News & Updates — out-jazz

I want to give some birthday love to one of my favorite figures from the '60s soul scene, the underrated Fontella Bass! Fontella is most remembered for a song that everyone knows but many people think is by Aretha Franklin! "Rescue Me" was a #1 hit in 1965 for Chess Records, their biggest seller since Chuck Berry's mid-'50s reign. Bass was denied songwriting credit, despite her contribution as a co-author. The tune has lasted forever and has been covered many, many times, as well as used in movies, ads, etc. The song was banned from radio by Clear Channel after...

Back when I played a drumkit, it wasn't Tony Allen who was my biggest influence. Nor was it Keith Moon, Mitch Mitchell, Art Blakey or anyone else. It was Rashied Ali! Someone once asked if a recording that was being played had Rashied on drums, and I was thrilled to tell him that it was actually me! But never in a million years could I match Ali in chops but I certainly dug his polytonal expression and unique waves of sound on the kit. Most famous for being John Coltrane's last drummer (and for the duo album they did together,...

The modern jazz pianist/composer Andrew Hill came from a musical West Indian family in Chicago. A prodigy, he first played accordion, sang and tap-danced before he taking up piano. He studied with Earl Hines, Pat Patrick and German composer Paul Hindemith and as a teenager played clubs, backing artists like Miles Davis, Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker. He toured in Dinah Washington's band and settled in NYC in '61. He worked with Johnny Hartman, Roland Kirk, Al Hibbler and others before a series of strikingly original and phenomenal recordings with the Blue Note label brought him acclaim from the musicians'...

Happy birthday to the unsung free jazz reedsman Arthur Doyle, he of the Alabama feeling. From Birmingham, his early touring and session work came with Motown groups, including Gladys Knight & the Pips, as well as some local Southern R&B groups before he went to NYC in the late '60s. He brought his R&B, gospel and bop chops to the city's free jazz scene and fit in his style very well with the high energy blowing music. He declined a full-time gig with Sun Ra's band to hook up with Noah Howard (the Black Ark band). The early '70s saw...

Happy birthday shout to one of the unsung tenor men of the second wave of US free jazz, "Freedom" Frank Lowe. His lyricism was not limited to the avant-garde as he cut some great, swinging records that touched upon free, post-bop, R&B and other influences. Memphis born and reared, he took lessons from Stax Records' saxophonist Packy Axton, as well as working in the label's record shop and studio. After school he moved to San Francisco for further studies with Bert Wilson and Sonny Simmons. Some encouragement from Ornette Coleman persuaded Lowe to move to NYC in the late '60s...