CHOPSFOREAL

Three Guitar Greats!

george benson - Take Five 1976

George Benson - Take Five
Label: CTI Records
Catalog#: CTI 8014
Format: Vinyl, LP
Country: US
Released: 1976
Genre: Jazz
Credits:
Bass - Ron Carter
Drums - Steve Gadd
Engineer - Rudy Van Gelder
Guitar - Phil Upchurch
Piano - Kenny Barron
Producer - Creed Taylor
Notes: Arranged and Conducted by Don Sebesky.

Tracklisting:
A1 Take Five (7:07)
A2 Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (2:54)
A3 My Latin Brother (6:55)
B1 No Sooner Said Than Done (5:50)
B2 Full Compass (5:38)
B3 The Changing World (4:50)

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George Benson’s Ibanez:

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GREAT BENSON NPR INTERVIEW:

CLICK HERE!

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TAKE FIVE:

Marcus Miller - Scoop

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BIO:

b. 11th June, 1959 in Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A. Marcus Miller has built himself a reputation as one of the finest jazz / r & b bass players in the business. He was initially discovered in the mid-70’s by Lonnie Liston Smith, who employed him at various gigs. Marcus embarked on a string of session work with artists including Bernard Wright, Tom Browne (’Funkin’ For Jamaica’), The Brecker Brothers, Bob James (for whom he has also written), Charles Earland and eventually Luther Vandross. He has also written, produced and recorded for Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, David Sanborn, Bernard Wright, Steven Dante, Roberta Flack, the late Grover Washington and Joe Sample (’Strike Two’)among many others.

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MARCUS MILLER ON JACO PASTORIUS:

I was around 15 years old and a drummer friend of mine told me I had to check this record out. It was Jaco’s first album. The first thing I heard was “Donna Lee”. I have to admit, I didn’t quite get it. It just sounded like some cat playing whatever notes he felt like. I was just learning about jazz and hadn’t progressed in my own development to where I could even begin to comprehend what Jaco was doing. But this guy was obviously good so I got the record for myself and began to really listen to it.

It stayed on my turntable for around two years.

FOR MORE CLICK HERE:

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TUTU:

8 year old guitar whiz Quinn Sullivan and Buddy Guy

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BIO:

Quinn Sullivan is an eight year old year old guitar prodigy and songwriting sensation. Since he first picked up a guitar at the age of 3 Quinn Sullivan has amazed and astounded everyone who has seen him. Three years later, at the age of 6, Quinn caught the attention of Ellen DeGeneres, and was flown out to Hollywood CA to appear on her national talk show. Quinn’s inspired performance of the song “Twist and Shout” which the Beatles made famous, brought down the house. Now at the age of 8, Quinn has made numerous public appearances and performances, more recently on stage jamming with Blues legend Buddy Guy. The next natural step for Quinn was to write and perform his own songs… which is what he is now doing! He recently recorded his first single, “Sing, Dance, and Clap your Hands” and within the same week, performed the song live on FOX 25 News . As Quinn said in the interview before the performance, “I just want to bring some happiness to the world with my music”.

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Django Reinhardt - Film Clip 1952

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BIO:

Django Reinhardt was the son of a traveling entertainer and the brother of Joseph Reinhardt. He grew up in a gypsy settlement outside Paris. Reinhardt first played violin and later took up guitar, and began working professionally in 1922 with the accordionist Guerino. In 1928, he was badly burned in a caravan fire, which resulted in the mutilation of his left hand. This deprived him of the use of two fingers and led him to devise a unique fingering method to overcome his handicap.

After a period of convalescence, he worked in cafés in Paris and in a duo with the singer Jean Sablon. In 1934, he was a founding member, with Stephane Grappelli, of the ensemble that became known as the Quintette du Hot Club de France. In the years before World War II the group gained considerable renown through its numerous recordings, and Reinhardt became an international celebrity.

MORE ON BIOGRAPHY CLICK HERE:

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elvin jones max roach art blakey drum battle part 1c

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THE PLAYERS:

1) ELVIN JONES

Elvin Ray Jones was born September 9, 1927 in Pontiac, Michigan, the youngest of ten children. By age 13, determined to be a drummer, Elvin was practicing eight to ten hours a day. He went nowhere without drum sticks in his pocket, and would beat out rhythms on any available surface. Early influences Elvin likes to cite range from Kenny Clarke, Max Roach and Jo Jones to parade drummers and the American Legion Drum Corps! I

After a brief gig at the Detroit club Grand River Street, he went to work at another club, backing up such jazz greats as Parker, Davis and Wardell Grey.Jones came to New York in 1955 for an unsuccessful audition for the Benny Goodman band but stayed in the city, joining Charlie Mingus’ band and making a record called “J is Jazz.” In 1960, he became a member of John Coltrane’s quartet. Jones, with his rhythmic, innovative style, became one of jazz’s most famous drummers under Coltrane. He can be heard on Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” and “Coltrane Live at the Village Vanguard.” After leaving the Coltrane quartet, Jones briefly played with Duke Ellington and formed the Elvin Jones’ Jazz Machine. He put out several solo albums and continued to tour, including last month in Oakland, California, Keiko Jones said.

