ONE LP

ONE LP PORTRAITS: ARTS | MEDIA | VENUES: NY EXHibition@ARChive of Contemporary Music

  • “Double Six - when I was in college in my first year I had formed a singing group patterned along the lines of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross - and Double Six.Double Six changed my life - I listened to them instead of going to class - I think they almost sent me home!Very important music to me, I became friends with Michel Legrand - his sister sang in the group then and Mimi Perrin - thank you Mimi! we’ll all see you soon.So Double Six - very important, lots of people important - but a special place for them.”Al Jarreau: Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 26th July 2011Les Double Six - released 1962Al Jarreau
  • Kenny Burrell: Distinguished Professor Of Ethnomusicology, Director of Jazz Studies, UCLA{quote}The record the maestro recorded in Paris in 1963 there are many great things on this recording.It starts off with Rockin'n Rhythm which we all know has gotten it's own wings after Ellington.Written in 1929 - hello! - Zawinul and those guys were do it later.Star Crossed Lovers from the Suite,the Theme from the Asphalt Jungle movie,couple of pieces featuring Cootie Williams, Concerto for Cootie, Tutti For Cootie and The Suite Thursday another suite by Ellington and Strayhorn.One that I particularly like - well I have to say it's one of favourite pieces in all of Ellingtonia - and all music is Tone Parrallel To Harlem known as Harlem Suite.This was commissioned in 1950 by Arturo Toscanini of The NBC Symphony Orchestra of New York. Ellington at that point was pretty popular and also gaining recognition as a serious composer so that's why he got the commission - at the time he was fifty one.That piece has been recorded in many formats including symphony orchestras both here and in Europe and on various occasions by Ellington himself with his band - this happens to be one of my favourite versions of it.First of all I love the composition, I think it's one of the most outstanding musical compositions ever written, certainly (ever written) by Ellington.It's a through composed piece of material - and it is jazz, not a lot of improvisation in this piece because it's through composed.But the main thing about this - it is a great extended composition of jazz music - that only Ellington could do.I would encourage anyone to listen this, it happens to be my favourite version of it - and this a live performance in Paris in 1963.One of the things you should listen to this piece of music is the huge variety of time changes - the huge variety of harmonic changes - the huge variety of tonal colour - of shifting around.It's amazing how he could get such variety with fifteen musicians - it's unbelievable, but he managed to do that and that's why he's considered many the greatest - not only the greatest jazz composer of the twentieth century but the greatest composer of the twentieth century and this is coming from some serious classical musicians who feel that way - let alone jazz musicians who feel that way.The classical people are starting to say this is some new - material done in a highly sophisticated way that has never been done before - so that's why I wanted to talk about this record!It's like all great art - the more you listen, the more you look - the more you hear, the more you see - I never tire of hearing this.Listen closely and something else reveals itself.{quote}Kenny Burrell: University of California, Los Angeles, 7th May, 2013Duke Ellington: The Great Paris Concert released 1973Kenny Burrell
  • I met up with Alan and Mark at the Blue Whale in little Tokyo, LA on a hot late Sunday afternoon where I discovered they had gone for the same album for very different reasons.Alan: Yeah. Well, this album from a horn player - I’m a trombone player - so, from a horn player’s perspective, it was very influential on me in a number of ways. Number one being that it was the first time I was introduced to Woody Shaw and his pentatonic style of playing. Very compelling, the way he was playing and I was attracted to a more modern style of playing a brass instrument and when I heard him initially I just knew I liked it . I didn’t know what the heck was going on and as I explored it a little bit further I got more familiar with pentatonics and his complete mastery of that and this record really, I think, is some of the strongest … ah … some of Woody Shaw’s strongest playing. In addition to Joe Henderson, I think the two of them are great foils for each other. Joe Henderson being one my absolute favourite tenor saxophonists and, you know, the trumpet/tenor combination has a long history in jazz and I think this is one of the premier examples of that, especially with Elvin Jones being on and then Larry Young, of course.An amazingly open feeling because of the organ. Larry Young and Elvin have this very loose kind of feel yet very...it just grooves so hard but it’s not in the organ-grinder kind of way. It’s an amazing example of kind of liberating the traditional organ/drum relationship from that to a more modern jazz context. And then you put those two horn players up on top of it and it just blew my mind.Mark: Yes, as a drummer, this could be one of the benchmark records for Elvin Jones, one of the classics - obviously there’s the whole John Coltrane library that’s, you know, sort of untouchable in a lot of ways, but this is one of the few dates, to my knowledge, that Elvin did with Larry Young. I know a few other records but this one is special in a sense that there’s one track on there where they play duo. I had never heard that before, this record , with those guys playing together. What, for me, what I heard was what I’m so used to, as a drummer , to hook up with the bass player, the organ player. This is a great example of… they’re not hooking up and yet they are. Elvin Jones is playing way behind Larry Young’s beat but somehow it works amazingly. It’s still a mystery. The reason why I think this record is still a complete mystery to me: how that sounds so good, because they’re playing almost in their own ostinatos, their own worlds, yet it gels so great and then obviously the playing on top of that, all the soloists are some of the most classic solos in jazz. So, I could talk for hours about this record but that, for me, was something that really stuck out.WE: That’s lovely. Thanks, gentlemen.Alan Ferber and Mark Ferber: 'The Austin Powers Room' - Blue Whale, little Tokyo, Los Angeles, May 2013Unity: Larry Young, leader - organ. Woody Shaw, trumpet. Joe Henderson, tenor sax. Elvin Jones, drumsAlan FerberMark Ferber
  • “It had to be Michael Jackson – then I had a tough time picking which record - but this has my favourite song – ‘Man in the Mirror’ – I love it so much.I narrowed it down from Off the Wall, Bad and Thriller - it was difficult to narrow it down even that far.This record means so much to me.”Becca Stevens: The Bay Horse, Manchester, March 2013Michael Jackson: BadBecca Stevens
  • {quote}We have this beautiful thing we do called The Fat Afro-Latin Jazz Cats which is our pre-professional program big band and one of the parents of one of the kids – and they’re from middle school and high school heard me say at a show that I’d worn out four or five copies of this record so he bought me one, so it’s a brand new vinyl pressing of Kenya.I wore out four or five copies so I listened to it! - we actually play some of the music - Wild Jungle, Conga Mulence, Kenya, Tin Tin Deo, we play Holiday Mambo.It’s considered the first Afro-Cuban big band Jazz big band record and I think the reason for this is that it has no purpose in terms of being commercial, sell records or just be a dance record – it’s really about the music.Machito was really quite the gentleman and really cared about having this emphasis on his big band and it was about jazz – these guys loved jazz, you know.They were Latin bandleaders who had profound respect for jazz.{quote}WE – Cool - this is lovely setting for the picture.AO – I think so too, with the mirror and the red curtains.WE – There’s going to be two of you Arturo!AO – I love it - it’s two too many – but yeah!“It’s two too many!” - that’s what my wife would say!Of course I don’t agree – there’s not enough of me – God knows my time is squeezed like crazy.We’ve been doing great work with The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra; this is in my opinion the best Afro-Cuban, Afro-Latin big bands in existence.We started this orchestra as part of Jazz at Lincoln Centre, we were there for five years and ventured out to create our own organisation and we’ve done incredibly well since then.We’ve created our own non-profit work, our education work, we’ve toured, won Grammys, been nominated for for Grammys.We’ve actually superseded anything we would have been allowed to execute under Wynton’s aegis.So it’s been amazing, we’ve just recorded out fourth CD which is called ‘The Offence of the Drum’ and it’s all about how the drum is the tool – like the internet - that both oppresses us and enslaves us and sets us free and liberates us – to be redundant!It’s literally about how the drum is an incredibly powerful tool and how it has shaped all of our lives in incredible ways.Tonight we’ll be playing a piece of mine called ‘Malecón and Bourbon’ which is an imaginary intersection, The Malecón is of course the famous street in Cuba - the intersection of Bourbon Street in New Orleans and The Malecón and it’s a place where we really discover the roots of jazz and the roots of latin are the same and not one is hierarchically above the other – they’re part and parcel of the same reality.Somehow we got those two artificially separated.At the end of the piece we play a kind of ragtime piece and start deconstructing it – it’s a jazz history lesson backwards.From Cecil Taylor working our way back to Scott Joplin. We end up with Scott Joplin, but the thing about Scott Joplin is that it’s quite right (in the context) and so we just try to get the right edge to it and all of a sudden that is wildly latin – it’s a really cool piece.But then if you’re not going to be a fan of your own music – who is going to be a fan of your music?Though my kids like my music so it’s not all bad!{quote}Arturo O'Farrill: Birdland, New York City, 29th April, 2013Machito: Kenya released 1958Arturo O'Farrill
