by Pico Arild Andersen may not be the first name that comes up when one thinks of the greatest living acoustic bassists, but he’s at least earned the right to be considered somewhere on that list. A player of expansive range, lyricism and velocity, Andersen’s list of credits as a sideman reads longer than Charles Manson’s rap sheet. He’s gigged [...]

by Pico Jazz just lost an all-world trumpeter. Indianapolis’ Frederick Dewayne Hubbard — who died Monday morning from complications following a heart attack a month earlier at age 70 — may not have shaped jazz as the great trumpet men before him like Armstrong, Gillespie and Davis did, but his mastery of the horn was just as influential to those [...]

by Pico NOTE: The New Jazz Composers Octet was the last backing band of jazz trumpet legend Freddie Hubbard, who passed away this morning at age 70 due to complications from a heart attack suffered on November 26. A truly major figure in jazz and one of the best trumpet players of all times, Hubbard leaves behind a legacy of [...]

Denny Laine — Fab, one time removed? — will forever be the other guy in Wings, the Paul McCartney-led 1970s successor band to the Beatles. Even if that belies Laine’s important earlier contributions to the Moody Blues (“Go Now,” a Wings concert staple), his occasional takeout moment with Paul’s band (in particular on 1978′s London Town), a batch of interesting [...]

by S. Victor I think it was about a year ago since there was last a discussion of 80S funk at our little corner of the blogosphere. But really, you can’t have a conversation about that topic without putting Prince into the equation. This ain’t about the once-nameless Purple One, though (for all things Prince, I’d recommend visiting our friends [...]

by Nick DeRiso We’ve already offered a tip of the hat to “Two Men With the Blues,” Wynton Marsalis’ new recording with Willie Nelson — an offbeat, stirring collaboration that crossed genres and, hopefully, changed minds about the walls we’ve put up inside the open spaces of our music. Eagle Rock Entertainment subsequently offered this terrific multi-media companion piece called [...]

NICK DERISO: Frank Sinatra, 10 years gone, would have been 93 this month. His mystery still lingers with me, as does the memory of a concert — one of Sinatra’s last — when he recaptured all of that complexity. Sinatra was both a pawn to his past and the king of it, a guy who shadowboxed on stage, and told [...]

NICK DERISO: Honest but melodic, spiritual and swinging, Ramsey Lewis’ take on a series of traditional holiday tunes could find no more surprising success than this. After all, “Here Comes Santa Claus” was originally a blandly corny hit single for Gene Autry, “The Singing Cowboy” and baseball club owner who said the idea came to him from a child’s excitement [...]

by Pico If whack jazz isn’t exactly your cup of tea, this fifth and final installment of “The Best of 2008″ might suit you better. It’s all about the blues, here. I took a fairly broad view of what is called “the blues.” Some of these records may not have a single twelve-bar blues in them, but they will all [...]

by Pico This is Part Four overall, but the last part of the “Best of Jazz” trilogy. While the last section focused on fusion, here’s where we’re gettin’ wiggy with it because this section is devoted to whack jazz. Looking back, I’m disappointed in myself that I didn’t cover that many new releases from the whack jazz realm; I covered [...]