Elvin has been heard on nearly 500 recordings, with no end in sight. He also made a temporary detour to Hollywood in 1971 to appear as the character Job Cain in the ABC Paramount film “Zachariah”. Reflecting his deep commitment to the music (”Playing is not something I do at night” he said, “It’s my function in life”).
MORE INFO:
http://www.drummerworld.com/drummers/Elvin_Jones.html

THE PASSION OF ELVIN JONES:

2) MAX ROACH:

Max Roach is a renowned American percussionist and composer. He was born in the year of 1925 in New Land, North Carolina, but he began his extensive career at the age of ten when he began playing drums in Brooklyn, New York for gospel music groups. These gospel groups proved to contribute the most significant influence to his musical style. He also studied at the Manhattan School of Music.

At Monroe’s Uptown House, a nightclub in Harlem, New York, Max Roach began working with a group of American jazz musicians (including pianist Thelonius Monk and alto saxophonist Charlie Parker) in 1942. These talented musicians were experimenting with a musical style that was to become known as bebop jazz, or bop. At the time, drummer Kenny Clarke was introducing stylistic innovations and was performing with many of the top bebop musicians. These innovations included utilizing the cymbals rather than the bass drum for the primary rhythmic pulse of the music. Roach was the first to fully realize the potential of these innovations and quickly developed his own style to become the leading drummer of the bop movement (early 1940s to mid-1950s). He played and recorded with most of the major jazz musicians of the period, including American tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins and American trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. From 1947 to 1949 he was a member of Charlie Parker’s historic bebop quintet. From 1954 to 1956 Roach led a jazz quintet with American trumpeter Clifford Brown.

MORE ON MAX ROACH, CLICK HERE:

MAX ROACH: Chillin’ With Abbey Lincoln, Lookin Fly!

ART BLAKEY AND THE JAZZ MESSENGERS:

The origins of the Messengers are in a series of groups led or co-led by Blakey and pianist Horace Silver, though the name was not used on the earliest of their recordings. The most celebrated of these early records (credited to “The Art Blakey Quintet”), is A Night at Birdland from February 1954,[citation needed] one of the earliest commercially released “live” jazz records. This featured Silver, Blakey, the young trumpeter Clifford Brown, alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson and bassist Curly Russell. The “Jazz Messengers” name was first used on a 1954 recording nominally led by Silver, with Blakey, Hank Mobley, Kenny Dorham and Doug Watkins — the same quintet would record The Jazz Messengers at the Cafe Bohemia the following year, still as a collective. Donald Byrd replaced Dorham, and the group recorded an album called simply The Jazz Messengers for Columbia Records in 1956. Blakey took over the group name when Silver left after the band’s first year (taking Mobley, Byrd and Watkins with him to form a new quintet with a variety of drummers), and the band was known as “Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers” from then onwards.

Two of the group’s most famous lineups featured Wayne Shorter on saxophone. The first was a quintet that existed from 1959 to 1961 and included Blakey, Shorter, Jymie Merritt, Lee Morgan, and Bobby Timmons. The second (1961–1964) was a sextet that added trombonist Curtis Fuller and replaced Morgan and Timmons with Freddie Hubbard and Cedar Walton, respectively. Shorter was the musical director of the group, and many of his original compositions such as “Lester Left Town” remained staples of Blakey’s repertoire even after Shorter’s departure. (Other players over the years made permanent marks on Blakey’s repertoire — Timmons, composer of “Dat Dere” and “Moanin’”, Benny Golson, composer of “Along Came Betty” and “Are You Real”, and, later, Bobby Watson.) Shorter’s more experimental inclinations pushed the band at the time into an engagement with the 1960s “New Thing”, as it was called: the influence of Coltrane’s contemporary records on Impulse! is evident on Free For All (1964), often cited as the greatest document of the Shorter-era Messengers (and certainly one of the most fearsomely powerful examples of hard bop on record).

MORE ON ART BLAKEY CLICK HERE

ART BLAKEY’s “Afro-Lick”:

Ski Beatz - the making of Jay-Z’s

Ski Beatz:

David Willis, known by most as Ski and Ski Beatz, is an African-American record producer mainly working in hip hop. Discovered by DJ Clark Kent, Ski was originally known as “MC Will-Ski”. In the 1980s, he was a member of the groups The Bizzie Boyz and Original Flavor. As MC Will-Ski, he not only rhymed, but produced most of the tracks himself.

