Major Label Says Read Jazz News

Major Label Says Jazz

Jazz on deck: Golden Ear Awards, Jim Hall, Lynne Arriale

Jazz - Jazz News
Friday, 18 March 2011 04:09
It's that time of year again — the Golden Ear Awards, annual praise night for the Seattle jazz community. The balloting is over, but you can still enjoy crowning the winners while listening at Tula's to the estimable bassist Chuck Deardorf, who's bringing sizzling Portland alto saxophonist Warren Rand up for the occasion. The rest of the quintet features Dawn Clement (piano), Dave Peterson (guitar) and Gary Hobbs (drums). There were some strong candidates this year. Deardorf is up for a well-deserved Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame award and, for best album, the nominees span nearly a century, from the crisp young lions of Seattle's Speak to 84-year-old veteran saxophonist Jimmy Heath, with the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra. More jazz Over at Jazz Alley, the great guitarist Jim Hall, whose beautiful, near-acoustic tone and conceptual delicacy have made him a favorite for decades, appears through Sunday with a dandy band: Greg Osby (saxophone), Steve LaSpina (bass) and Joey Baron (drums). Following Hall into the Alley is pianist Lynne Arriale, an inventive, pastel yet muscular pianist who takes listeners on several lovely journeys on her new album, "Convergence" (Motema). Arriale appears with ace bassist Omer Avital and drummer Anthony Pinciotti. Paul de Barros: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Last Updated on Friday, 18 March 2011 04:17

Grammy's salute Jazz

Jazz - Jazz News

Midnight at the Barrelhouse: The Johnny Otis Story

Jazz - Jazz News

Friday, 21 January 2011 04:08

For six decades, Johnny Otis played just about every role you can play in the music business: musician (on drums, vibes and piano), singer, songwriter, arranger, bandleader, talent maven, producer, business manager, promoter, radio and television personality, author and nightclub owner. In the age spanned by the ends of WWII and the Vietnam wars, Otis' musical and social impact on black culture in and around Los Angeles seems impossible to overstate.

Johnny Otis is enshrined in the Rock 'n' Roll, Blues, and R&B Halls of Fame. He was not the greatest rhythm and blues musician, but may have been the rhythm and blues musician's greatest advocate. Otis was responsible, wholly or in part, for launching the careers of R&B legends Big Mama Thornton, Jackie Wilson, Little Esther Phillips, and Etta James. He produced R&B and blues records for the Duke, Federal, King, Peacock and Savoy labels, and for three decades produced The Johnny Otis Show, public radio's overview of popular black music and culture.

More Articles...

Origins of Virgin Records

Quite apart from the innovative characteristics of the music, Tubular Bells has the second claim to rock 'n roll greatness. Being the first record released by Virgin Records, it was also the start of the Richard Branson empire, which has since blossomed into a global conglomerate built on megastores, airlines, railways, telecommunications and much more.

READ MORE
Ring of Fire

Johnny Cash

Released May 1963 | Columbia

'Ring of Fire' was the single that cemented Cash's reputation as the outsider anti-hero of country music. Like many of his hits of the time, it spent several weeks a top the country chart,j but also reached Number 17 on the U.S. pop chart, making it Cash's biggest mainstream success since 'Ballad of a Teenage Queen' and 'Guess Things Happen That Way,' which both made the Top 20 in 1958. With its jaunty rhythm offset by that memorably ominous vocal delivery, the song has all the hallmarks of classic Cash, even if its toughest critics find the breezy Mariachi trumpet break to be at odds with lyrics about falling "down, down, down."

Unlike many of his other most famous recordings, 'Ring of Fire' was not one of Cash's own compositions. It was written for him by his future wife, June Carter - a big country music star in her won right as part of the second incarnation of The Carter Family - and singer-song wirter Merle Kilgore. Carter and Kilgore most likely had Cash in mind when they writer the song, however; it sounds today as well-suited to the Man in Black as any of his self-penned hits, from 'I Walk the LInek' to 'Folsom Prison Blues.'

Source: Classic Singles Back to Back
Smooth Jazz Riffs

Dwayne Kerr Garners Endorsement from GUO Musical Instruments Co.

on Eve of Touring Again with Erykah Badu

by Cheryl Hughey

Dwayne Kerr, flutist for Erykah Badu, recently announced his endorsement with GUO Musical Instruments Co. As a frequently touring artist, Kerr is a great match for this maker of composite flutes. "I always wanted to own a wood flute, but touring with the additional stress of changing weather and climate can make traveling with a wood flute challenging. The Grenaditte is great. It's made with a polymer composite material...no problems and no more worries," he said.
Kerr is quick to point out that the weight of the flute does not compromise the quality. "It's light weight making it ideal to travel and has a beautiful warm, dark and rich tone. The action is really responsive...I absolutely love my Grenaditte C flute...I believe the Grenaditte is the next innovation in flute technology." Known as the "funky fluteman," Kerr is currently gearing up for another tour with Erykah Badu.

Read more
Cloud Music: How Hard Do Online Streaming Services Rock?

Cloud music services promise to rock the digital world and reinvent the way we discover new artists, songs and albums. By saving your music online, and letting you instantly stream tunes anytime, anywhere over the Internet to PCs or mobile devices, they simultaneously eliminate concerns with storage, synching and piracy.

The field continues to boom for cloud music services, which let you house a single library of tunes or an entire digital music collection online, then access it on-demand from dozens of gadgets (smartphone, tablet PC, portable media player, etc.). But while services like Spotify, Amazon Cloud Player, Mog and Rdio have millions of fans singing a happy tune, record labels and execs fear their growing power to upend the digital music industry. Who can blame them? With even Apple and Google now eyeing the streaming online music space, iTunes may soon be the least of their worries.

In the first episode of our new running video series, Gear Up, we review the best cloud music services to discover whether or not they'll have you singing a happy tune. And, of course, we consider just how likely they are to really represent the future of digital entertainment.

April 15, 8:30 AM ET | By Scott Steinberg
Christian Rock News

Fireflight Celebrates First Career Grammy Nod

12/02/2010 ChristianRock.net

Premiere modern rock band Fireflight receives its first career GRAMMY nomination this week, with its third studio album For Those Who Wait announced in the Best Rock or Rap Gospel Album category last night by The Recording Academy®, as determined by the voting members of The Academy. For the third year, nominations for the annual GRAMMY Awards were announced on primetime television as part of "The GRAMMY® Nominations Concert Live!! — Countdown To Music's Biggest Night®," a one-hour special broadcast live on CBS from Club Nokia at L.A. Live.

The 53rd Annual GRAMMY Awards will be held on "GRAMMY Sunday," Feb. 13, 2011, at STAPLES Center in Los Angeles and once again will be broadcast live in high definition TV and 5.1 surround sound on CBS from 8 – 11:30 p.m. (ET/PT).
Pop Music Scene

Paul McCartney Rocks 'Saturday Night Live' With Beatles, Wings Classics

by M. Tye Comer

Comedian Paul Rudd may have been the show's official host, but it was the other Paul that had made this weekend's "Saturday Night Live" an epic television experience.

Sir Paul McCartney brought his A-game to the SNL set on Dec. 11. Not only did Macca rock 30 Rock with five songs -- including Wings hits "Jet" and "Band on the Run," and Beatles' classics "A Day in the Life" and "Get Back," and John Lennon's anthem "Give Peace a Chance" -- he also flexed his comedic chops by getting silly with Rudd in the opening monologue, impersonating Camilla Parker-Bowles (Prince Charles' wife) during Weekend Update, and playing a tiny harmonica in an amusing digital short.