  • {quote}I've listened deeply to music all my life and there seems to me to be something unique about Kind of Blue. Of course, it's jazz - and I'm a jazz lover - but the appeal of this recording has transcended category from the moment it was released in 1959. It beguiled me in my teens and it still knocks me out 40 years later. It is perfect from first minute to last and it may well turn out to be immortal.{quote}Bill Adler: At home, New York City, 3rd April 2014Miles Davis: Kind Of Blue released 1959Bill Adler: Interview
  • Bob George: ARCchive of Contemporary Music, New York City, 1st May, 2013{quote}Here’s the problem: how do you pick a record when you have more than 2 million? People always ask us what is my favourite record and things like that and it’s always like… stupid. I just say that well, there are certain records at certain times that I played over and over and over again. And that would be like when I was playing football in high school. It was like one summer it was Revolver and I played it just endlessly. In terms of picking one that was like a favourite, it was this - Brian Eno Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) but it’s a toss-up between that and one by Anna Domino called East and West. I wanted to pick Anna because she is more obscure and really fantastic but this record, I think, is also an important recording because I think it shows the way that music would move in the future. More than, if you wanted to say something radical like, you know, The Beatles are completely unimportant in terms of the future of music, which of course is absurd and true. That perhaps they are a tautology; they finished what they did, they started something, they finished it, starts off as pop songs that are well-crafted and ends up enormous, incredible studio techniques with George Martin. And yet, when I think about the way music has gone since that time, I think of a little bit later someone like Eno building upon that and really determining what dance music would sound like and what pop music would sound like. So though I am completely opposed to the way he looks and the glam world that he comes out of, this record is so powerful, the beats are so strong and so insistent and the wording quite clever that this is really sort of a record I played over and over and over again .{quote}Bob George: ARCchive of Contemporary Music, New York City, 1st May, 2013Brian Eno: Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) released 1974ARChive of Contemporary Music
  • “I have a lot of favourites you know, in fact when I was asked to make a top ten album list I came up with twenty five!Like 1A, 1B, 1C – I can’t pin it down to ten!This is one of the first albums I ever bought, it’s actually a French record from a French jazz concert when rock ‘n’ roll was just beginning.It doesn’t have any vocals, it has saxophone leads.I’d play it to you except that my turntable’s broken right now.It’s just got this kind of classic 50’s - sneakers, bobby soxer the white bucks - and this is where it all began and all the rest of the other records come out of this one – so I thought we’ll just start at the beginning and that way I’m not pinned down to any band or artists – it’s all just rock ‘n’ roll to me.” Bob Gruen: Westbeth Centre for the Arts, New York City, 30th April, 2013Rock and Roll: Volume 1Bob Gruen
  • {quote}She was my hero, she was my mentor, she was my idol.I got to know her very very well and I was very proud that I did, because she was a real buddy of mine.I think there's a whole life in this voice for her to sing the songs that she sings - I mean you could cry listening to her and I just think she was like a beautiful ebony statue.Great songs.{quote}Annie Ross: At home, New York City, May 2013Billie Holiday: Lady in Satin 1958Annie Ross
  • Brad Stubbs: At home, West Hollywood CA, 12th May, 2013{quote}I chose Getz/Gilberto with Stan Getz and João Gilberto, which was my entry into jazz - I didn’t even know it was jazz - and I loved it so much and it’s just an album that I have just bought over and over and over again and I listen to it all the time. I listen to it when I’m kissing my wife, when I’m making love. Everything was built on this album, after I heard this, then I fell in love with Sting, I fell in love with Michael Franks, I fell in love with Sade. I’m a writer and I write stuff like that, that sort of same beautiful…it’s jazz, but it’s beautiful. And jazz isn’t always beautiful to some people when you listen to Coltrane or something when he’s gettin’ all crazy in the 60s, but this is beautiful, you know. And I loved it so much and anyway that’s why I picked this album. But I have so many copies of it and I just keep buying it. If I saw it today at [???] I’d probably pick it up again and I’d go, Oh wait a second, I already have this. I don’t care! So that’s my story on that. Stan Getz though, something interesting about him, he got a lot of flak for this album, you know, and it’s happened to a lot of artists since then. You know, that’s not real jazz, it’s beautiful but if you look at this album it’s still in the top ten of jazz songs. This, Miles Davis Kind of Blue, Take Five – those are the top ten songs. And I look at people like Brian Wilson from The Beach Boys, he got a lot of flak and it hurt him and it drove him crazy and he neglected his music. It happened to Sly Stone from Sly and the Family Stone. The black community gave him a hard time because he was writing these positive songs and Norah Jones, another one – I love Norah Jones – but she got a lot of flak for this music but you know what? Those are the records that are going to last and last and last and it was almost a tragedy that Stan Getz couldn’t embrace this, you know, for longer because you know his peers were judging him – it “wasn’t real jazz” but to me it was the best stuff that Stan Getz ever did. And of course Jobim, oh what a great writer! One of the greatest writers since Beethoven, in my mind. You know, he does such interesting things with music, that I can spend years just analysing his songs and the way he writes, because he’s otherworldly. And anyway, that’s why I love Getz/Gilberto.{quote} [laughs]Brad Stubbs: At home, West Hollywood CA, 12th May, 2013Stan Getz, Joåo Gilberto: Getz/Gilberto released 1964Featuring Antonio Carlos Jobim and Astrud GilbertoBrad Stubbs
  • “I choose a Clifford Brown album called The Beginning and the End it chronicles this guys experience from the beginning of his musical career until a recording the day before he actually died.It’s strange because when I first got the record I didn’t really know what the record was about or why they put it together I just remember hearing this amazing this amazing trumpeter and trying to mimic his version of {quote}Donna Lee{quote}, and I can remember at the end of the song hear him speak to the audience – and even as a little kid feeling that this guy had a lot of heart and was compassionate – through his voice – you know what I mean?He sort of says a farewell to the world and I had no idea that’s what actually was happening you know. So when I got a little bit older and I realised what was going on it made me want go back and re investigate it when I was a much better trumpeter and I realised he was playing some pretty impossible things on the instrument when in essence he was a baby - this guy passed away in his early twenties. There’s stuff that this guy did with the instrument that many fifty year old trumpet players would never attempt and this guy did it sixty years ago.It’s scary to think about it.The thing I love so much about Clifford Brown - in addition to his trumpet playing being so refined and so perfect, you could just always tell he was playing with sincerity and love in his heart, that’s a model that I’ve tried to keep going.Lots of guys - they look at some of my song titles and titles of the albums, some of the music is about social issues and things of that nature and they’re kind of charged sometimes – they say ‘oh well this guy’s angry’ - but if they only knew I actually was playing the music from a stance of love. I don’t want this (social issues) to affect my kids - I’m just trying to take that model and apply it to the time period that I inherited.”Christian Scott: Band on the Wall, Manchester, November 2010Clifford Brown : The Beginning and the End- released 1973Christian Scott