After an extended absence from the hip-hop scene, “Will-Ski” re-emerged. This time strictly a producer using the shorter moniker “Ski.” Ski formed a partnership with Darrien Dash, cousin of Damon Dash. Together, they co-founded “Roc-A-Blok” productions, as a sister company to the then fledgling, Roc-A-Fella Records. Ski contributed four tracks to Jay-Z’s debut album, “Reasonable Doubt”. These included the hits “Dead Presidents,” “Politics as Usual,” and “Feelin’ It.”

Ski established a reputation for his organic production style. He was a contemporary to DJ Premier and DJ Clark Kent. Ski was hired to provide tracks for AZ, Lil’ Kim, and Fat Joe.

Ski worked very closely with the Bronx hip-hop duo Camp Lo producing their entire debut album “Uptown Saturday Night”. He found success with the hit singles “Coolie High” and “Luchini”. Later, Ski signed the group Sporty Thievz and rapper Pace Won to his “Rok-A-Bloc” label and produced the bulk of their material.

MORE CLICK HERE:

BEFORE THE EMU SP-1200 THERE WAS THE SP-12 (and that damn commodore 64 floppy drive!):

Robert Glasper : Montreal Jazz Festival 2007

BIO:

Robert Glasper (b. Houston, Texas) is a jazz pianist. He has performed at jazz festivals throughout the world, and released his major-label debut, Canvas, on Blue Note Records in 2005. He has also collaborated with many hip hop and soul musicians, including Bilal (as musical director), Mos Def (also as musical director), Common, Talib Kweli, Slum Village, Jay-Z, J Dilla, Erykah Badu and Meshell Ndegeocello. In addition to his jazz trio, he also has another line up, The Robert Glasper Experiment, in which he explores fusions of jazz and hip hop.

Glasper’s trio performed at the 2007 Bonnaroo Music Festival as part of Blue Note’s “Somethin’ Else” jazz tent. Like previous Jazz great, Herbie Hancock, Glasper is likely to be included in the classic Jazz cannon as his active and prolific participation in hip and contemporary music youth culture is unique and rare for Jazz musicians today.

MORE INFO CLICK HERE:

THE FIRST JAZZ GREAT WITH A BROW-PIERCING!:

Bass Day 1998

ELECTRIC BASS ORIGINS:

In the 1930s, inventor Paul Tutmarc from Seattle, Washington, developed a guitar-style electric bass instrument that was fretted and designed to be held and played horizontally. Audiovox’s sales catalogue of 1935-6 (also featuring a solid body six-string electric guitar) listed the world’s first fretted, solid body electric bass that was designed to be played horizontally — the Model #736 Electronic Bass Fiddle. The change to a “guitar” form made the instrument easier to hold and transport, and the addition of guitar-style frets enabled bassists to play in tune more easily and made the new electric bass easier to learn. Tutmarc’s inventions never caught the public imagination and almost no further development of the instrument took place until the 1950s.

THE AUDIOVOX # 736:

miles davis electric 73 montreux part 1

Buy the Live At Montreux: 1973-1991 CD BOXSET!!!!!!!:

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Miles-Davis-Montreux-1973-1991/dp/B00006FDSY

LASTFM Live At Montreux 1973-1991:

http://www.last.fm/music/Miles+Davis/The+Complete+Miles+Davis+at+Montreux:+1973-1991,+1988-07-07+(disc+13)

On the Corner is a jazz fusion album by Miles Davis recorded in June and September 1972. It was scorned by critics at the time of its release and was one of Davis’s worst-selling recordings. Its critical standing has improved dramatically with the passage of time; today it is seen as a strong forerunner of the musical techniques of hip hop, drum and bass, and electronic music.

Davis claimed that On the Corner was an attempt to connect with a young black audience which had largely forsaken jazz for rock and funk. While there is a discernible rock and funk influence in the timbres of the instruments employed, from a musical standpoint the album was a culmination of sorts of the musique concrète approach that Davis and producer Teo Macero (who had studied with Otto Luening at Columbia University’s Computer Music Center) had begun to explore in the late 1960s. Both sides of the record were based around simple, repetitive drum and bass grooves (the track delineations below were arbitrary at best), with the “melodic” parts snipped from hours of meandering jams. These techniques, refined via the use of computers and digital audio equipment, are now standard amongst producers of electronically-based music……….

MORE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_The_Corner

LOOKING INTO THE EYES OF A GOD: