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Articles by Chris May

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Top Ten Sci-Fi Jazz Albums

Read "Top Ten Sci-Fi Jazz Albums" reviewed by Chris May


On The Launch Pad Robert Frosch, head honcho at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration from 1977 to 1981, wrote that at cocktail parties he was sometimes asked whether NASA had some gizmo or other that had recently been brought to fictional life in a sci-fi book or movie. If Frosch's answer was “No," the next question was usually, “Are you going to get one?" To which Frosch's answer, a truthful one, was often, “We're working on it."

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Ten Supreme Fender Rhodes Albums

Read "Ten Supreme Fender Rhodes Albums" reviewed by Chris May


In 1965, reeling from the impact of Motown and the Brit invasion led by the Beatles, and about to be hit by the triple whammy that was acid rock and the rebel culture that went with it, jazz was on the back foot. Its relevance as entertainment, art form and spiritual sustenance was under threat, at least for people under thirty years of age. And then along came Harold Rhodes and the Fender Rhodes. The electric piano was not a ...

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Wayne Shorter: The Final Mission

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Every good story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Depending on how one figures it, Wayne Shorter's recording history has upwards of half a dozen important chapters. They tell a tale of superheroes, of monsters and demons and, ultimately, of the sight of a new dawn. Just three of the chapters cover the story's beginning, middle and end. The first concerns Shorter's own-name Blue Note albums of the middle to late 1960s; the middle one his years with ...

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Charles Lloyd: Defiant Warrior Still On Song

Read "Charles Lloyd: Defiant Warrior Still On Song" reviewed by Chris May


As fool's errands go, few compare with selecting a Top Ten Albums collection from Charles Lloyd's extensive top-drawer output. But here goes. Lloyd newbies could consider the list a launch pad, and seasoned fans can compare the choices with their own... Anyone going to jazz festivals in summer 1966, and lucky enough to catch the Charles Lloyd Quartet, will likely have one tune in particular imprinted on their memory. Not because Lloyd had already twice recorded “Forest ...

22

Jaimie Branch: 7 Steps To Heaven

Read "Jaimie Branch: 7 Steps To Heaven" reviewed by Chris May


Following the 2024 re-election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, and his subsequent ratification as President-for-Life, the US Constitution was suspended. Jaimie Branch, who had passed in 2022, was one of many musicians, film makers, writers and visual artists whose work, no longer protected by the First Amendment, was declared Un-American and its broadcasting and public performance banned. Branch had been prominent among those American jazz musicians who raised their voices against the rising ...

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Bill Evans: Ten Essential Sideman Albums

Read "Bill Evans: Ten Essential Sideman Albums" reviewed by Chris May


Bill Evans attracts a special sort of fan. Clinically obsessive is a reasonable description. While far from undiscerning, we find something, usually plenty, to enjoy in every record Evans played on. And we want them all in our collection. Evans' hardcore fans include practically every musician who played with him. Eddie Gomez, his bassist for 11 years, spoke for many when, in an interview for the liner booklet of Bill Evans Treasures (Elemental, 2021), he said: “Every ...

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Wayne Shorter: An Essential Top Ten Albums

Read "Wayne Shorter: An Essential Top Ten Albums" reviewed by Chris May


At the start of September 2021, trumpeter Terence Blanchard released Absence (Blue Note), dedicated to saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter, who for health reasons had recently been obliged to retire from performing, at least temporarily. Some people celebrating their eighty-eighth birthday, as Shorter did the previous month, might not welcome being the dedicatee of an album with such a title. They might consider a more appropriate choice of words to be Presence or even I'm Feeling Fine Thanks For Asking. ...

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Michel Legrand: Hollywood Hitmaker And Jazz Genius

Read "Michel Legrand: Hollywood Hitmaker And Jazz Genius" reviewed by Chris May


For many jazz fans, Michel Legrand is celebrated, if he is celebrated at all, for one album only: the masterpiece Legrand Jazz (Columbia, 1958). But Legrand's jazz legacy is more extensive than that, including other historic recordings, with large and small ensembles, under his own name and by Stan Getz and Phil Woods, whose Images (RCA, 1975) is regarded by some listeners as Woods' most perfect album. Legrand began his career in Paris in the early 1950s, ...

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Herbie Hancock: An Essential Top Ten Albums

Read "Herbie Hancock: An Essential Top Ten Albums" reviewed by Chris May


The title of Herbie Hancock's 1973 hit single “Chameleon," pulled from his jazz-funk monster Head Hunters (Columbia), was an apt one. Hancock had already undergone several transformations: from the blues-and-gospel-infused vibe of his Blue Note debut, Takin' Off (1962), to more experimentally inclined Blue Note albums in the mid-to-late 1960s, and on to his early 1970s sextet Mwandishi, once dubbed “the thinking fan's fusion band." Along the way, as a member of Miles Davis' so-called “second great ...

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Horace Silver: His Only Mistake Was To Smile

Read "Horace Silver: His Only Mistake Was To Smile" reviewed by Chris May


In his sleeve note for the audio restored Horace Silver album Live New York Revisited (ezz-thetics, 2022), British writer Brian Morton cut to the chase. “[Silver]'s only mistake," he wrote, “was to smile while he was playing... a challenge to the notion that jazz should be deadly serious and played with a pained rictus." From a historical point of view, Silver's cheerful face--his natural, default expression on stage—has done him no favours. It has fostered a perception ...


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