  • {quote}Well, I was a struggling graphic artist and I got this job for this new Stephen Sondheim musical, Follies. And I called up the ad agency that was handling the art and said, ‘This is David Byrd, I’m an artist, and could I present a sketch?’ And they said, ‘Oh no, we’ve paid all the sketch artists. We only have a budget for 14.’ And I said, ‘Well, how about if I do it for free?’ And they said, ‘Oh, well, we love free!’ So I did a sketch and oddly enough it was chosen, much to my total surprise. I just wanged it out and did it, you know? And it became kind of a legendary show that was very large. It had a cast of 48 and huge sets and it was about the end of an era, about the end of the Ziegfeld era, really. Those girls and those... They were plotless. They had vaudeville acts between... They had six-foot girls walking around in glamorous costumes. And, ironically, the show opened on the night of my 30th birthday - it’s an album I always revisit and I’ve done four different productions in different places. So I’ve done four different versions of this. I did a profile. You know, I’ve just done every possible idea I could get from that original idea of the Follies girl with the title being her head dress and the crack symbolising the end of an era. It’s a metaphor. So that’s kind of it.{quote}WE: Would you say that that album represents as much to you musically? Or would you say that there are any other bands or ensembles or records that musically really speak to you very deeply? DB: {quote}I like this show particularly because it’s a pastiche that’s extremely eclectic. So it represents every possible type of music pre-1940. And I was born before Pearl Harbour. So I know everything from Victoriana, Ragtime, Operetta, Big Band Jazz, little band jazz. And popular music, Gershwin. I mean, it’s all in this show.{quote}WE: So it gathers all the strands of your own taste in music, I guess.DB: Yes, and even though I did many rock posters, as I’ve grown older, I listen more to Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald and Chris Connor and people like that than I do rock music. And I don’t know why that is. That’s just it. Though there are some new bands that I think are pretty sensational. And one of my favourite guys was Lou Reed who we just lost recently - and Leonard Cohen.{quote}David Edward Byrd at home Silver Lake, Los Angeles, 13th April 2014David Edward Byrd: At home Silver Lake City, Los Angeles, 13th April 2014Original Broadway Cast: FolliesDavid Edward Byrd
  • {quote}Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Hymnen that was composed in about 1966/67. It’s a German import pressing of that album.WE: What’s the thing about it that’s made it outstanding for you?EC: Well, it’s avant-garde electronic composition which has been some of the music I have liked ever since I was a teenager. I heard his music and John Cage and some other contemporary classical composers in the late ‘60s and it totally changed my life and I kind of pursued that genre type of music ever since then.{quote}Edward Colver: At home, Highland Park, Los Angeles CA, 6th May, 2013Karlheinz Stockhausen: Hymnen composed 1966-67Edward Colver
  • {quote}It’s the best playing of Duke Ellington I ever heard in my life. It’s really beautiful. You can hear him humming on “Sophisticated Lady” in the background and it’s heart wrenching - it’s so beautiful. On something like “I’ve Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good” he starts off with some real slow playing of it in free time just by himself and then the band pulls it in after he plays the first verse and it feels like somebody’s just taking a romp through the park on a warm summer day. And then “Caravan”, which has that Latin beat to it, he just really grooves on it and leaves a couple of measures out and then comes back in. And those measures he leaves out are so important and so strong – he just did the right thing all the time – he was totally intuitive. He’s a real hero. You see, I don’t play that kind of music; I come from the slow blues of Jimmy Yancey . I accompanied Jimmy’s wife, Mama Yancey, after he died. I learned on the streets first and then I took a couple of degrees in music later. I love classical music but it kicks my ass in so badly when I try to play it so I memorise stuff. So I am more wired to play improvised music so this is the kind of stuff I play- but I don’t play like Monk but I just love what he plays. Most of the stuff I love is what I can’t do!{quote} [laughs].Erwin Helfer: Katerina's, Chicago, 14th May, 2013Thelonious Monk: Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington released 1955Erwin Helfer
  • {quote}My One LP is Pyramid - first because Mllt Jackson is the quintessential vibraphonist - he plays the most unbelievably beautiful version of Django I've ever heard. When I first heard that record I fell in love with his playing - it was of my first records where I ever heard Bags play.
I immediately fell in love with it and I immediately tried to emulate his playing, that's when I was beginning to play vibes and I said {quote}I'm going to learn every note this man's playing.{quote} 
Still to this day I haven't done it because every note that he plays is so carefully crafted and it's hard to recapture that - it's a pyramid – a pinnacle and I think it really represents the Modern Jazz Quartet.{quote}Greg Carroll, Aladdin Hotel, Kansas City MO. May 2013Greg CarrollModern Jazz Quartet: Pyramid 1959 - 1960American Jazz Museum
  • “The ‘Donny Hathaway Live’ album is so special because it captures - with full concentration the thing that’s special in live performance. That communication, that exchange of audience and artist.There’s back and forth conversation, the women and the men in the audience are screaming things back to Donny and Donny’s of course responding musically - and responding incredibly musically.You can feel the emotion in the room as soon as the needle hits the record.That communication - it’s not just jazz, it’s not just soul, it’s human to human.That exchange between humanity is just beautiful to see. It happens on Donny Hathaway LIve.”Gregory Porter: Band on the Wall, Manchester, 13th June 2012Donny Hathaway: Live - released 1972Gregory Porter
  • “It is, and you know how difficult that is for a musicians and the more eclectic the musician the more…you know, I could say so much about so many influences and the music I come from - Celtic music, Indian music - honours the teachers and people before so I don’t want to give a speech if I could about everybody but what I’m going to do is tell you about one record. I have a CD re-issue of it, it’s called Rosemary Lane by Bert Jansch. And Bert Jansch was one of the seminal people in the English folk scene in the early ‘60s. He eventually played in a band with John Renbourne [checked] and Danny Thompson, the great bass player, called Pentangle. This record led me to that, led me to the idea that jazz and eastern fusion and Celtic or British music could all mix. Nobody worried then about boxes. And so when I was 14 years old, I skipped school a lot and my mom worked downtown, right down here, and there was a place called Jenkins Music and they had this record and the cover of it looked so cool and I just had to buy it. It had him playing guitar and open tunings and playing everything from Corelli to old tunes to songs and, you know, it was folk mixed with something different . And so when I was 14, it led to the direction that led me to Britain later , that had me go there and I just learned the music, played in the folk clubs and met many of these people. Bert Jansch died last year [October 2011] and it was a real loss. He had a successful career in spite of heavy alcoholism and was a real influence on a lot of people. And so, Rosemary Lane of all the records I could think of that I could put my hands on and I was sitting downtown where I found it with someone from Britain, it really puts it all together. That’s very important to me… I was going to say that for I for years performed three or four songs off of this record, you know, at different times and on my new record I just recorded a song from this called “Sylvie” or “I Once Had a Sweetheart”. So it’s with me, all the time, and it led me to so much more and I didn’t know what was there. It shows the thread in my life, the connection to my heritage in Britain and yet mixed with that openness that allows us to play different kinds of music and show those connections.”Gerald Trimble: Aladdin Hotel, Kansas City, MO, May 2013Bert Jansch: Rosemary Lane released 1971Gerald Trimble
  • The style of this portrait is in homage to Peter Blake and Jann Haworth, co-creators of the legendary album cover - and of course to 'Four Lads Who Shook The World.'{quote}I think a lot of it was the time, you know when Sgt. Pepper’s came out, in my mind it was always a sunny day - even at midnight, so a lot of it was the time the context within when I first heard it.George Martin gave me an advance copy I played it to death of course as everybody else did.The songs are incredible, the journey is incredible from the opening bars to the last bar of 'Day in the Life' .It's a very complete record I feel, it's a very strong statement as a whole of their incredible ability - to be able to write songs that reach people's hearts and souls and that record did it for me.Pet Sounds is a close second of course, that also is a beautifulrecord but Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is it.I remember when the Hollies were recording at Abbey Road I talked to George Martin about it.I said {quote}So what are the boys up to?{quote}He goes {quote}They're recording a new record, it's taking quite a while.{quote}{quote}Got a title?{quote}{quote}Yes Its going to be called Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.{quote}and I said - {quote}Joking right!{quote}{quote}He goes - no I'm not joking - that's what they want to call it.{quote}Graham Nash: Interviewed at Richard Goodall Gallery, Manchester.Photographed in 2013The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band released 1967Graham Nash
