The Evolution of Modern Jazz

Now that you know the names of the players, you can mine the WCJ genre on your own. These are my last recommendations in hard bop before we go to "fusion". Ike Quebec, "Heavy Soul" "The Cannonball Adderly Quintet in San Francisco" Charles Mingus, " Mingus AH-Um Charles Mingus" Art Blakey, "A Night in Birdland" "The Best of Horace Silver" "The Best of Lee Morgan" The sidemen on these CD's became leaders, These few CD's can take you a long way.

Tomorrow we'll begin "Fusion". Since there are many experts here, I hope for a lot more help in that genre. While I liked fusion initially, it got boring in a hurry. I guess that tells you why I'm not the best person to take us through fusion. Next we get into some of the most beautiful music in jazz. It's so beautiful, that I've had people tell me it's not jazz because they don't like jazz. The next phase of this wonderful music incorporates music from around the world, maybe that's why some say it isn't jazz; whatever it is I love it.

That clip of Dave Grusin comes from the excellent 'DG presents West Side Story' DVD. I own both the CD & the DVD. Unfortunately, this clip and the whole DVD are unsynced video shown with the original recording. It's easy to get caught up in the incredible playing but if you watch closely the players are rarely playing in sync with the tune! Even the Michael Brecker solo can be clearly seen as him alone in the studio overdubbing his part. I picked up this DVD expecting to see a video of the band playing the music from this magnificent recording but the whole thing is this unsynced mess! Doesn't alter the fact that it's a fantastic record! This was the last GRP Big Band recording. The 1st 3 were 'official' releases from the GRP Big Band. The 2nd group of three, although released as Dave Grusin records were actually the Big Band; 'The Gershwin Collection', 'Homage To Duke', & 'West Side Story'. GRP's usually remembered for the glut of 'smooth/fuzak' records they released but they also put out quite a few great records!

This is Ike Quebec, "Heavy Soul".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1cTgZDUsSc

Now what about Benson

Did I mention that I like Neal Hefti