Don Friedman - Standards In Cagliari

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 64:52
Size: 148.5 MB
Styles: Bop, Piano jazz
Year: 2003
Art: Front

[12:34] 1. In Your Own Sweet Way
[11:51] 2. The Shadow Of Your Smile
[ 8:49] 3. Solar
[12:33] 4. Stella By Starlight
[10:52] 5. My Foolish Heart
[ 8:09] 6. Confirmation

Double Bass – Jeff Fuller; Drums – Tommy Bradascio; Piano – Don Friedman. Recorded Live on 15th of October in Cagliari at Bastione di Saint Remy during the 17th Sardinia international Jazz Festival.

Donald Ernest Friedman (born May 4, 1935 in San Francisco California), better known as Don Friedman, is a jazz pianist. On the West Coast, he performed with Dexter Gordon, Chet Baker, Buddy DeFranco and Ornette Coleman, among others, before moving to New York. There, he led his own trio in addition to playing in Pepper Adams's, Booker Little's and Jimmy Giuffre's bands in the sixties. He was also a part of Clark Terry's big band. He currently works in New York as a pianist and jazz educator. He has many fans in Japan, and has recently toured in the country. ...

Standards In Cagliari

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The Dionne Farris Charlie Hunter Duo - Dionne Dionne

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 33:59
Size: 77.8 MB
Styles: Vocal jazz, R&B
Year: 2014
Art: Front

[3:26] 1. Alfie
[3:07] 2. Walk The Way You Talk
[4:12] 3. Always Something There To Remind Me
[4:50] 4. Don't Make Me Over
[4:21] 5. Wives And Lovers
[2:02] 6. Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forgets
[4:11] 7. Déjà Vu
[3:43] 8. Walk On By
[4:02] 9. You're Gonna Need Me

The debut album from the duo of Dionne Farris and Charlie Hunter, 2014's Dionne Dionne finds the former Arrested Development vocalist and acclaimed jazz guitarist covering songs strongly associated with legendary R&B singer Dionne Warwick. Here, Farris and Hunter take a stripped-down jazz and soul approach to such classic Warwick numbers as "Always Something There to Remind Me," "Don't Make Me Over," "Walk on By," and others. Working as both a creatively inspired collaboration and deeply heartfelt homage, Dionne Dionne will certainly be a revelation for longtime Farris, Hunter, and Warwick fans alike. ~Matt Collar

Dionne Dionne

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Kay Kyser - Best Of Big Bands

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 47:29
Size: 108.7 MB
Styles: Big band, Easy Listening
Year: 1980/1990
Art: Front

[2:31] 1. Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition!
[2:22] 2. There Goes That Song Again
[2:54] 3. Indian Summer
[3:24] 4. That's For Me
[2:42] 5. If I Only Had A Brain
[2:44] 6. Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree (With Anyone Else But Me)
[2:35] 7. (There'll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs Of Dover
[2:59] 8. Two Sleepy People
[3:06] 9. Bell Bottom Trousers
[3:16] 10. On A Slow Boat To China
[3:05] 11. Ole Buttermilk Sky
[2:59] 12. Deep Purple
[3:19] 13. (I Got Spurs That) Jingle, Jangle, Jingle
[3:01] 14. The Woody Woodpecker Song
[3:09] 15. Huggin' And Chalkin'
[3:16] 16. The Old Lamplighter

Kay Kyser was never much more than an entertaining curio in the field of swing music, a novelty act with an unusually good band to back him up. All of his hits from the late '30s until the end of the '40s are represented, most of which have more nostalgic interest today than major musical value, although Ginny Simms and her successors sing well enough. The sound on this collection isn't ideal, as it dates from a period when Columbia in particular was getting a cold, harsh texture from much of its '40s big band masters; but it is fair, and there's unlikely to be an upgrade anytime soon. ~Bruce Eder

Best Of Big Bands

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Smokey Robinson - Timeless Love

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 55:34
Size: 127.2 MB
Styles: R&B, Vocal
Year: 2006
Art: Front

[4:30] 1. You Go To My Head
[5:05] 2. I'm In The Mood For Love
[5:28] 3. Our Love Is Here To Stay
[3:18] 4. Fly Me To The Moon (In Other Words)
[5:50] 5. Night And Day
[3:39] 6. I'm Glad There Is You
[3:15] 7. More Than You Know
[4:08] 8. Speak Low
[5:08] 9. Time After Time
[2:46] 10. I Can't Get You Anything But Love (Baby)
[2:53] 11. I Love Your Face
[4:25] 12. I've Got You Under My Skin
[5:03] 13. Tea For Two

Smokey Robinson hasn't had much use for making records since his records stopped selling in significant numbers, which happened as of the early '90s; after that, his only regular album has been 1999's Intimate. But Universal Music's New Door imprint exists for the purpose of making new recordings with veteran artists for whom the major label is the repository for the bulk of their catalogs (think Joe Cocker, Nanci Griffith), and Robinson fits that criterion perfectly, since Universal controls the Motown library. But instead of making an album of new, original songs, Robinson has opted for the hoary concept of "aging rock-era pop star sings pre-rock standards," an idea that was never good to begin with and that should have been buried with the final entry in Rod Stewart's series of atrocities. Happily, Robinson's version turns out to be not half bad. One reason for this is that, unlike Stewart et al., his model is not Frank Sinatra and the rest of the Rat Pack, but rather some of the jazz singers who also essayed the work of Cole Porter and other pre-1950 songwriters. Robinson seems to have first heard these songs as sung by Ella Fitzgerald (his primary influence), Sarah Vaughan, and Billie Holiday, among others. When he sings "I'm in the Mood for Love," he throws in some of the King Pleasure vocalese on James Moody's jazz interpretation of the song, "Moody's Mood for Love." Robinson is no stranger to the material; he first recorded Kurt Weill's "Speak Low" and Porter's "I've Got You Under My Skin" with the Miracles in 1962, and now as a 66-year-old he isn't afraid to take these songs where he wants to take them, i.e., in the direction of his '80s "quiet storm" hits. They are all the better for it. As of 2006, Robinson was spending his time playing the concert halls in the many hotel/casinos around the country; his versions of these standards would be as likely to drawn appreciation in such venues as his old hits. ~William Ruhlmann

Timeless Love

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Dick Hyman - Stompin' At The Savoy

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 46:14
Size: 105.8 MB
Styles: Jazz organ
Year: 2007
Art: Front

[2:57] 1. Begin The Beguine
[4:04] 2. Moonlight Serenade
[3:39] 3. I'm Getting Sentimental Over You
[4:18] 4. One O'clock Jump
[3:58] 5. Sing, Sing, Sing
[3:00] 6. Song Of India
[3:20] 7. Stompin' At The Savoy
[3:07] 8. And The Angels Sing
[2:57] 9. Cherokee
[2:59] 10. A String Of Pearls
[2:51] 11. You Do Something To Me
[3:20] 12. Music Makers
[3:17] 13. St. Louis Blues
[2:20] 14. Way Down Yonder In New Orleans

Throughout a busy musical career that got underway in the early '50s, Dick Hyman has functioned as pianist, organist, arranger, music director, and composer. His versatility in all of these areas has resulted in a long career involving film scores, orchestral compositions, concert appearances and well over 100 albums recorded under his own name. While developing a masterful facility for improvisation in his own piano style, Mr. Hyman has also investigated ragtime and the earliest periods of jazz and has researched and recorded the piano music of Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, James P. Johnson, Zez Confrey, Eubie Blake and Fats Waller, which he often features in his frequent recitals. Other solo recordings include the music of Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers and Duke Ellington. Some of his past recordings with combos are From The Age Of Swing, Swing Is Here, Cheek To Cheek, and If Bix Played Gershwin, plus numerous duet albums with cornetist Ruby Braff, and fellow pianists including Ralph Sutton, Shelly Berg, Derek Smith.