  • {quote}It's called L'ascension by Olivier Messiaen who was a French composer I have loved for most of my life. Why I love his composiitions is he shows that music has always existed. Humans only stole it. We borrowed it - but it's in nature, It holds the universe together, ask any skylark or ask any blackbird they'll tell you.{quote}Jack Bruce: Band on the Wall, Manchester, 24th March, 2011L'ascension was composed in 1932-33Jack Bruce
  • {quote}I’ve chosen Shirley Horn’s Here’s To Life - Shirley Horn with Strings - it is in my estimation the most beautiful vocal album that's ever been made - maybe any kind of album. Johnny Mandel did the arrangements and they are exquisite.Her phrasing, her voice her understanding of a story and a lyric - they move me to tears every time - I'm just touched beyond words.It's sheer beauty - it’s just sheer beauty from beginning to end and to me it's everything that music is supposed to be.The pace is so slow and yet it never feels long you know - it's like someone takes you by the hand and says 'let's go walk by a beautiful stream - and that's what you do, you take this beautiful slow walk with this woman who knows life inside and out.The depth of her soul comes out and the beauty of her soul and the beauty again of the music comes out - it's just exquisite.I never tire of it - ever.{quote}Jeanne Pisano: Hollywood, CA, May 2013Shirley Horn: Here's To Life 1992
  • “It was impossible to make a choice! This is Charlie Parker with Strings – a compilation of all the Charlie Parker with Strings – not just the one studio performance there’s some live performances.Someone at The Charlie Parker organisation that used to give the benefits for Charlie Parker - the Foundation that his wife started, made this compilation and they gave them out to some of the sponsors and people who came to support that organisation.There are recordings from the Apollo Theatre and different venues.It’s a unique collection – as you know - it’s Charlie Parker man, Charlie Parker one of the geniuses of our music so - you know I’ve heard people say ‘if you don’t play no Charlie Parker you ain’t playing Jazz!’Everybody takes a little bit of Charlie Parker in their improvisation.”Jimmy Heath: Langston Hughes Library, Flushing, New York, 30th April, 2013Charlie Parker with Strings Master Takes, recorded 1947 - 1952Jimmy Heath
  • “It's 'Raw Power' by Iggy and the Stooges it came out in 1973. I heard about it in 1978 I think when I was about fourteen – fifteen. A bunch of friends that I used to hang out with who were all guitar players at various levels, were a bit older than me, I used to play around at friends houses and one guy said I should check this out because it reminded him of the way I was playing at the time, so that intrigued me. This name Raw Power kept coming up again and again. So I got on the bus and went into town to buy it, which was a big deal because I was only a kid and I didn't really have that much money. 
When I actually pulled the sleeve out of the rack I just could not believe it – I mean - the power of that image hasn't diminished anyway. Just the sleeve alone promises quite a lot and I couldn’t really imagine what I was gonna be getting into. On the bus all the way home I was just kind of stunned by these images, these Mick Rock pictures. So I was already hooked before I'd even played it really because the sleeve alone - well for a start it does what the music does. It’s got the promise of some kind of shadowy other world - which if you live in the suburbs as a teenage kid looking for something interesting it's really quite alluring I think. I couldn't believe the music - I still absolutely love it and listen to it often.The thing about it is a lot of people assume that Iggy Pop particularly and the Stooges were just about ramshackle random attitude - there is plenty of attitude behind it but the amazing thing about it is that is very very deliberate, it's almost intellectual - that was something I didn't really understand at the time. I think a lot of people still don't realise that about Iggy Pop and James Williamson, who is the guitar player - and who is actually my favourite guitar player because of this record - that there's a real agenda. It's not just people putting their heads down and being messy – yeah it's got alot of attitude and it’s got a lot of raw noise manifesto in it but it's very deliberate and the words are pure street poetry I think - “Search and Destroy” particularly. 
”I Need Somebody”, “Penetration”. So it's about sex, it's about drugs and it's about an alternative subterranean world I think. Which are all amazing things particularly for a teenager or someone who’s looking for something outside of the culture but it doesn't really last unless the people making it actually live it.
You can have all those things sort of things hung around the iconography around the sleeve and the titles - this idea of sex and drugs and subterenea - but the thing is with these guys they were actually really living it.
I think it's very beautiful as well, tracks like “I Need Somebody” has this kind of burlesque bordello folk music aspect to it. Almost like 20's or 30's prohibition American folk that is about illicit things. It’s about sex really and it has that in the music and its matched perfectly by the vocal delivery - so again in Iggy Pop you've got a very young livewire poet who read Time magazine and Newsweek because he wanted to - as I understand – because he wanted to know what the enemy was doing and wrote his lyrics accordingly. He's not just someone who's trying to cop an attitude, he's someone who really understands that he's living in the shadows kind of thing and it’s just this kind of other worldly kind of promise he delivers. Aside from all of that its got killer rock 'n' roll riffs - really killing riffs. I'm often asked who's my biggest influence or who's my favourite guitar player and all that, and I've always been able to say James Williamson. 
I don't really play like him other than if I go back to where I started with this story. The start of this song on there called “Gimme Danger” is this very haunting arpeggio acoustic thing and that's where this friend of mine put the connection between me and this record together because it does like sound the way I was learning to play.
I think often with things that you connect with on an artistic level, so in my case records. There's two ways you can do it - one is that you admire something and that's fine - that you admire a record or you admire a painting - but often I think it's because the artist is capturing something that you understand - a feeling that you understand, so even if you’re looking at or listening to something abstract there’s a little lightning bolt of recognition in there.I think that’s what makes artists great because it’s an unquantifiable almost subconscious thing for many humans who dare to kind of peek around the regular third dimension. You might sitting on a bus or in your car or on the way to school or at the back of the classroom or wherever it may be. Perhaps when you go sleep at night and you have this thing in your consciousness or subconscious and we don’t really pay attention to them until they come out in a colour or a riff or they come out in a lyric I think music and painting does it better - particularly abstract painting does it better (than a lyric) because language immediately by definition quantifies things and what I’m talking about is this extrasensory aspect - and all the greatest music that hooked me as a kid did that - it’s like the promise of a different world that you weren’t living in but at the same time you recognised it - it was familiar.I can’t ever disassociate this record from all those things because it was so powerful to me. So even if I wasn’t in the mood to listen rock ‘n’ roll music I would always have that massive connection with this record because it really sums up a big period of my life that seemed to be constantly strewn in sodium light that was coming through the windows of my bedroom in my parents council house you know.I’d turn all the lights off and there was one of those big yellow street lights outside the window that would seep through the room from late September till spring really, so it seemed like an eternity as a 15 year old and I would just listen to that record and play along with it.I understood it without having to analyse it – “I’m a street walking cheater with a heart full of napalm” is the opening lyric.”Johnny Marr: Richard Goodall Gallery, Northern Quarter, Manchester, 23rd February 2011Raw Power released 1973 Iggy PopJohnny MarrJohnny Marr talks about his One LP Raw Power towards of the interview at the BBC in the FX section.
