Atsuko Hashimoto Organ Trio & Voices - Songs We Love

Size: 161,6 MB
Time: 69:07
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2005
Styles: Jazz/Blues: Hammond Organ, Vocals
Art: Front

01. Ladybug (6:22)
02. Bye Bye Blackbird (4:25)
03. My Ship (5:21)
04. You Don't Know What Love Is (4:02)
05. Misty (5:21)
06. The Song Is You (4:46)
07. Nature Boy (7:30)
08. Ruggin' The Blues (4:37)
09. What's Going On (4:50)
10. The More I See You (6:33)
11. Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow (3:47)
12. God Bless The Child (5:56)
13. Stormy Monday (5:31)

Personnel:
Atsuko Hashimoto: B3 Hammond Organ
Yutaka Hashimoto: Guitar
Juasa Kanoh: Drums

Voices:
Elijah Levi
Harvey Thompson
Toni Scruggs

'Songs We Love' is a fitting title for a project that brings together Osaka's finest husband and wife jazz team with three outstanding vocalists from the U.S. Songs abound on this recording, but the operative word here is love. The love the Hashimoto's inspire, reflected in the reverent yet playful way they approach their craft, goes a long way toward explaining why others are so eager to share their talents in creating music with them.

Atsuko began to explore the B3 at an early age starting with popular songs and cutting her teeth on such jazz classics as Duke Ellington's Take the A Train. She studied classical music for several years before choosing to dedicate herself to jazz music and the jazz organ.

At age 18 she started working for Hammond Japan, giving live organ demonstrations and instructing as a Hammond-certified teacher. She quickly developed a reputation for her skills at the B3, creating complex melodic and harmonic compositions over a consistent, inventive and hard-swinging bass-line.

Atsuko brings a freshness to the jazz repertory and the Hammond B3 through her innovative approach to the instrument. She has played with jazz greats before large audiences, her joy in music, sense of play and abundant personal warmth shining through her mastery of the idiom while exercising the full range of voices and dynamics available to the Hammond/Leslie combo.

Songs We Love 

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Jimmy Gourley - The Jazz Trio

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 55:10
Size: 126.3 MB
Styles: Guitar jazz
Year: 1983/2006
Art: Front

[5:25] 1. Montagne Madness
[5:38] 2. Shameful Roger
[5:27] 3. Orgy Valley (Orgeval)
[6:11] 4. You Go To My Head
[5:25] 5. Ladybird
[4:57] 6. Wrong Man Blues
[6:03] 7. I Thought About You
[5:27] 8. Day By Day
[5:27] 9. Orgy Valley (Alternate Take)
[5:06] 10. Ladybird

A bebopping guitarist with a solid enough rhythmic edge for R&B, Jimmy Gourley came from a family background that more than just leaned toward conservatory training. Gourley's father actually founded the Monarch Conservatory of Music itself, located in Hammond, IN. Gourley was still popping pimples when he began bumping up against would-be boppers: one of the guitarist's high-school mates was none other than Lee Konitz, a wizard on the alto saxophone but at that point toting a tenor to high-school band class.

Heading south, Gourley went on his first tours in commercial outfits combing the territory of Louisiana and Arkansas. From 1944 through 1946 he shipped out with the Navy. When he returned he picked up a job in Chicago replacing the equally fine guitarist Jimmy Raney in a combo led by the somewhat obscure Jay Burkhart. In the late '40s Gourley was still keeping Windy City company but the names became more prominent, including singers Anita O'Day and the duo of Jackie Cain and Roy Kral.

The '50s would be best described as the guitarist's French period. Basing himself out of Paris, Gourley was associated mostly with Henri Renaud as well as his own house band stints at various clubs. Excellent recording sessions during this period present the guitarist in the company of tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims, alto saxophonist Gigi Gryce, trumpeter Clifford Brown, drummer Roy Haynes, and trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, not to mention homeboy Konitz. There was a dash back to Chicago during this decade but Gourley primarily spent his time in Paris, a long run as one of the local accompanists at the Blue Note allowing him the opportunity to continue associating with the cream of the jazz crop.

