On this date in 1943, the great vibraphonist and one of my favorites Gary Burton was born in Anderson, Indiana. Whenever I have “One of those days” it’s usually the vibes of Burton that bring me back to a happier and more relaxed place. Some background and information on Burton from Wikipedia:
at Amazon
So this morning started with a cold walk to my office. I left the car at the office yesterday and walked home during the snowstorm! While that may have been a good idea yesterday, it didn’t seem that good this morning, when I faced a ten minute walk to work with single digit wind chill temperatures. But like I always say when I struggle through a run “At least the music was good!” The music came from an album released back in November titled Hammond Heroes. The album somehow got accidentally downloaded on to the iPhone a while ago and I didn’t delete it because of the title! Well am I glad I didn’t, because it’s got some great tracks on it. It’s has tracks on it from guys like Jimmy and Dr Lonnie Smith, Larry Young, and Jimmy McGriff where they are the top dog and then it has tracks where the organist is a member of the band or trio, pairing with folks like Pat Metheny. John Scofield, Lou Donaldson and Pat Martino. I was constantly looking at the tracks as great ones kept coming on, to see who was playing this time. Well, one of the tracks I liked right away was “Bag of Jewels” from Lou Donaldson. Donaldson is one of those oh, too many jazz artists whose name I know but not their music. the other track that caught my attention was “Oleo” from Pat Martino. Pat was another artist like Lou, and after listening to him play a few weeks ago on that tribute to Wes, I tracked down his music and listened to his album El Hombre and he is that!!
Saxophonist Doug Webb was born in Chicago and raised from the age of three in California. He is a well-known West Coast jazz musician. Webb has appeared on over 500 recordings for a myriad of artists including:Horace Silver, Freddie Hubbard, Sal Marquez, Stanley Clarke, Brian Bromberg, Quincy Jones, Mat Marucci, Bobby Caldwell, Kyle Eastwood, Rod Stewart, Carly Simon, Art Garfunkel, Queen Latifah, Cher and Vikki Carr.He played for fifteen years with the Doc Severinsen Tonight Show Big Band.. with whom he still tours. He also played with the house band for the Dennis Miller TV show, and the Jimmy Cleveland orchestra
Well if you told me when I was in the fist half-mile of my run tonight that I would end up running faster and farther than I did on Tuesday night I ay you are nuts!! Obviously I did not feel real spry at the beginning of the run! Part of the reason for that it was a lot colder than i thought it was and I always have trouble breathing when the air is cold. But I had put on an album by what I thought was a progressive rock band Enbound and their 2011 release And She Said Gold and it sounded pretty good, so I tuned in and trudged on!! I clocked in at the first mile point at in 10:16 not bad.So I said let’s just keep moving listening to those guitars. keys and vocals that I could understand!! I asked my self over the course of the next mile, “how was I do” and the answer came back ok!! I really didn’t check my time at any other points. I just kept looking down at my pace and was constantly happily surprised that the pace was for the majority of the time hovering around that 10:30 minute per mile pace!! When I crossed the point where i started and had stopped on Monday night I was almost 2 minutes faster than Monday!! So I kept going and ended up running a full 3 miles compared to 2.8 miles on Monday and the final time was 31:30 for the three miles which coverts to a 10:30 minute per mile pace. I was very pleasantly surprised by both the run and the music! Now like I said the soundtrack for the run was And She Said Gold from Enbound. S
ince I knew nothing about the band other than they have a great guitar player and vocalist, I went to their Facebook where I found that they are from Sweden!! I went to ProgArchives and found nothing!! Then I googled the Enbound and found them listed on several metal sites. They label their music on their Facebook page as Hard Rock/Melodic Metal. And when I went to a forum where they discuss what groups they put on the Prog Archives site I read that they liked their music but that tended more to metal than prog. I guess I agree but I thought there were several tempo changes within songs and between songs that they would make it to the Prog Archives!! Anyway the band hails from Boras, Sweden a town of about 66,000 people located in the southwest quadrant of the country. Enbound was formed in 2006 by Mike Cameron Force. His intention was to create something special with Enbound, and 
not just be a normal rock/metal band. The pieces of the band came together over the next several years. bass player Swede was added to the line-up, as well as the extremely talented [then 17, now 20] year old guitar virtuoso Marvin Flowberg. In 2009 the band found their singer in Lee Hunter [Lars Säfsund] who is most famous for his work in the band Work of Art as well as performing in musicals like Jesus Christ Superstar, in the TV program “Singing Bee” on Swedish television and performing with Biondo in the Rumanian Eurovision song contest 2008. So in 2011 the albumAnd She Said Gold mastered by Björn Engelmann [Rammstein, Primal Fear, Sonata Arctica] was released. Ok so now my mind has given up on me ans all I’ll say is that in my opinion this is a great album. Full of hard charging metal that will rock you.. with some terrific guitar by Flowberg and then there are some slow ballads and throughout the whole album, Hunter’s vocals are perfect for band!! So as I say check them out!! Here’s the “official” video for the opening track “Combined The Souls”
harmonica or not. It sure didn’t sound like the ones I know and the album cover which was small really didn’t help Here is the cover of the album…so I thought it was a harmonica, but the shape looked kinda funky!!After listening to most of the album, I went to Enrico’s website, where I read that he is one of the most respected players of the Chromatic Harmonica in the world today. So off I went to learn more about the Chromatic Harmonica….. at Wikipedia I read:
Today among all out celebrations of the start of a New Year we also celebrate the birthday of one of my favorites jazz artists vibraphonist Milt Jackson. (January 1, 1923 – October 9, 1999) From All About Jazz…..we read that Milt Jackson was…..