  • {quote}In the seventies it was very popular among friends of ours to listen to American comedians.There were quite a number of them. There was Victor Borges and many others whose name I don't remember but we did spend lots of time listening to these records. Then I suddenly discovered Lenny Bruce .Lenny Bruce was more aggressive,was very political and very tough. He was really an anarchist in a way. I was very impressed by his work especially from a political point of view.At that time there was a need for that sort of aggression and criticism of society.Among the establishment he became terribly unpopular because of his criticism of society and (way of) life itself.To some degree it relates to the situation I came across in South Africa, but in general I saw it as a worldwide criticism of the establishment.{quote}Jürgen spoke later about what he considers to be his most important photographs - those he took of Nelson Mandela on his return to his cell on Robben Island where he had been held for seventeen years.{quote}As I watched (Mr.Mandela) and took a few frames I suddenly realised 'what goes through this man's brain now - seventeen years being stuck in this little place?' Looking out of that window, what does he see looking out of that window?And then I said 'thank you very much' and he turned around and he gave me a little smile, it wasn't his normal smile - it was his coming out of deep thought and contemplation of sorrow passed and so on.It was very personal.I think that was my most important two pictures, him looking out and turning around and having that little smile. That was a very different smile from his natural smile.{quote}Jürgen Schadeberg: Belgravia Gallery, London, 23rd June 2014Lenny Bruce: Busted! Live 1962Jürgen Schadeberg
  • “It’s Here’s Little Richard’ and the reason it’s so special to me is because when I lived in Detroit I was about eight years old and I had a doll’s house made out of tin and this song came on called Long Tall Sally and I’ll never forget that moment in my life because I started running in circles around the doll house.Something like snapped inside of me and I kept running and running in circles and circles until I actually ran into the doll house and I cut my lip and had to have stitches, I have a tiny little scar here.I just freaked out about Little Richard and I made my mother get me this single Long Tall Sally, when I played it I started running circles around the house – it my reaction to Elvis was one of love but Little Richard set something off in my being and when I was nine they realeased this album ‘Here’s Little Richard’ and I never had an album, I’d only had singles and I only had a record player that played singles but I loved Little Richard so much – and my mother was a working mother so to buy a long playing record player was an extravagance for us.But she knew how much Little Richard and Long Tall Sally (laughs) meant to me so she got that record player and I used to put it on and just go crazy – crazy in front of the mirror dancing, holding onto the door knob and dancing , doing this dance that I called ‘The Chicken’ and that was really the beginning of Rock ‘ n’ Roll for me.WE: “To continue a little, I guess that’s what lead to your whole love of music and largely shaped a lot of the things you’ve done do you think?” LG: “No I think that my parents divorced when I was just about four years old and it was music whether it was the music my mother had you know – the Andrew Sisters, Rosemary Clooney – the songs that I would sing at camp with the councillor – there were so many moments where music was my conective tissue to love.So I feel that this kind of universal language that the music speaks – because you don’t have to know what the words mean – I still don’t know – excuse me - what the ‘bleep’ Bob Dylan saying! - But it gets to me.So Little Richard was only an extension into how my body could feel music - could actually do to set me into a tizzy.My mother thought I’d gone nuts!It tripped – I thought – this is freedom!”Lynn Goldsmith: ARChive of Contemporary Music, New York City, 29th April, 2013Little Richard: Here's Little Richard released 1957Lynn Goldsmith
  • {quote}This is fantastic because…the first thing, you know, my father was in gospel music so we always grew up in that and then, you know, the church music and then we started playing, I guess back then we’d call it rhythm and blues or doo-wop. But then one day I was over at somebody’s house and I heard Charlie Parker playing “Just Friends” and he was just flying through the air on his beautiful music and I say “What is that?!” and they say “That’s jazz and he’s on improvisation” and I said “Wow! I’ve gotta learn how to do that” and that was the beginning of it.{quote} Lonnie Liston Smith: Richard Goodall Gallery, Manchester, 7th October 2010Charlie Parker with Strings: 1949,1950Lonnie Liston Smith
  • “Miles at his height in the 50's before jazz took another turn - this album, along with the other Miles' of this period was really at the height of the elegant era of jazz: Then it went somewhere else that was equally amazing.But I really love how the combination of soulfulness and intelligence that these guys played with - 'Trane and Red Garland, Paul Chambers, Philly Joe, Cannonball and Miles - just an unbelievable group and this record is just - Philly Joe - Paul Chambers - they're just killin’ on this record.{quote}Marcus Miller: Band on the Wall, Manchester, November 2011Miles Davis: Milestones 1958Marcus Miller
  • “It’s Setting Sons by the Jam which came out in 1979. I was fourteen and I remember the whole Mod thing coming in.I used to work on the market with my Dad – my Dad’s an artist as well, and we’d sell his paintings from a market stall in St Albans where I was, in inverted commas ‘working’ for him for some pocket money!I remember the earlier Jam stuff but I think this album has got some great great songs on it. It’s notionally about three friends before the war knocking about on the bomb sites and what have you - then actually going into battle - you never know what war it is.They’re all beautifully written songs - really catchy - quite difficult to play. I was in a band at the time - we never actually worked out how to play many of them.It actually ends with the only poor song on the album which is Heatwave by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas.Now, we played Heatwave in my band and one of the first paintings that I produced – I paint giant facsimiles of 45s, was Heatwave by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. We used to play the 45 over and over and over again to try and work out what the words were and wore the bloody thing out! We never figured it out so we just used to sing the one verse over and over again. That was the first painting I did because that song meant so much to me. At the age of fourteen my big sister Melanie - who’s ten years older than me said “well look if you're a Mod and you’re into The Jam and all the rest of it” - and then she showed me all her 45s – “you'd love Tamla Motown, Stax and The Yardbirds and The Small Faces.”And suddenly I’d found this fantastic collection of sixties music, and as a sort skinny spotty little fourteen year old kid it made me quite cool amongst my peers. It meant I could stand up straight and have the sort of cocky attitude I’ve had for the rest of my life really!So when i was searching for something to do as an artist, thinking back, it was that moment that sort of defined my life really and a lot of the songs I listened to then have made me the way that I am. The friends you meet, the way you dress it all started then so this album just came on the cusp of that before i discovered all this other stuff - which of course Paul Weller was influenced by – but I didn't know that at the time.So although i was into all sorts of other music, jazz – I play guitar – not particularly well but I play the guitar and lots of the albums on my shortlist are great guitarists like Brian Setzer from the Stray Cats, I’ve got a beautiful album, a George Benson album callled Summertime.That and this one were vying - but really it had to be this one because it’s the one I played over and over and over again and all the songs came back to me.”Morgan Howell: Richard Goodall Gallery, Manchester, 7th December, 2013The Jam: Setting Sons released 1979Morgan Howell
  • {quote}I picked The Ramones debut record. I stumbled upon it later in my life - maybe around 30 - as opposed to so many people who come across punk rock and rock 'n' roll so much earlier. That album to me just summed it all up and I thought it so applicable to any other genres in terms of integrity - I find it so interesting how many people in other genres go to that album - and that band as a definition of individuality, personality - groundbreaking.I just think that any great movement or genre has someone who has a different voice that they remain true to.{quote}Marco Olivari: Blue Note, New York, 10th February, 2014The Ramones: Ramones released 1976Blue Note: New York