Gourley shows up on in one classic film on jazz, the noted 'Round Midnight, his featured number perhaps asking a question directly about his career, "How Long Has This Been Goin' On?" About a decade later, his own liner notes described him as "still searching, still stumbling" in a session involving his regular trio with drummer Philippe Combelle and bassist Dominique Lemerle. The guitarist is considered one of the most accomplished members of the jazz expatriate community. ~ Eugene Chadbourne

The Jazz Trio

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Bennie Green - Come Sunrise

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 78:24
Size: 179.5 MB
Styles: Bop, Trombone jazz
Year: 2015
Art: Front

[5:15] 1. You're Mine You
[5:32] 2. Can't We Be Friends
[5:32] 3. All I Do Is Dream Of You
[5:31] 4. Melba's Mood
[8:58] 5. See See Rider
[6:49] 6. Congo Lament
[4:26] 7. Encore
[6:24] 8. That's All
[5:43] 9. Green Leaves
[5:24] 10. Bye Bye Blackbird
[6:00] 11. Lullaby Of The Doomed
[6:43] 12. This Love Of Mine
[6:01] 13. I Love You

Bennie Green was one of the few trombonists of the 1950s who played in a style not influenced by J.J. Johnson (Bill Harris was another). His witty sound and full tone looked backwards to the swing era yet was open to the influence of R&B. After playing locally in Chicago, he was with the Earl Hines Orchestra during 1942-1948 (except for two years in the military). Green gained some fame for his work with Charlie Ventura (1948-1950) before joining Earl Hines' small group (1951-1953). He then led his own group throughout the 1950s and '60s, using such sidemen as Cliff Smalls, Charlie Rouse, Eric Dixon, Paul Chambers, Louis Hayes, Sonny Clark, Gildo Mahones, and Jimmy Forrest. Green recorded regularly as a leader for Prestige, Decca, Blue Note, Vee-Jay, Time, Bethlehem, and Jazzland during 1951-1961, although only one further session (a matchup with Sonny Stitt on Cadet in 1964) took place. Bennie Green was with Duke Ellington for a few months in 1968-1969 and then moved to Las Vegas, where he spent his last years working in hotel bands, although he did emerge to play quite well at the 1972 Newport Jazz Festival and in New York jam sessions. ~bio by Scott Yanow

Come Sunrise

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Beady Belle - Belvedere

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 38:58
Size: 89.2 MB
Styles: Neo-soul, Contemporary R&B, Vocal jazz
Year: 2008
Art: Front

[4:38] 1. Apron Strings
[5:05] 2. A Touch Of Paradise
[4:51] 3. Tower Of Lament
[4:18] 4. Self-Fulfilling
[4:23] 5. Tranquil Flight
[3:35] 6. Intermission Music
[3:41] 7. Viscous Ocean
[4:28] 8. Boiling Milk
[3:55] 9. Two-Faced

Beady Belle is one of the favorite bands of the jazz star Jamie Cullum. That's why he sings on Beady Belle's new album, on the duet "Intermission music". * Also the the American soul star, India. Arie, is one of Beady Belle's biggest fans. She also sings on "Belvedere", on the duet "Self-fulfilling". Beady Belle has played over 180 concerts in over 100 cities in over 20 countries.

Belvedere

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Benny Goodman - Easy Does It!

Styles: Clarinet Jazz
Year: 1952
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 24:15
Size: 78,2 MB
Art: Front

(2:44)  1. Henderson Stomp
(3:09)  2. Makin' Whoopee
(2:52)  3. Sweet Georgia Brown
(2:58)  4. Behave Yourself
(3:06)  5. I Never Knew
(3:03)  6. Puttin' On The Ritz
(3:17)  7. I Can't Get Started
(3:04)  8. That's A Plenty

For a kid who liked jazz, Chicago was a great town to grow up in. Musicians had begun working their way north from New Orleans about the turn of the century, and by the early 1920s giants like "Jellyroll" Morton, Sidney Bechet, "King" Oliver and Louis Armstrong were playing in Chicago and making history. Kids who paid attention to this development were going to make history themselves in a few more years - Bud Freeman, Davie Tough, Eddie Condon, Milt Mesirow (Mezz Mezzrow), Gene Krupa, "Muggsy" Spanier, Jimmy McPartland, Jess Stacy - and a kid in short pants who played the clarinet. Benny Goodman was only 10 when he first picked up a clarinet. Only a year or so later he was doing Ted Lewis imitations for pocket money. At 14 he was in a band that featured the legendary Bix Beiderbecke. By the time he was 16 he was recognized as a "comer" as far away as the west coast and was asked to join a California-based band led by another Chicago boy, Ben Pollack. Goodman played with Pollack's band for the next four years. His earliest recording was made with Pollack, but he was also recording under his own name in Chicago and New York, where the band had migrated from the west coast. In 1929, when he was just 20, Benny struck out on his own to become a typical New York freelance musician, playing studio dates, leading a pit orchestra, making himself a seasoned professional. 

