gradually fell in love.

Spalding had begun performing live in clubs in Portland, Oregon as a teenager, securing her first gig at 15 in a blues club, when she could play only one line on bass. One of the seasoned musicians with which she played that first night invited her to join the band’s rehearsals “so she could actually learn something”, and her rehearsals soon grew into regular performances spanning almost a year. According to Spalding, it was a chance for her to stretch as a musician, reaching and growing beyond her experience. Her early contact with these “phenomenal resources”, as she calls the musicians who played with her, fostered her sense of rhythm and helped nurture her interest in her instrument.

Spalding was mentored by Thara Memory, a trumpeter and educator from Portland, Oregon, United States. He has been involved with the Portland jazz scene for over 40 years.

She has cited jazz bassists Ron Carter and Dave Holland as important influences on her music; Carter for the “orchestration” of his playing and Holland for the way his compositional method complements his personal style. She has described the saxophone player Wayne Shorter, and singer-songwriter Milton Nascimento, as heroes. She has also noted her preference for the music of Brazil.

Spalding has said she loves fusion music and was influenced by a “wonderful arc that started 40 years ago where people kept incorporating modern sounds into their music”. She has expressed concerns that jazz has wandered from its roots, suggesting that jazz has lost its street value and its relevance to “the Black experience to the Black Diaspora and beyond” now that has been co-opted by the “seasoned ‘art’ community”. She has noted that, in its early days, jazz was “popular dance music” and “the music of young people who considered themselves awfully hip”, and believes “hip-hop, or neo-soul […] is our ‘jazz’ now as far as the role these genres play in the music genre lineage”. And that, in order to write original music, one must read and stay informed about the world. She has said she models her career on those of Madonna and Ornette Coleman.

Wynton Marsalis (trumpet) 1961 :: Jazziversary Greetings to Wynton Marsalis! Wynton Learson Marsalis is a trumpeter, composer, teacher, music educator, and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, United States. Marsalis has promoted the appreciation of classical and jazz music often to young audiences. Marsalis has been awarded nine Grammys in both genres, and a jazz recording of his was the first of its kind to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

At an early age, he exhibited an aptitude for music. At age eight, Wynton performed traditional New Orleans music in the Fairview Baptist Church band led by banjoist Danny Barker, and at 14, he performed with the New Orleans Philharmonic. During high school, Wynton performed with the New Orleans Symphony Brass Quintet, New Orleans Community Concert Band, New Orleans Youth Orchestra, New Orleans Symphony, various jazz bands and with a local funk band, the Creators.

At age 17, Wynton was the youngest musician admitted to Tanglewood’s Berkshire Music Center, where he won the school’s Harvey Shapiro Award for outstanding brass student. Wynton moved to New York City to attend Juilliard in 1979, and picked up gigs around town. During this period, Wynton received a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to spend time and study with trumpet innovator Woody Shaw, one of Wynton’s major influences at the time. In 1980, Wynton joined the Jazz Messengers led by Art Blakey. In the years that followed, Wynton performed with Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Sweets Edison, Clark Terry, Sonny Rollins, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams and countless other jazz legends.

In 1995, PBS premiered Marsalis On Music, an educational television series on jazz and classical music hosted and written by Marsalis. Also, in 1995, National Public Radio aired the first of Marsalis’ 26-week series, entitled Making the Music. Wynton’s radio and television series were awarded the George Foster Peabody Award. Marsalis has also written five books: Sweet Swing Blues on the Road, Jazz in the Bittersweet Blues of Life, To a Young Musician: Letters from the Road, Jazz ABZ (an A to Z collection of poems celebrating jazz greats), and his most recent release Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life.

In 1987, Wynton Marsalis co-founded a jazz program at Lincoln Center. In July 1996, Jazz at Lincoln Center was installed as new constituent of Lincoln Center. In October 2004, Marsalis opened Frederick P. Rose Hall, the world’s first institution for jazz containing three performance spaces (including the first concert hall designed specifically for jazz) along with recording, broadcast, rehearsal and educational facilities. Wynton presently serves as Artistic Director for Jazz at Lincoln Center and Music Director for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. One of his most recent releases was a 2011 collaboration with blues-rock guitarist Eric Clapton, a Jazz at Lincoln Center concert that produced the live album Wynton Marsalis & Eric Clapton Play the Blues. In 1997, Marsalis became the first jazz musician ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his epic oratorio, Blood On The Fields.

Boogie Woogie Red (piano) 1925-1992 :: Boogie Woogie Red was an American Detroit blues, boogie-woogie and jazz pianist, singer and songwriter. He variously worked with Sonny Boy Williamson, Washboard Willie, Baby Boy Warren, Lonnie Johnson, Tampa Red, John Lee Hooker and Memphis Slim.

He was born Vernon Harrison in Rayville, Louisiana, moving to Detroit in 1927. In his adolescence he began performing in local clubs, and went on to work alongside Sonny Boy Williamson, Baby Boy Warren and John Lee Hooker.

