Mosaic Records Daily Jazz Gazette 2010-July 2021

Mosaic's Joe Henderson Box Set: A Look Inside

In his invaluable blog Jazz Profiles, Steven Cerra offers a glimpse inside Mosaic's new box set, Joe Henderson: The Complete Blue Note Studio Sessions. Go here for more info, and to order your set.

Mosaic Image of the Week

Louis Smith: Born May 20, 1931

Born in Memphis on May 20, 1931, trumpeter Louis Smith settled in the Detroit area after graduate school at the University Of Michigan. With a clean technique, a beautiful tone and great ideas, he tried his hand at the big time, recording for Transition Records in 1957, but the label went out of business before it could release it. Here Comes Louis Smith became his Blue Note debut. His next album was Smithville with Charlie Rouse and Sonny Clark (see photo). He joined Horace Silver in the summer of 1957. Silver’s Newport performance with Smith in amazing form was released 50 years later. He soon returned to teaching in Detroit/Ann Arbor area. Between 1978 and 2003, he recorded a dozen albums for Steeplechase. Visit www.mosaicrecordsimages.com for more Francis Wolff Blue Note photography.

-Michael Cuscuna

A Mosaic Review

Jazz History Online on Mosaic's New Louis Armstrong Box Set

Thomas Cunniffe presents another of his thorough assessments of classics in jazz, this time training his analysis on Mosaic's new box set, The Complete Louis Armstrong Columbia and RCA Studio Sessions 1946-1956. Among his insights: "Armstrong is in top form, both as trumpeter and singer...the sound quality of the set exceeds Mosaic's usual high standards." By all means, read Tom Cunniffe's review. For more info, and to order your set, go here. Read from Jazz History Online…

Fats Navarro: Bebop's Trumpet Bridge

Fats Navarro was an essential innovator whose style was born of bebop but previewed the approach to improvisation that characterized hard bop. Marc Myers focuses on his work in this Jazz Wax column.

-Michael Cuscuna

Photo of Fats Navarro (left top) and Howard McGhee by Francis Wolff

After the Pandemic: Is a Cultural Outburst Coming?

Is it safe to come out now? Maybe so; and then some, postulates Ted Gioia. As he notes, the global influenza pandemic of 1918 was followed by an era of intense, frenzied celebration (read: partying) and cultural outbursts: think Dadaism, Surrealism, the Jazz Age, and in particular, the cultural ferment exemplified by New Orleans jazz. If Gioia is right, hold on to your hats -- or as it were, your face masks!

-Nick Moy

Bob Koester, R.I.P.

In 1967, I was intrigued by the new names coming out of Chicago like Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, Lester Bowie and so many more. I was doing college radio in Philly and was in touch with Bob Koester, whose label Delmark was releasing music by these AACM artists. He invited me to Chicago if I could come up with money to get there. I stayed at his apartment. He and his wife Sue took me to many jazz and blues gigs. It was 10 days of pure discovery. One night, we went to a West Side club where Magic Sam was playing. Bob had told me about a great rib place down the street. I left the club to track it down. Within minutes, Sam grabbed my collar and said, “Where do you think you’re going? I need to go with you to get the barbecue.” Bob was a pipeline to the great innovations coming out of that unique city. His label was an extension of his enthusiasm.

-Michael Cuscuna

Jazz Appreciation — Carla Bley, 84 and Counting

Having done sound for Carla Bley's first tours in the 70s, I came to admire her unique approach over a sweep of time. Carla's a most singular composer, where Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, and Don Cherry can collide with Gilbert & Sullivan or Pink Floyd. Best listened to over several albums across decades, Carla's latest set of three albums of trios, with longtime collaborators Steve Swallow (electric bass) and Andy Sheppard (tenor saxophone) "are not a casual sequence...[providing] a refreshing reminder of her greatness," says Steve Ellman in The Arts Fuse.  "Some people seem to think that admiring Bley and listening raptly to her recordings are guilty pleasures. She is not a flashy pianist. She likes to be funny in a puckish, not-at-all-jazzy way. Her bands have, at times, been like traveling vaudeville troupes. She is not afraid of schmaltz, although she often adds lemon juice to it. "She is not Serious, as in “self-important.” But she is very serious, as in “true to an artistic vision.”"She is one of the greatest living jazz composers. She is not the only one, especially in these days of talent aplenty, but she is too often overshadowed, and that is something of a shame. "She stands apart."