By 1934 he was seasoned enough to be ready for his first big break. He heard that Billy Rose needed a band for his new theatre restaurant, the Music Hall, and he got together a group of musicians who shared his enthusiasm for jazz. They auditioned and got the job. Then Benny heard that NBC was looking for three bands to rotate on a new Saturday night broadcast to be called "Let's Dance," a phrase that has been associated with the Goodman band ever since. One band on the show was to be sweet, one Latin, and the third hot. The Goodman band was hot enough to get the job, but not hot enough to satisfy Benny. He brought in Gene Krupa on drums. Fletcher Henderson began writing the arrangements - arrangements that still sound fresh more than a half century later. And the band rehearsed endlessly to achieve the precise tempos, section playing and phrasing that ushered in a new era in American music. There was only one word that could describe this band's style adequately: Swing. After six months of broadcasting coast to coast the band was ready for a cross-country tour. The band was ready but the country was not. The tour was a disaster until its last date in August, 1935, at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles. The only plausible explanation for what happened there is that "Let's Dance" was aired three hours earlier on the west coast than in the east. The kids in Los Angeles had been listening, and thousands of them turned out to hear the band in person at the Palomar. They hadn't even come to dance; instead they crowded around the bandstand just to listen. It was a new kind of music with a new kind of audience, and their meeting at the Palomar made national headlines.

When the band headed east again, after nearly two months at the Palomar, they were famous. They played for seven months at the Congress Hotel in Chicago, where Teddy Wilson joined them to complete the Benny Goodman Trio. Back in New York Lionel Hampton made it the Benny Goodman Quartet, and the band was a sensation at the Hotel Pennsylvania's Madhattan Room. The band made it even bigger at the Paramount Theatre, where lines began forming at breakfast time and continued through the last daily show. It was grueling for the kids who waited for hours to dance in the aisles. It was more grueling for the band; they returned each night to the Madhattan Room for still more swing. At the age of 28 Benny Goodman had reached what seemed to be the pinnacle of success. The new radio program, "The Camel Caravan," was scheduled in prime time, and the whole nation listened not only to the band itself but to the intelligent commentary by some of the most influential critics of the day, including Clifton Fadiman and Robert Benchley. But it was not quite the pinnacle. On January 16, 1938, Sol Hurok, the most prestigious impresario in America, booked the Benny Goodman band into Carnegie Hall. For generations Carnegie Hall had been the nation's greatest temple of musical art, home of the New York Philharmonic and scene of every important artist's debut (even if they had played in a hundred other concert halls first).

So this was a debut not only for Benny Goodman but for jazz. Though many others followed him to Carnegie Hall, there has never been another concert with such an impact. It even made his "classical" Carnegie Hall debut more newsworthy a few years later when Benny returned there to launch his second career, as a soloist with major symphony orchestras and chamber groups. Benny Goodman was indisputably the King of Swing - the title was invented by Gene Krupa - and he reigned as such thereafter until his death in 1986 at age 77. Over the years he played with the greatest figures in jazz: Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Mildred Bailey, Bessie Smith and countless others. Many of those who played with him as sidemen later achieved fame as leaders of their own bands, as soloists, or even as movie or TV actors - Harry James, Ziggy Elman, Gene Krupa and Lionel Hampton to name a few. 

A list of Benny's hits would fill a book. In fact it filled several books by his devoted discographer/biographer Russ Connor. That crowded career, spanning more than six decades, had an almost unparalleled impact on popular music and the importance of the clarinet in both jazz and classical music. Thousands of youngsters throughout the world were influenced to play the clarinet through listening to Benny Goodman's recordings and live performances, and the style of those who turned to jazz was universally patterned after what they heard Benny play, whether or not they realized it. The popularity of the "big band" format is another of the legacies of this musical giant. http://www.bennygoodman.com/about/biography.html

Personnel: Benny Goodman - clarinet & bandleader; Mel Powell, James Rowles, Jess Stacy – piano;  Tom Romersa, Bill Douglass – drums;  Artie Shapiro, Harry Babasin – bass;  Allan Reuss, Al Hendrickson – guitar;  Red Norvo – vibes;  Jake Porter – trumpet;  Ernie Felice - accordion

Easy Does It!

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Gerald Wilson - Detroit

Styles: Jazz, Big Band
Year: 2009
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 62:51
Size: 144,2 MB
Art: Front

( 5:30)  1. Blues on Belle Isle
( 8:47)  2. Cass Tech
( 6:40)  3. Detroit
( 7:07)  4. Miss Gretchen
( 7:12)  5. Before Motown
( 8:47)  6. The Detroit River
(12:32)  7. Everywhere
( 6:12)  8. Aram

Commissioned by the Detroit International Jazz Festival and premiered on the occasion of the composer's 91st birthday, Gerald Wilson's six-movement "Detroit Suite" demonstrates that after nearly seven decades in the music business, the nonagenarian composer and arranger still has a great deal to offer in terms of musical creativity. Wilson spent the latter part of his teen years in the Motor City, where he studied trumpet, piano, percussion, and composition at Cass Technical High School from 1934-39, and he still regards Detroit as a "hometown." 