  • Full title - The Night Has A Thousand Eyes{quote}Well, it’s a recording of Ronnie and Sonny Stitt that was done in 1965 in the old place in Gerrard Street. And it was a spontaneous union. They were having quite an argument in the office at the back of the club prior to Sonny going onstage. It was a musical dispute. And it was time for Sonny to go on the stand, so he turned around to Ronnie and said, ‘You wanna take it on the bandstand?’ And Ronnie said, ‘Absolutely!’ And the two of them stormed onto the bandstand and what ensued after that was one of the most electrifying evenings that any of us had heard probably ever, because of course they were nuts mad at each other and they were trying to outdo the other and it was amazing. The whole evening was absolutely incredible. And the irony is none of us realised it was being recorded, we were so wrapped up in the music. And I remember saying to Ronnie afterwards, ‘If ever there was a night that should have been recorded, this was it! It’s an absolute sin that this...(laughs)...isn’t there for people to listen to. ‘ And we were lucky. It was recorded. And it was a memorable evening that I don’t think anyone who was there will ever forget. And the other extraordinary thing is that when this was released, actually after Ronnie had passed away, cos of course the 50 years thing had gone by... But Valerie Wilmer was there that night and she took the photograph that was...is...on the cover of the CD. It never was an LP cos it wasn’t released during the time when it would have been an LP. And the picture is completely remarkable because she captured Ronnie playing some quite exquisite changes and Sonny Stitt looking at his fingering and looking completely mystified and perturbed which was such a wonderful summary of what actually was happening that night.So that’s... It’s my favourite CD. Clearly, I was mesmerised when it came out and very grateful that it had been recorded.{quote}Mary Scott: Hotel Pennsylvania, New York Cit, 3rd April 2014Ronnie Scott and Sonny Stitt: The Night Has A Thousand Eyes recorded at Ronnie Scott's, Gerrard StreetReleased 1997 Mary Scott Global Music
  • It is special for a couple of reasons. When I was asked to pick my favourite record I sat at dinner – Mike Chadwick told me about it – and I sat at dinner for about an hour trying to think of it and I couldn’t come up with anything - like my singularly favourite record. So I decided to pick like a record that was one of my favourite somethings.So this is my favourite bass record, actually, as a bass player. I think every track, the bass playing and the key bass playing to me is like absolutely perfect, like everything that I ever have wanted to be as a bass player, you know is on this record, both key bass and electric bass. The other reason why it is special to me because this dude is the mentor of my mentor, Bernard Wright.So Bernard is the guy who kind of totally shaped the way that I think about music and play and Don Blackman was Bernard’s mentor, growing up together in Jamaica, Queens. So I feel that there is kind of like, you know, maybe a little bit of that kind of lineage sentimentality, I guess, you know, about it but yeah absolutely, just an incredible record from back to front - you got it!Michael League: Band on the Wall, Manchester, July 2013Don Blackman: Don Blackman 1982Michael League: Bandleader Snarky Puppy
  • Ruth Price is Founder and Artistic Director of the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles.{quote}I think I respect this album more than any other, it's called Peggy Lee Mirrors - it was done a while back I don't know exactly when - not recently that's for sure!When you think of Leiber and Stoller you think of Yakety Yak - really famous songs, the only song on this album anyone would know would be Is That All There Is? - which sounds really Brechtian.These are trunk songs that nobody ever heard - they're wonderful. Johnny Mandel did the orchestration - it's the perfect marriage.If I had done this album I would consider my life well spent, I really do respect it - it's gorgeous. But I have a lot of singers I love - and a lot of musicians I love.{quote}Ruth Price: At home, Beverly Hills CA. April 2014Peggy Lee: Mirrors released 1975Ruth PriceThe Jazz Bakery
  • {quote}Well, it’s Lou Reed’s Transformer. It could have been any number of LPs, if I’m honest. It’s a really difficult question, is I think the first thing that I’d say. But the first one that popped in my head was Velvet Underground Loaded just because that was a really significant album for me. Probably, around 13/14 years old when I first got onto that tip and obviously then Lou Reed stemmed directly from that. Inappropriately appropriate this week with Lou Reed having died a couple of days ago but Transformer has always been a really significant album for me as well primarily because it filled a lot of gaps for me. I was into quite indie alternative music at that time, sort of the prequel to grunge and stuff like that and yeah, I think Lou Reed filled a lot of gaps in terms of that proto-punk sort of style and yeah, I think it just had a different vibe for me. It kind of just felt really different when I first listened to it even though it was way after that I obviously discovered it. I wasn’t there at the onset but I was definitely interested in a lot of stuff that he was talking about and sort of paring music back. It was the first time that I had appreciated that paring back of music and simplifying, which was then adopted more by punk aesthetic. This album particularly, I think you can hear that with a range of different sounds on the album as well. Some of the tracks are real proto-punk sort of sounding tracks and then others are melodic almost pop, do you know what I mean? That pop track sort of sound to it. But it is something that this and Loaded by Velvet Underground are the records that I return to. Sometimes, not in the most pleasant of times. Sometimes it’s in the darker periods that you’ll return to certain music but yeah, it’s definitely one of the albums I’ll keep going back to, drawn back to, on those rainy days when you need something to put on. This is one of the few albums, I think, that you can listen to all the way through as well. I think that’s a bit more of a rarity these days to actually get albums that you buy for the entirety of the album to listen to but this is still one of them for me, definitely. That’s really significant; if I can put an album on and not feel as if I want to change it that’s always a good sign for me, definitely.{quote}Neil Antcliff: Camden Palace Hotel, Cork, 28th October, 2013Lou Reed: Transformer released 1972 Neil Antcliff
  • {quote}Elton John – for me – ran at his peak in the years I was at high school. Madman Across The Water came out around ’71, and he was the first person that I became a fan of and I would spend nights getting tickets. And everything about his craziness was sort of inside me cos I came from a very repressed background and there was just something I could experience. Busting loose, being crazy and creative... And Captain Fantastic was sort of my ‘American Graffiti’ summer. This came out in ’75 and it was a song everybody played. I was the editor of the yearbook and everybody talked about me being the crazy Elton John fan for four years and he’s finally leaving! (laughs) But it was. I was so absorbed and the song ‘Someone Saved My Life Tonight’ always made me think, ‘You can get out.’ You can somehow be different from background that I don’t really want to go into too much, but I really thought I would be trapped in a certain kind of life. And this and getting out of my school and thinking, ‘This is the change in my life to being an adult,’ to making decisions that were gonna get me out of the little town I was in, and what I had to do to make sure I didn’t screw it up. And this is just four years of listening to his music, in particular, amongst others that I really loved, but this one was sort of my anthem. And that’s why when you mentioned an album, I really thought of this summer. 'Cos after this summer, everything was totally different to me, when I got to college and started to become my own person... I met David while I was still in college. And I went from being engaged to be married, to, a few months later, moving in with this character. And I reflected again on this song, ‘Someone Saved My Life Tonight’, and meeting David changed the whole course of my being able to be honest and be the person I was meant to be. So that’s why this album is important to me.{quote}Jolino Beserra: At home Silver Lake, Los Angeles, 13th April 2014Elton John: Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy released 1975Jolino Besarra
