When Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson were ready to record the epochal “Thriller” LP, Quincy called the best of the best, among them, songwriter Rod Temperton. In his autobiography “Q”, Quincy says that Rod was “one of the best songwriters who ever lived, with the melodic and contrapuntal gifts and instincts of a classical composer…He…
I still can’t believe the sudden passing of legendary producer, writer, musician, and author Kashif on September 25th. I have grown up with his solo records and all the great songs and albums he wrote and produced for other artists. I wanted to share this article from December 21st which was published on this site…
Toronto-based guitarist Galen Weston and his band are currently touring Europe with their acclaimed debut album “Plugged In”. In addition to his ten originals on the album, Galen with his yellow Stratocaster also plays arrangements of Keith Jarrett‘s “Country”, and the standard “Like Someone In Love” by Jimmy van Heusen. You can hear a lot of…
You might as well call Macy Gray‘s new album “The Real Macy” – it is simply her best yet because of three simple things: the studio technique, the master musicians, and of course her exceptional voice, too. The recording, her first for the audiophile Chesky label, was done with just one mic and it features…
Madeleine Peyroux recorded her latest country/folk/jazz/blues album in a church in Great Milton, Oxfordshire or in the middle of nowhere. Her partners are Jon Herrington on guitar and Barak Mori on bass. And the repertoire is a potpourri of different styles and genres we’ve become familliar with: Songs by Tom Waits (“Tango Till They’re Sore”),…
So this time around, after so many different projects with guest singers and what have you, the Experiment is back to its core design: all four artists have written tracks for the new album and all of them take over vocal duties, too. Robert Glasper, bassist Derrick Hodge (also with a new album out), drummer…
Prince, Barry Manilow, Cyndi Lauper, Kraftwerk, and Peter Gabriel all on one album – a cover album by piano trio extraordinaire The Bad Plus. It is anyone’s guess if the title of the album refers to the difficult process of finding suitable cover songs for an album like this or to the fact that it can indeed…
The multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer Derrick Hodge has released his second album on Blue Note called, well, “The Second”. This time around though, he has played all the instruments himself (almost all). The Marcus Miller-like bass lines on the opening title track pave the way for this ultra-relaxed, somehow experimental, always entertaining set which is…
The guys from Real Side Records just released their fifth edition of “Soul On The Real Side”, a collection of twenty soulful cuts ranging from 1970 to 2015. As usual, there are real hard-to-find tracks on the album as well as contemporary tunes from Lisa Stansfield (1993) and R Kelly (2015). Several of the songs…
In 1962, Toots Thielemans wrote “Bluesette” which has become a standard now. He worked on many film scores, has recorded dozens of albums, has played with Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker and George Shearing in the early 50s and received countless awards. I first heard him on the 1981 Quincy Jones LP “The Dude” on “Velas”,…