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Curtis Fuller RIP

Curtis Fuller has been on my mind a lot lately because I’ve been binge listening to the edition of the Blakey band with Curtis, Freddie Hubbard and Wayne Shorter. His sound and his highly individual and innovative improvisations had no equals. But when I think of Curtis, I think about recording sessions that we did together and cities in Europe where we’d hang after concerts. Curtis had a beautiful smile and a big heart. He was also one of the funniest men I’ve ever known (see the attached photo with Lee Morgan). Now this one-of-a-kind has left us at age 86. He once told me that when he first came to New York that Blue Note signed him as an artist and within a few months gave him the distinction of being the only trombone soloist to record with Bud Powell, John Coltrane and Jimmy Smith. Visit www.mosaicrecordsimages.com for more Francis Wolff Blue Note photography.

-Michael Cuscuna

A Mosaic Review

London Jazz News on Mosaic's New Louis Armstrong Set

"At no point is it ever less than revelatory." Leonard Weinreich writes this and much more in his detailed London Jazz News review of Mosaic's new box set, The Complete Louis Armstrong Columbia and RCA Victor Studio Sessions 1946-1966. This set is now in stock. Go here for more info and to order your set.

Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers: 1974

Art Blakey nurtured an amazing amount of talent during his years leading the Jazz Messengers (1955-89). This video features one of the brief, unrecorded transition groups from 1974 with Carter Jefferson, Olu Dara, Cedric Lawson and Stafford James. What is most remarkable is that, regardless of the era and the personnel, Blakey’s ensembles always sounded like the Jazz Messengers.

-Michael Cuscuna

Moki Cherry: Don Cherry's Collaborator Now Gets Her Due

Even now, a quarter century after his death in 1995, jazz fans need little prompting to summon his manifold accomplishments, whether with Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler or Archie Shepp, with Old and New Dreams or under his own name. Not so for Don Cherry's wife, Moki Cherry -- even though her collaborations, and in particular her art, visibly permeate Don Cherry's work. A new book, Organic Music Societies, from the not-for-profit arts organization Blank Forms, aims to set the record straight on the magnitude of Moki's contributions to the culture of her time.

-Nick Moy

Joey DeFrancesco to Stream Live from Van Gelder Studio

Next up in the series of live streams from the historic Van Gelder Studio: Joey DeFrancesco, playing Rudy Van Gelder's studio organ, with an impressive group including Billy Hart, Peter Bernstein and Houston Person, on Saturday, May 15 and May 16.

-Nick Moy

Info on the Stream…

Alain Marquet's Jazz Museum of Paris

Like Marc Myers, I have yet to visit this intgiuing looking shop tucked away in Montmartre in Paris. Until we are ready to travel to Paris again, we'll have to make do with this JazzWax dispatch, with its alluring photos from photographer Gilles D'Elia.

-Nick Moy

An Anthony Davis Playlist

Anthony Davis, the composer and pianist who earned a Pulitzer Prize in 2020 for his opera The Central Park Five, is likely one of the rare players and composers arising from the jazz tradition to earn praise from Opera News as "a national treasure." In this edition of List'N Up from the American Composeer Guild's I Care If You Listen, Davis assembles a absorbing playlist that at once deeply honors his jazz tradition, while adroitly sidestepping category.

-Nick Moy

Singing Coltrane in the Afternoon

It’s never too soon to get them on the right track.

-Michael Cuscuna

Frank Sinatra: Old Man River Without a Breath

Much has been made of Frank Sinatra learning circular breathing from Tommy Dorsey, but I can’t remember many instances of him using. This 1962 version of Old Man River from one of Sinatra’s special shows him using the technique flawlessly at about 2:50 into the tape. The audio sync is a little off, but that doesn't mar the effect.

-Michael Cuscuna