  • {quote}Kind of Blue has obviously captured a lot of people hearts, it's a huge success in terms of getting out there and people hearing the music - and for good reason.It just has an amazing an balance of a lot of space and a lot information too. Man - 'Trane and Cannonball play their asses off on it!And of course Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly are both on the record - and Jimmy Cobb - I love getting the chance to play with him - and actually this whole band - this particular band (Four Generations of Miles) with Sonny Fortune and Buster Williams – who are phenomenal musicians and really great people too. And of course Jimmy.Buster was telling me when Paul Chambers died he was called to play in the Wynton Kelly Trio with Jimmy, and then when Kelly died three months later....I hear a lot of stories now with this band - there's a whole bunch of history these cats run down.But this record just really knocked me out, it's really hard to pick your favourite record - there a million of 'em, and I don't really have a favourite but this is certainly one of the greatest records ever I think and for obvious reasons.And Miles of course just played his heart out all the time - he just played from the heart and everybody on that record did. So they gave amazing performances, amazing amazing beautiful record.{quote}Mike Stern: Photographed at Band on the Wall, Manchester, March 2011 Interviewed at Birdland, New York, February 2014Miles Davis: Kind of Blue released 1959Mike Stern
  • {quote}My favourite recorded series of works - it's an extensive collection of beautiful beautiful music that was written in the 11th century.It was written by a woman by the name of Hildegard Von Bingen and the greatest performance of those particular works is by a vocal group called Sequentia.These are Gregorian chants and it's just some of the most beautiful spiritual music you've ever heard.{quote}Pat Martino: Band on the Wall, Manchester, 23rd May 2013Hildegard Von BingenSequentiaPat Martino
  • {quote}It's Frank Sinatra's Greatest hits – Strangers in the Night is my favourite track and It Was a Very Good Year - I like that one and Thats Life -he was verylivelyon That's Life'.I like all of them Bill!He could sing seriously or go jazzy and swing a song.- he could sing any song, a ballad or a lively one and I love the way his tone blended with an orchestra.I like him all over, good entertainer ,everything about him, I thought he was lovely - lovely blue eyes O'l Blue Eyes! He was lovely.Really funny as well – good sense of humour.I just like to listen to him but I've seen a lot of his pictures - though he was a nice dancer too. I remember him with Gene Kelly and Grace Kelly, him and Bing - they were good together.I was in his fan club donkey's years ago, you had to pay a subscription of two shillings or two and six pence – something like that and used to get some information about him now and then – don’t know where all that went though!I liked the way he sat on a tall stool his hat just tipped at an angle when he sang.That's a lovely picture (of him) - he was the best.I loved him in other words!{quote}Mum: At home Woolston, Chehire, 7th December, 2013Frank Sinatra: Greatest Hits! released 1968
  • “It's a vinyl lp of Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks which i've had since i was a teenager. As a young man I was very into jazz - inspired by my mother, and listened to a lot of trad jazz recordings.But some friends of mine where into Dylan and we used go round to a friend's house Hugo at lunch time and listen to Blood on the Tracks.It was this that really got me started on quite a long period of enjoying Bob Dylan's singing and song-writing which inspired me not only musically, but also politically really and gave me some sense of the possibility of using the visual arts as a media for bringing about social change and campaigning for the things which we feel are right and important.So it was an eye opening, ear opening and heart opening experience really, listening to Blood on the Tracks.It lead on to me buying a number of his other records and I still enjoy them and listen to them today.”Revd Ralph Williamson: The Great Hall, Christ Church, Oxford, 18th February, 2014Bob Dylan: Blood on the Tracks released 1975Revd Ralph J. WilliamsonRalph uses his skills as a photographer to help the college and cathedral to support an inspiring educational project for slum children in Delhi called 'Saakshar which he established with Edwin Simpson and John Briggs respectively.Saakshar School Appeal
  • {quote}The reason this album is special to me is because the producer of the album - J Dilla is my favourite hip hop producer and I got the privilige to actually work with him before he passed away in 2006. To work with him - watch him make music - watch him in ‘the lab’ and see how he works.J Dilla is probably the only producer I know that changed the way musicians actually play their instruments. Normally a producer will just take from the musicians and do their thing - but J Dilla actually changed the way musicians play music.So this particular album Fantastic Volume 2 - when it came out, was to me the first time a record that made people start playing in that hip hop way behind the beat - kind of sloppy hip hop way - all that stuff started with Dilla - you know what I mean.This record has all of my favourite people on it - D'Angelo’s on there - Common - a lot of people on this record. It also means alot because of the time period it came out, and how it influenced the way I play doing my Trio and my Experiment band - just the way we feel the beat, his drum patterns, drum sounds, the way he samples piano and where he decides to put it - it's placement is what makes it just very very special. So I've kind of patterned alot of the stuff - especially when we play J Dilla beats we pattern alot of our stuff around his idea of where the beat is - so I think he was definitely ahead of his time and a genius of his time. So that's why I chose this record.”Robert Glasper: Hilton Garden Inn, Glasgow 28th June 2012Slum Village Fantastic, Vol. 2 - released 2000Robert Glasper
  • “My record of import is one I heard in 1962 when I heard the melody played by Yusef Lateef on oboe.I later found out the record he made on this disc was called ‘Going Home’ which is one of the movements from a Dvorak Symphony.So I went out and bought the disc – that would have to be done by Leonard Bernstein and The New York Philharmonic when they do the four movements of the Dvorak New World Symphony - and among these four movements is that melody called Going HomeThe story is that Antonin Dvorak came to the States - to New York, heard some blues people and went back to his hometown in Europe and wrote this melody – we call it ‘Gong Home’I’ve since recorded it on a record of mine called Orfeu with Bill Frisell on guitar, Houston Person on saxophone and my working quartet.It’s a great view of a classical melody interpreted by jazz musicians who are always, going home.”Ron Carter: At home New York City, 1st April 2014Antonin Dvorak: New World Symphony composed 1893Ron CarterLeonard Bernstein
  • “This is the first jazz recording I ever heard, it’s not even bebop! It’s a rebopper! ‘Charlie Parker’s Reboppers.'There’s a whole story behind this record.Charlie Parker alto, Miles Davis, trumpet, Curley Russell bass and - who’s on piano? Hen Gates that was Dizzy – he couldn’t give his real name – and Max Roach on drums.So it was Curly (Russell), oh my God – can you believe that?So on the other side is {quote}Bille’s Bounce{quote}, same personnel.I always sang as a little kid, I never knew what kind of music I wanted to sing and then after I moved back to Detroit to be with my mother and go to high school, there was a jukebox downstairs from my school.I was always playing music there, you know, putting nickels in.So I knew most of the artists and their songs that made them famous – not that I was tired of hearing – but I was looking for something else and I saw this. I saw this and I said ‘Oh – Charlie Parker and His ReBoppers, I wonder what that is?’So I put my nickel in – four or five notes and I thought – and oh my God, this is the music I’ll dedicate my life to.Whether I sing it, teach it, support it – whatever, it doesn’t matter, I’ll just dedicate my life to that music.I’d finally found the music that I wanted to do where I felt I could get into and really mean it.And I’ll tell you, I got goose bumps when I first heard the first four notes, I was like whoa – it was almost like being elevated you know.That was ‘Now’s The Time’.And the funny thing about this record that’s so beautifully framed now is I was doing a concert maybe two summers ago and there was a wonderful poet on before us, his name is Billy Collins.He recited his poetry and afterwards it was going to be me and Cameron Brown the bass player, that’s a duo I have.I’ve been doing bass and voice since the fifties.I’m the originator of bass and voice – not to brag – but to say hey to singers and bass players ‘you know can do music this way too. And there are people doing it now – which is great.This was an outdoor concert and so we were in this big house where we got dressed, got ready and relaxed until we went on.It was just Billy Collins reciting his poetry and me and Cam.So my friend, (Peter) - this drummer and a wonderful artist, he knows I’m a Bird freak - and he draws birds – all kinds of birds he’s done - they’re beautiful he sends them to me or gives them to me.It was Peter, I said ‘Peter it’s good to see you man’He said ‘ Yeah I have a present for you – I said really? I said ‘what is it?’ He said ‘yeah open it up’And so I opened it up – it was this, all framed beautifully.I got so emotional and I thought oh my God - I don’t think I can go up there and sing right now!But I waited a few minutes, I hugged him and kissed him and thanked him.I said ‘Oh my God this is the most wonderful gift I’ve ever been given - except of course the music and my daughter (laughs).So that’s the story of that record!”Sheila Jordan: At home, New York City, 11th February 2014Charlie Parkers Reboppers - The Koko Sessions by Devon {quote}Doc{quote} WendellSheila Jordan