In addition to his activities in the jazz and concert worlds, Mr. Hyman has had a prolific career in New York as a studio musician and won seven Most Valuable Player Awards from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. He acted as music director for such television programs as Benny Goodman's final appearance (on PBS) and for In Performance at the White House. He received an Emmy for his original score for Sunshine's on the Way, a daytime drama, and another for musical direction of a PBS special on Eubie Blake. He is a member of the Jazz Hall of Fame of the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies and the New Jersey Jazz Society.

Stompin' At The Savoy

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Jeff Lorber - Midnight

Styles: Jazz Funk, Fusion
Year: 1988
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 49:57
Size: 116,2 MB
Art: Front

(4:28)  1. Midnight
(4:16)  2. The Simple Life
(4:49)  3. Down Low
(4:33)  4. I Ain't Thinkin' About You
(4:27)  5. Watching The Sun Set
(4:55)  6. Dear Prudence
(4:28)  7. The Wild East
(5:12)  8. Never
(3:54)  9. Perugia
(4:29) 10. Feelin' It
(4:21) 11. A Walk In The Park

How's this for a definition of a smooth jazz elder statesman: one whose career spans an entire generation, whose hit album in 1999 uses the same instrumentation and stylistic approach as his first demo 24 years before, only now those old instruments and style are hip again as part of a retro movement? Listened to side by side, Midnight and his 1977 breakthrough Water Sign are like twin sons born to the same family years apart. In addition to the hypnotic clicking wah-wah guitar grooves, both albums focus on Fender Rhodes and Hammond B-3, the attractive one-two keyboard punch Lorber has favored for all of his career but the mid-'80s when he experimented with techno sounds. Lorber sets the tone on the hiss-and-pop LP effect before the music begins on "Down Low." The title of the second track, "The Simple Life," best reflects this old-school mentality. On that tune, Lorber experiments on the Rhodes by holding notes of the melody for different lengths of time, creating those unusual distortions; then he'll use those sounds alternately while improvising off the main melody and enhance certain lines with a brief B-3 wash or an acoustic piano flourish. The introduction to the title track is a wayward Rhodes line wandering in search of a groove, which Lorber helps create by providing the wah-wah-flavored rhythmic click himself. ~Jonathan Widran http://www.allmusic.com/album/midnight-mw0000035154

Personnel: Jeff Lorber (various instruments); Chelsea, Robin Dixon (vocals); Gary Meek (flute); Urs Weisendanger (keyboards); Michael Landau, Paul Pesco, Buzz Feiten, Stuart Wylen (guitar); Nathaniel Phillips (bass); John Robinson (drums); Paulinho da Costa (congas, tamborine, percussion).

Midnight

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Carmen Lundy - Night and Day

Styles: Jazz, Vocal
Year: 1986
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 45:05
Size: 105,6 MB
Art: Front

(3:50)  1. Night And Day
(6:15)  2. Everything Must Change
(5:12)  3. Easy To Love
(3:38)  4. My Old Flame
(4:03)  5. Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me
(3:18)  6. Lullaby Of Birdland
(4:55)  7. More Than You Know
(5:32)  8. Willow Weep For Me
(4:16)  9. My Shining Hour
(4:03) 10. Every Time We Say Goodbye

Reissue of the 1987 classic album on its 25th anniversary with these very special musicians - Kenny Kirkland, Rodney Jones, Curtis Lundy, Victor Lewis, Ricky Ford and Alex Blake. Available for the first time after many years, the album contains the original tracks with new artwork created by Carmen Lundy especially for this reissue. Finally, the wait is over! We loved this album then, and it sounds even better this time around. Features extraordinary performances from Ms. Lundy and a stellar ensemble, with the late great Kenny Kirkland on piano, this album of standards (her only album of all standards) is a welcome return to the classic songbook.~Afrasia Productions https://www.amazon.com/Night-Day-Carmen-Lundy/dp/B005X1TJUI

Personnel:  Carmen Lundy : Vocals; Kenny Kirkland: Piano; Alex Blake: Bass & Electric Bass; Curtis Lundy: Bass;  Victor Lewis: Drums;  Rodney Jones: Guitar;  Ricky Ford: Tenor Saxophone