The opening "Blues on Belle Isle," which is named for a park on a island in the Detroit River, features the alto sax of Randall Willis, trumpeter Sean Jones, violinist Yvette Devereaux (following in the footsteps of the young Jean-Luc Ponty, who occupied this chair in the Wilson ensemble four decades ago), and guitarist and Gerald's son Anthony Wilson, who has been a mainstay of the Diana Krall quartet for the past several years. "Cass Tech," Wilson's paean to his alma mater, is a variation on Benny Golson's "Along Came Betty" in much the same fashion as Bill Holman's take on "Stompin' at the Savoy" for Stan Kenton over a half-century ago. The ballad "Detroit" spotlights Willis on flute, Jones on fluegelhorn, and the tenor sax of Kamasi Washington (Jones and Washington appear on both the Los Angeles and New York sessions). Based on the chord changes of Billy Strayhorn's "Chelsea Bridge," "Miss Gretchen" salutes Mack Avenue founder and president Gretchen Valade with solos from pianist Brian O'Rourke and the Harmon-muted trumpet of Winston Byrd, plus Devereaux (adapting the classic Ben Webster solo from the release to her violin) and Anthony Wilson. Latin rhythms a la Wilson's "Carlos" and "Viva Tirado" predominate in "Before Motown" (which bears absolutely no connection with the musical genre of that name), with Bobby Rodriguez's trumpet, Les Benedict's trombone, and the tenors of Washington and Louis Van Taylor all capturing attention. "The Detroit River," on the other hand, resembles Count Basie on steroids, as trumpeter/contractor Ron Barrows, veteran soprano saxophonist Jackie Kelso, trombonist Eric Jorgensen, Devereaux, Van Taylor, O'Rourke, and Anthony Wilson all contribute to this hyper-charged swinger.

The two remaining tracks, "Everywhere" (a remake of the title cut from a 1968 Pacific Jazz LP by Wilson) and "Aram," are from the same sessions as Wilson's 2005 New York, New Sound (his Mack Avenue debut) and feature the New York ensemble. Flute legend Hubert Laws highlights the modal "Everywhere," while "Aram" (possibly named for the Soviet-era Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian) offers frequent rhythmic shifts between jazz-waltz and straight-ahead 4/4 tempi supporting powerful solos by trumpeter Terell Stafford (Director of Jazz Studies of the Boyer College of Music at Philadelphia's Temple University, and a member of NYC's celebrated Vanguard Jazz Orchestra) and altoist Antonio Hart. ~ Robert J.Robbins  http://www.allaboutjazz.com/detroit-gerald-wilson-mack-avenue-records-review-by-robert-j-robbins.php

Gerald Wilson – Conductor;  Ron Barrows - Contractor, Trumpet;  Brian O'Rourke – Piano;  Mel Lee – Drums;  Trey Henry – Bass;  Carl Randall - Tenor Sax;  Jackie Kelso - Alto & Soprano Sax;  Kamasi Washington - Tenor Sax;  Louis Van Taylor - Baritone & Tenor Sax;  Randall Willis - Alto Sax & Flute;  Terry Landry - Baritone Sax;  Bobby Rodriguez – Trumpet;  Rick Baptist – Trumpet; Winston Byrd – Trumpet;  Eric Jorgensen – Trombone;  Les Benedict – Trombone;  Mike Wimberly – Trombone;  Shaunte Palmer – Trombone;  Yvette Devereaux – Violin;  Sean Jones - Trumpet, Flugelhorn;  Anthony Wilson - Guitar

Detroit

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Eight To The Bar - Superhero Swinger Undercover

Styles: Swing, Big band
Year: 2003
File: MP3@256K/s
Time: 48:14
Size: 89,3 MB
Art: Front

(3:40)  1. Superhero Swinger Undercover
(3:15)  2. My Boogie Woogie Hand
(2:46)  3. It's A Groove
(4:19)  4. Maybe Someday
(3:58)  5. Sugar High
(4:53)  6. My Old Flame
(3:39)  7. Reptile Man
(2:58)  8. The Shelf
(4:21)  9. Troubles Drift Away
(4:24) 10. Romeo
(3:55) 11. Skeleton Key
(2:24) 12. I'm My Own Grandpaw
(3:38) 13. Set You Free

Listening to Eight to the Bar is a lot like driving along a time-warped highway precisely halfway between Count Basie's Kansas City and Fats Waller's Harlem, where the car radio picks up everything from "Take the A Train" to "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B". Their original material, like their outlandish wardrobes and onstage choreo, is a colorful mix of forties jive and fifties jump blues. With their female vocals, saxophone, guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums, this unique sextet pack a musical and visual wollop not seen in New England since the group's inception in 1975. http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/ettb11

Superhero Swinger Undercover

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