Six Years of Musoscribe: Jazz

Other than a copy of Weather Report‘s Heavy Weather purchased back in the 80s, I never paid attention to jazz until the last couple of decades. And even then, my interest in (and knowledge of) the genre was pretty limited. Arguably it still is, but I know what I like. In addition to many album reviews and several liner notes projects (more on those at the bottom of this post), I’ve been fortunate to interview a few jazz composer/performers.

Bayeté
Omnivore Recordings reissues expanded versions of long-lost and/or greatly treasured music in a wide variety of genres. One of their most interesting projects is a black power/fusion album from Todd Cochran aka Bayeté. Cochran and I enjoyed a deep and wide-ranging conversation.

Larry Coryell
Larry Coryell deserves to mentioned in the same breath as John McLaughlin, but he’s less well-known. Coryell granted me an interview, and we went into some detail.

Resonance Records’ Zev Feldman
The non-profit Resonnace Records works tirelessly to unearth rare and unheard jazz recordings. The label’s A&R man Zev Feldman talked with me about their goals, with specific emphasis on ther Wes Montgomery releases.

Les McCann
Soul jazz legend Les McCann will likely remain one of my all-time favorite interview subjects. Here’s my Les McCann interview/feature.

John McLaughlin
I was fortunate enough to land an in-depth conversation with the jazz and fusion guitar legend. Here’s the multi-part feature. I was scheduled to meet him soon thereafter, but things went horribly wrong. Here’s that story, too.

Jazzhaus’ Ulli Pfau
A German-based label called Jazzhaus has rights to the tapes of the country’s national radio station and television companies, and they released a good bit of excellent quality archival material from their vaults. My interview with curator Ulli Pfau dealt with the label’s efforts.

Fred Pallem of Le Sacre du Tympan
When on a vacation in Montréal in 2007, I stumbled across a wonderful big band called Le Sacre du Tympan. (Seemingly I was the only person in town who didn’t know ahead of time that the Montréal Jazz Festival was happening.) A few years later I managed to contact and interview band leader Fred Pallem.

Concord Music Group
The music conglomerate that currently holds the rights to the jazz (and other genre) catalogs of Riverside, Fantasy, Prestige, Stax, Specialty and others is doing a fine job of reissuing old jazz titles. I spoke with the company’s Chris Clough about the reissues and more.

There are simply too many jazz-related reviews on this blog to list them all. This link will point you to some of the more recent ones. And I’ve curated and/or written liner notes for a couple of Cannonball Adderley reissues, Black Messiah and Big Man.

More to come; next time I’ll look at some power pop-related interviews and writings.

Follow “the_musoscribe” on Twitter and get notified
when new features, reviews and essays are published.