  • “I have done many live recordings but I have never done a live recording of my own as a band leader and this is on my label which is entitled Sound Reason and that emblem has a significance. As you can see, it’s kind of a play on words because when you look at it, it’s a sun in the background with gold bars in front of it, so - Sonny Fortune [laughs]- the boy ought to be ashamed of himself but I’m not! So, you know, it’s all my compositions and it’s with a band that I feel very, very good about. That was the reason why I recorded it. And it’s, like I said, my first live recording as a band leader.I tell you what - there’s a tune on there that I wrote for someone that I have the highest regard for, is Elvin Jones . There is a tune on there called “The Joneses” and the tune consists of…it’s dedicated - and there were some reviews and people thought that I was talking about the family of Joneses, Thad and Mel, but actually I’m talking about Elvin and his wife Keiko, and she was Japanese and so the composition consists of a Japanese acknowledgement as well as an Elvin Jones acknowledgement and I feel very good about that.Coltrane told me that if I ever got the opportunity to play with Elvin Jones to take it, so I was working with Elvin the night Coltrane died.So I’m kind of locked into where I’m at because of a whole history of events and I should add that my two favourite drummers - last year when the Four Generations of Miles got together I told Jimmy Cobb - I said you ask anybody that’s known me for years and they’ll tell you I tell them that I developed my rhythmical concept from Jimmy Cobb and Elvin Jones, those were the two guys that influenced me the most.So to be working with Jimmy Cobb now is a continuation of when I was working with Elvin Jones.”Sonny Fortune: Harlem, New York City, April, 2013Sonny Fortune
  • {quote}I have chosen a re-mastered CD of the singing of Margaret Burke Sheridan who died in 1958. Now, in a way, my reason for selecting her is not that she is my absolutely favourite voice in the world. For example, I perhaps prefer Kathleen Ferrier or, I’m not sure, others. But I identify with her story because she is an Irish singer. She was born in County Mayo and I find this very poignant (and Anne Chambers has written a really beautiful book about her) but she was born a year before my grandmother – she was born in 1889 – and she actually was orphaned by the time she was 11. I think of this little orphan girl being sent up to the nuns in Eccles Street, the Dominican nuns, and Mother Clement, a very famous music teacher, taking her under her wing and somehow Margaret Burke Sheridan’s voice redeeming her whole life as well as giving us a lot of pleasure. I love that story. I should say that I went to Eccles Street myself as a boarder in the ‘60s. I didn’t know about her then so later on when I started to listen to music more carefully I thought oh my god, a beautiful concert hall, which was knocked down to make room for the Mater [Hospital], that beautiful private chapel must have been the places where she sang with Mother Clement. I’m an art historian by profession so these little funny quirky ways of reimagining a creative person intrigue me and I indulge myself in them so when you can retrace some of the parts it’s a pleasure. Her voice is wonderful, absolutely rich, golden voice. She had been a mezzo soprano but she was persuaded to become a soprano and I always think that gives you a sort of richness to the voice, I don’t know. Her debut was in 1918 and all her best roles were with Puccini, I think, and by 1923 Puccini himself was tutoring her. But she’s a very funny person because she loved being Irish. Now I know there was a thing for Irishry, you know, just before and after the First World War but still I think she was very sincerely passionate about her Irish identity. In this re-mastered disc which RTÉ put together – RTÉ in Limerick – they quoted a bit from one of her radio interviews and she talks about her performance in Naples being cancelled because of the death of Terence MacSwiney who was the Lord Mayor of Cork and a great Irish patriot. So she didn’t try and throw off her identity; she celebrated it and the great, great, great conductor Toscanini called her the Empress of Ireland. She only had a 12 year career - she started late and it ended early - and when she came back to Ireland during the Second World War she was very poor and RTÉ Radio apparently would give her something like two and six to come in and do an interview and friends put her up in a flat in Fitzwilliam where the people who owned the Shelbourne Hotel gave her a residence there. But she went around the city, apparently, sometimes wearing her operatic gear and sometimes she would sing to somebody at the bus stop if she started to talk to them about a role. Thomas MacGreevy has a lovely essay in The Capuchin Annual about that. He was a bit embarrassed. She suddenly broke into, maybe Ave Maria I can’t remember what, at the bus stop. Hilton Edwards the great theatre director, founder of The Gate in 1928, he said, “Did you not know the curtain had come down?”. One of the things I am interested in is the way artists become artists and succeed in holding on to their talent. And in one of those RTÉ – Radio Éireann as they were then called – interviews she said it’s not the work you do in the studio that makes you the great artist you are, it’s the communal life of the artist which brings out their creativity. And I am very interested in this idea of the extraneous things to the actual technical perfection being important in the training of an artist and I remember a great artist called Noel Sheridan, the name’s a coincidence I’m sure, and he was the director of the National College of Art and Design and he said “a quarter of the education goes on in the canteen and [he] looked favourably on this” and I like that.So for me it was a beautiful voice combined with a poignant story that I can personally vaguely identify with through her going to school in the same school that I had gone to.{quote}Vera Ryan: The River Lee Hotel, Cork, 29th October, 2013Margaret Burke Sheridan: Un Bel Di compilation released 2008Margaret Burke SheridanVera Ryan
  • WE We’re with Mr Vinny Fodera. We’re in Brooklyn, in the Apple.VF: The Big Apple.WE: The Big Apple.! Thanks for that. And so Vinny, what have you chosen very kindly as your one LP, would you tell me why is it so special to you please?VF: I chose Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced [laughs] and I must say it was very difficult to choose only one. But the reason I chose it, although I was actually very profoundly enlightened some years earlier by The Beatles - I was a young tad of a lad - and they sort of opened my mind to music.I chose the Hendrix album because it’s actually more relevant to my professional life. When I first heard Jimi it blew my mind – as I’m sure it did many people – and listening to his playing and his technique made me very aware for the first time of the guitar itself, not only just the guitar - but the songs. I was fascinated at how he achieved the tones and sounds and effects that he did which led me to investigate the guitar itself. I realised that in the hands of a master like him the guitar could be a very powerfully expressive tool. So in a very real way that led me…it actually began a love affair with guitars and basses and gear of all sorts which has culminated in my current career as a luthier so I really sort of owe it in some large measure to that early influence byhim.So, thank you, Jimi! And it’s still a turn-on. I still listen to him and try to play and catch some of what he was doing. Endlessly fascinating -that’s it!Vinnie Fodera: In his workshop, Brooklyn, New York, May 2013The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Are You Experienced, 1967Fodera Handmade Bass Guitars
  • {quote}I really love this record. When I was growing up in London a few close friends and I discovered it back in our teens, and we used to listen to it together, talk about what the songs meant to us. Whenever I listen to it now it takes me back to that special time in my life and to those precious friendships….amazing how an album can do that isn't it? I find the stories here so rich and engaging in the way they are told through the playing, production and arrangements. The record has been a real source of inspiration to me over the years, and I still get something new from it even after all these years of listening…{quote}Oli Rockberger, Rockwood Music Hall, New York City, 2nd April 2014Sting: Mercury Falling released 1996Oli Rockberger
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