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…..
Ok so before I choose which album I think should win, I’ll have to listen to the first three albums a few more times, and the last two, I really hadn’t heard until recently….Toronzo Cannon’s album I give a quick listen last night and tonight I listen to Walter Trout’s Luther’s Blues for the second or third time. Now I am a fan of Walter Trout’s music, but I just couldn’t find the album at any of the streaming sites I use and then I forgot about the album. I found it though the other night at Spotify and gave it a listen and it’s a great hard-driving blues album with some of the best guitar playing that Walter’s ever done! The album is of course an album of covers of the music of Luther Allison. Why an album of Luther’s cover? I read at one reviewWalter Trout: Luther’s Blues Review
So this afternoon, I received an email from Echoes, that included the top 25 albums for the month of December 2013. The album at number 9 was Hydrosphere by Divine Matrix. Since I deal all the time with things related to the hydrosphere, i.e. wetlands, storm water regulations, I thought it was a good album for me. Not that the album really had anything to do with those things the theme of the album is obviously water! The album was the second electronic ambient album that I listened to today. The first album was Jeff Greinke’s album Cities in Fog 1 & 2. Greinke’s album is a lot darker than Hydrosphere. Overall, I like Hydrosphere better because of its mellower mood.
So I had to go today for a follow-up visit for my new hearing aids. While the trip is longer than the trip to the old place,I got a hearing aid from, the trip does give me time to listen to some music! The trip there was Prog Rock from Glasgow, UK and the way back was nuevo flamenco First the prog rock from Comedy of Errors and their 2013 release Fanfare & Fantasy. Evidently the band formed in 194 had various line-up changes and released a few albums then disbanded and reformed in 2011. And according to the bard at their website:
Christmas Eve was the birthday of one of the best, least famous trumpet players, Woody Shaw. Shaw was born December 24, 1944 in Laurinburg, North Carolina. and raised in Newark, New Jersey from the age of one year old. His parents were Rosalie Pegues and Woody Shaw, Sr. His father was a member of the African American gospel group known as the ‘Diamond Jubilee Singers’ and both his parents attended the same secondary private school as Dizzy Gillespie: Laurinburg Institute. Shaw’s mother was from the same town as Gillespie: Cheraw, South Carolina.
So I have listened to an album over the last few days that i think is one of the best blues albums of the year, Q.E.D. by Jim Allchin. Jim is not quite your typical blues artist. How many blues artist do you know that you can say this about??….
Yesterday, as I was reviewing the Jazz birthdays, I noticed one of the showcased albums on the sidebar. The album was Breather and the artist was Shlomi Cohen.Since the name sounded, and the album looked, interesting I thought I’d give it a listen. What I found was a very, very talented new musician. Who has been nominated for a Grammy as part of the nominated album “Frutero Moderno” by Gonzalo Grau & La Clave Secreta. He is also collaborates with Colombian Harpist Edmar Castaneda, bringing his incredible and unique form of music to the world. Shlomi is also a member of the horn section of the Bernie Worrell Orchestra (founding member of Parliament-Funkadelic). Now, where he finds time to record Breather, his debut solo album, I don’t know, but somehow these ultra-talented people always find a way don’t they!
So the other day, when I was coming home from dropping my wife in Trenton so that she could look for dead people, I listened to some prog rock. The band that I listened to was Sun Caged and their 2007 release Artemisia. I found them in the “Just for You” section at MOG. The blurb at the bottom said “because you listened to Suspyre and Roswell Six”. Since I like both of those bands, I figured I would like them. I figured right, some really good stuff!! According to the Prog Archives Sun Caged is:
