by Nick DeRiso Luis Bonilla’s “I Talking Now” (NJCO/Planet Arts), from the first bristling blast of trombone on the title track, is dashing down a busy city street. It’s difficult to tell, at first, if he’s running away from or toward something. Whatever the apprehensions, you are quickly surrounded by all of the nervy beauty and the exhilarating clatter we’ve [...]

by Nick DeRiso Introspective, but brimming with a raw-boned optimism, “American Central Dust” finds a focused Jay Farrar asking questions — and being OK when he doesn’t always get them. That confidence of purpose, despite the unease of our fast-moving, recession-torn dynamic, seems to come from getting back to a stripped-down musical approach that once defined Son Volt and its [...]

by Nick DeRiso A player of both strength and generosity, Louis Armstrong’s influence — as a soloist, as a pioneer who moved folk music into the realm of artistry, as a personality — remains incalcuable nearly four decades after his death. There are lines you could draw: No Armstrong, no Lester Young. No Lester Young, no Charlie Parker. No Charlie [...]

Today, we remember Texas jazz guitarist Herb Ellis, who has passed at 88 in his Los Angeles home after a long bout with Alzheimer’s. Over a career that spanned six decades, Ellis worked with a number of legends, including Ella Fitzgerald, Jimmy Dorsey, Louis Armstrong and in the classic line-up of the acclaimed Oscar Peterson Trio. Here’s one of our [...]

Bursting forth as rock teetered between too-big prog pyrotechnics and mawkishly symphonic concept records, it comes as little surprise that Big Star seemed to disappear with barely a ripple. That, and the fact that Alex Chilton, who died yesterday at 59 after a heart attack, always seemed to be disappearing, anyway. Even so, Chilton, along with early bandmate Chris Bell, [...]

by Nick DeRiso You hear Beatles songs remade by jazz musicians with notable frequency, some more successful (Jaco Pastorius‘ glorious reading of the oft-covered “Blackbird” from “Word of Mouth”; a just-right “All My Loving” on “Basie’s Beatles Bag”; Ramsey Lewis‘ underrated “Hard Day’s Night” from “Finest Hour”) than others (almost all of the rest of that un-Fab 1966 Count Basie [...]

Sam Newsome, who first came into wider notice as a tenor-playing member of the Terence Blanchard Quintet in the early 1990s, takes the soprano to places both familiar and new on “Blue Soliloquy.” Subtitled “Solo works for the soprano saxophone,” it’s Newsome’s tone-poem love letter to what makes his new instrument such a freeing experience. No longer having to “carry [...]

by Nick DeRiso Peter Gabriel, always one for the theatrical, has begun a suitably elaborate two-part process with “Scratch My Back” — his first new work since 2002′s “Up.” This recording, featuring occasionally over-curated readings of work by others, will be followed by “I’ll Scratch Yours,” a return-the-favor CD that showcases these same artists tackling Gabriel’s catalogue. The guy who [...]

by Nick DeRiso For years, I thought of Vince Guaraldi’s work — particularly, on the first 16 Peanuts specials between 1965-76 — as something akin to comfort food. I didn’t recall it as being all that challenging. His themes, in my memory, were always lushly lyrical, even impressionistic (“Love Will Come,” “Cast Your Fate to the Wind,” “Rain, Rain Go [...]

by Nick DeRiso Johnny Cash leaves us, finally, much the same way he arrived — rustic, spiritual, unbent. But something, these newly released final recordings make clear, had changed. Cash died nearly seven years ago still in mourning over the absence of his one true love. But not before completing a song cycle that would continue through to this, the [...]