Speaking of "Summertime"... The Music The Tune: "Samba With Some Barbecue" Recorded: 20 November, 1968 at Van Gelder Studios, Englewood Cliffs, NJ Personnel: (deep breath...) Paul Desmond- Alto Sax Paul Faulise, Bill Watrous, and Kai Winding- Trombone John Eckert, Joe Shepley, and Marvin Stamm- Trumpet/Flugelhorn Ray Alonge and Tony Miranda- French Horn Joe Beck- Guitar [...]
Summertime, and the living was somewhat easy. I'm not sure if the fish were jumping, but here in Alabama the cotton is indeed high (acres of land alongside the roads around town are full of fields of cotton. Yep, this is ALABAMA Alabama). The calendar says it's now officially Fall, but nobody told the weather [...]
It's another soggy grey day here in north Alabama, and as such, out comes the reflective music. Here's a record I found during my cross-country tour this summer. To the music! The Music The Tune: "Festive Minor" Recorded: 15 January, 1959 in New York City Personnel: Gerry Mulligan- Baritone Sax Art Farmer- Trumpet Bill Crow- [...]
It's high-time for another installment of 'Desmond's Quotes', and this one's a bit unusual. This post features performances taken from radio broadcasts of the Dave Brubeck Quartet at the Blue Note in Chicago, Illinois. Recorded in March of 1953, these recordings find the group on fire, Paul Desmond especially so. Aside from showing his tasty [...]
After a summer full of traveling and other activities, it's time to get back to writing more regularly. Here in northern Alabama, it's a dreary, gray day with lots of rain, which made me want to put a record on that was a solid swinger but in a mellow groove. Enter the dependable Billy Taylor. [...]
After a momentary break, it's time to get back to some Brubeck, the reason why I began this website! This is one of those rarer bootleg albums, where the information surrounding the recording is actually pretty well-documented. It's the album pressing itself that is confusing and unclear. With that, on to the music we go! [...]
Before politics completely prevents it, here's another album that was not made in America, but in the land out back, down under, but not in the upside down- Australia! There's not much more to add, so to the music we go! The Music The Tune: "Decidedly" Recorded: 1960 in Sydney, Australia Personnel: Don Burrows- Clarinet [...]
This is an album I've been looking forward to writing about from the moment I created this blog. The product of Playboy Magazine's first jazz poll, Hugh Hefner decided to create an album to honor the winners of the poll. By releasing such a project, Hefner and the folks at Playboy provided a snapshot of [...]
Yesterday, the Raggy Waltz staff brought to my attention that it was Cal Tjader's birthday. Today, the Raggy Waltz staff have alerted me to the fact that it's the birthday of another famous Northern Californian jazz musician. Born 90 years ago on July 17, 1928, pianist Vince Guaraldi was not only a contemporary of Cal [...]
Say what you want about social media and its terrible effect on culture, but today it proved its worth. Scrolling through Twitter this morning, I was informed through a tweet that it was Cal Tjader's birthday. Born 93 years ago on this date, July 16, 1925 in St. Louis, Missouri, Tjader's family relocated to the [...]
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