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Marc Myers' JazzWax

Fowser & Gillece: "Top Shelf"

In most cases these days, the best new jazz albums sound terrific from their opening notes. I audit about 15 new CDs daily and, in nearly every case, the most inspiring ones are exciting from the get-go. That's largely because better musicians and their producers know that in today's world of digital distractions, you have to come  out of the gate with your best stuff. Listeners no longer spend much time trying to figure out what musicians are trying to say and they aren't very forgiving when feet drag. [Pictured above, from left: Behn Gillece and Ken Fowser]

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Documentary: Paul Horn

Don't know much about Paul Horn? The 83-year-old flutist and saxophonist was a pioneer of mystical or New Age jazz in the late 1960s and beyond. But in the early '60s, Horn was straddling traditional jazz and jazz-classical and beginning to nibble at the avant-garde. Reader Peter Campbell in Cairo, Egypt, sent along YouTube links to a fascinating hour-long Horn documentary, The Story of a Jazz Musician (1962).

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Billy VerPlanck: A Joyous Life

The late trombonist-arranger Billy VerPlanck isn't particularly well known to jazz fans today—but he should be. Throughout his career, from the late 1940s to 2009, Billy had a delicate, swinging touch when writing for bands—more harmonic interplay and seduction than sheer bombast and section muscle.

 

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Documentary: Buddy Rich

We tend to remember drummer Buddy Rich today merely as a crabby guest on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in the '70s or a guy who detested rockers but did a pretty good job for a while trying to dress like one. The truth is Rich had a long and storied background as the drummer in top bands of his day (Bunny Berigan, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, etc.), behind top jazz artists (Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Hank Jones, etc.) and in front of his own killer bands.

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Interview: Sonny Rollins

I have two articles in today's Wall Street Journal—a "House Call" column for the Mansion section on Sonny Rollins (go here) and an "Anatomy of a Song" column for the Arena section on the Four Tops' Reach Out I'll Be There (go here). [Photo of Sonny Rollins at home in his living room by Ethan Hill/Redux]

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