In the mid 1970s, Red used to play solo piano at the Blind Pig, a small bar in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He recorded his own albums in 1974 and 1977, and toured Europe that same decade. Red appeared on BBC Television’s Old Grey Whistle Test in May 1973. However most of Red’s work was completed within Michigan.

Anita O’Day (vocalist) 1919-2006 :: Anita O’Day was an American jazz singer. Born Anita Belle Colton, O’Day was admired for her sense of rhythm and dynamics, and her early big band appearances shattered the traditional image of the “girl singer”. Refusing to pander to any female stereotype, O’Day presented herself as a “hip” jazz musician, wearing a band jacket and skirt as opposed to an evening gown. She changed her surname from Colton to O’Day, pig Latin for “dough,” slang for money.

O’Day, along with Mel Tormé, is often grouped with the West Coast cool school of jazz. Like Tormé, O’Day had some training in jazz drums (courtesy of her first husband Don Carter); her longest musical collaboration was with jazz drummer John Poole. While maintaining a central core of hard swing, O’Day’s skills in improvisation of rhythm and melody put her squarely among the pioneers of bebop.

She cited Martha Raye as the primary influence on her vocal style, also expressing admiration for Mildred Bailey, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday. She always maintained that the accidental excision of her uvula during a childhood tonsillectomy left her incapable of vibrato, and unable to maintain long phrases. That botched operation, she claimed, forced her to develop a more percussive style based on short notes and rhythmic drive. However, when she was in good voice she could stretch long notes with strong crescendos and a telescoping vibrato, e.g. her live version of “Sweet Georgia Brown” at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, captured in Bert Stern’s film Jazz on a Summer’s Day.

The call from Krupa came in early 1941. Of the 34 sides she recorded with Krupa, it was “Let Me Off Uptown”, a novelty duet with Roy Eldridge, that became her first big hit. That same year, Down Beat named O’Day “New Star of the Year”.

During the late 1940s, she recorded two dozen sides, mostly for small labels. The quality of these singles varies: O’Day was trying to achieve popular success without sacrificing her identity as a jazz singer. Among the more notable recordings from this period are “Hi Ho Trailus Boot Whip”, “Key Largo”, “How High the Moon”, and “Malaguena”. O’Day’s drug problems began to surface late in 1947, when she and her husband Carl Hoff were arrested for possession of marijuana and sentenced to 90 days in jail. Her career was back on the upswing in September 1948, when she sang with Count Basie at the Royal Roost in New York City, resulting in five airchecks. What secured O’Day’s place in the jazz pantheon, however, are the 17 albums she recorded for Norman Granz’s Norgran and Verve labels between 1952 and 1962.

As a live performer O’Day also began performing in festivals and concerts with such musicians as Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson, Dinah Washington, George Shearing, Cal Tjader, and Thelonious Monk. She appeared in the documentary Jazz on a Summer’s Day, filmed at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, which increased her popularity. She admitted later that she was probably high on heroin during the concert. She also said that it was the best day of her life in that hers was the star performance of the festival and she made the cover of national magazines for it.

[buzzbandsla]

Tonight in LA: Bruce Springsteen, Esperanza Spaulding, Junior Boys, Reggie Watts, Filligar, Intronaut, Acid Mother Temple, Pat App

Tonight in LA: Bruce Springsteen, Esperanza Spaulding, Junior Boys, Reggie Watts, Filligar, Intronaut, Acid Mother Temple, Pat App

Tuesday’s Los Angeles concerts:  ► Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band bring a generous four hours of rock, soul and sweat to the L.A. Memorial Sports Arena. ► There will be a phenomenal display of basstastic nouveau jazz fusion at the Belasco Theater with Esperanza Spalding. ► It’s a night of Canadian electro-pop with Junior Boys, Jessy Lanza, and Borys at the Regent, with local hero Cooper…

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[stereocurator]

I wasn’t expecting this gem from Esperanza Spaulding. I was a big fan of her first album, which was predoiminately a more traditional jazz, but she takes a big leap here switching into rock and alternative with her own signature blend, and it pays off big time. Check out Earth to Heaven in the links below, named Best New Track by Pitchfork.

[Purchase] [Spotify]

Artist: Esperanza Spaulding Album: Emily’s D+Evolution (Preorder Above) Label: Concord Music Group First Heard: Pitchfork If you like: Genre Blending at its Best

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[saltfight]

#NowPlaying One by Esperanza Spalding // this is slaying me

[nottyelduende]

Once autumn’s glow Has gone away And gray cotton clouds Blanket drowsy days You’re the winter sun

Once fallen leaves Have lost their crunch And turn to confetti Brown and orange I know soon You’ll come tame the whip of the wind And bathe the naked branches with warmth and light

When tired bones tremble From the cold One kiss of your warmth Heals the soul Shine winter sun Make this cold heart whole

Once autumn’s glow Has gone away And gray cotton clouds Blanket drowsy days I know soon You’ll come tame the whip of the wind And bathe the naked branches with warmth and light You’re the winter sun

[soul-service]

[portcherish]

Thank you