Night and Day

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Junior Mance - Happy Time

Styles: Piano Jazz

Year: 1962

File: MP3@320K/s

Time: 43:17

Size: 100,0 MB

Art: Front

(6:17)  1. Happy Time

(5:22)  2. Jitterbug Waltz

(5:28)  3. Out South

(4:42)  4. Tin Tin Deo

(5:50)  5. For Dancers Only

(4:39)  6. Taggie's Tune

(5:36)  7. Azure Te

(5:20)  8. The Simple Waltz

Pianist Junior Mance was in excellent company on this inspired 1962 session with bassist Ron Carter and drummer Mickey Roker. Its unfortunate this trio only recorded together on this one date as their unity propels the blues, gospel, and bebop ideas Mance consistently feeds them. The program is highlighted by three Mance originals "Out South," "Taggie's Tune," and the torrid joy of the opening theme "Happy Time," along with versions of "Jitterbug Waltz," "Tin Tin Deo," and Mance at his soulful bluesy best on Clark Terry's "The Simple Waltz."~Al Campbell http://www.allmusic.com/album/happy-time-mw0000671960

Junior Mance Trio: Junior Mance (piano); Ron Carter (bass); Mickey Roker (drums).

Happy Time

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Jim Snidero - Interface

Styles: Saxophone Jazz
Year: 2011
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 55:25
Size: 128,0 MB
Art: Front

(6:47)  1. Interface
(6:12)  2. Silhouette
(4:56)  3. Fall Out
(8:44)  4. One by One
(5:54)  5. Aperitivo
(7:45)  6. Viper
(6:37)  7. After the Pain
(8:26)  8. Expectations

The digital age has completely changed the way language is used. People talk about "googling" things, discovering new "apps," and "friending people" all the time, so it wouldn't be surprising if the word "interface" eventually replaces "communication" in common, everyday conversations. Interfacing can essentially be viewed as a modern day synonym for communication, and that, after all, is one of the cornerstones of jazz. Saxophonist Jim Snidero knows this all too well. With an impressive résumé as a sideman, decades of performing experience under his belt, fifteen prior leader dates which showcase his talent, and a reputation as one of the biggest names in jazz education, thanks to his Jazz Conception books, Snidero has shown that communication with listeners and other musicians is key to success. Interface is a logical successor to Crossfire (Savant, 2009), which found the saxophonist utilizing guitar in place of piano, but it isn't more of the same thing. Paul Bollenbacks use of acoustic guitar on a number of tracks, the impressive drumming from newcomer McClenty Hunter, and the decision to make this an all-original date, help to make this album stand apart from Snidero's prior record.

Three-quarters of the Crossfire band is on board here, with rock-solid bassist Paul Gill filling out the roster, and this band of musical brothers is in sync every step of the way. Gill anchors the band through a variety of settings and, on the rare occasion that he solos ("Expectations"), he manages to perfectly capture the mood of the music. Bollenback's playing is almost beyond words, and he comes at each song in a different way. He delves into bluesy soul soloing that would make Grant Green proud ("After The Pain"), strikes at the heart of the music with power and aggression ("Fall Out"), and astonishes with his stellar technique ("Viper"). While Bollenback and Snidero each have own unique voices on their respective instruments, both players have a shared trait in their playing, which speaks of sincerity and honesty, regardless of the setting. Snidero might make powerful calls to the wild at one moment ("Viper") and naked, intimate gestures at another ("One By One"), but it all comes across with clarity and sense of purpose. Hunter hasn't been part of Snidero's world for as long as the other players, but he makes his mark on this album. He always finds a way to get to the core of each piece, whether the music calls for easy swing ("Expectations"), virtual nothingness that's felt more than heard ("One By One"), or something a bit more potent ("Fall Out" and "Viper"). These eight Snidero originals make it abundantly clear that these four men can interface with the best of them.~Dan Bilawsky https://www.allaboutjazz.com/interface-jim-snidero-savant-records-review-by-dan-bilawsky.php
 

Personnel: Jim Snidero: alto saxophone; Paul Bollenback: guitar; Paul Gill: bass; McClenty Hunter: drums.

Interface

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