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Bobby Bradford

How can one begin to assess the numerous contributions of a great cornetist/trumpeter/composer/bandleader/educator? How can one also adequately offer a testament for an artist who is such a high quality human being and who profoundly touches so many lives?

Those of us who have been blessed to know Bobby Bradford for a number of years can attest to a probing, powerful intellect that assimilates the history of Jazz in a highly unique manner, drawing conclusions that are as innovative and provocative as one of his solos. His understanding of the history, coupled with his embracing of Jazz’s mandate for innovation, reveals itself in his teaching, playing and composing. I have profoundly admired his brilliant mind, up-tempo wit and his usual location of being two or three steps ahead of everyone else. Like Lester Bowie, he has achieved an individualistic incorporation of Louis Armstrong’s musical language and has placed that influence within the context of modern Jazz’s avant-garde movements. Like Sonny Rollins, J.S. Bach and Ornette Coleman, Bradford has a strong penchant for using musical sequences in both his compositional and improvisational languages. Also like Sonny Rollins, Bradford has a remarkable gift of musical memory. These gifts along with a boundless imagination have consistently enabled Bradford to deftly organize his improvisations. I am consistently stunned by the exquisite musical architecture instantaneously created in his solos. These improvisational edifices give room for his listening audiences to roam within them--exploring and discovering something new about him and themselves. Bradford’s rhythmical language is extremely diverse and his lyrical leanings give many of his solos an emotional depth that only the best practitioners in the music achieve. Bradford is Bradford - coming out of Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Fats Navarro, Charles Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Young - yet still Bradford.

One crucial aspect of Los Angeles’ musical scene, from Bop to Free Jazz, was that one had to find his or her individual sound. It is impossible to confuse one note of Bobby Bradford with that of any other trumpeter or cornetist. His sound uses a smidgen of air, sometimes in a fashion similar to Ben Webster or Paul Gonsalves’ use of air, as an expressive part of the sub-tone sound. Bradford’s timbral specificity within his language (not the one sound fits all ideas approach) adds a vocal quality to his playing that exudes emotional sensitivity not often found within the context of new music.

Just as Horace Tapscott was during his lifetime, Bobby Bradford is an important musical and personal mentor for many in the Los Angeles basin. To this day his Mo’Tet ensembles continue to help to develop many younger and mature musicians. I first met Bobby Bradford in 1973 in Claremont, California while he was playing in Stanley Crouch’s group, “Black Music Infinity.” The front line of Black Music Infinity consisted of Bradford and alto/soprano-saxophonist Black Arthur Blythe. It was amazing to hear the two of them together. Looking back, I am convinced that it is still one of the most effective front lines that I have ever heard. Eventually the ensemble expanded, adding David Murray, trumpeter Walter Lowe, Mark Dresser and me. Bradford’s influence on all of us younger members of the ensemble was immense. He treated each of us as if we were his equal, although we were struggling mightily, trying to come to grips with the distance between what we were able to articulate and the precious gold that poured out of Bradford’s cornet and Blythe’s alto sax. I can clearly see his (and Arthur Blythe’s) imprint on all of us.

Jazz At LACMA: 30 Years Of Friday Night Jazz

by Chuck Koton
February 14, 2023

For more than thirty years, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has been presenting a free, swinging jazz concert every Friday evening. During that time so many jazz clubs in the Los Angeles area have come and gone: the Vine Street Bar and Grill, Charlie O's, Spazio's and Cafe Metropol, among others, have all shut their doors. In 2009, landlord greed forced the Jazz Bakery out of their long-time home and, more recently, Covid killed Joon Lee's Blue ...

Album Review

Bobby Bradford and Friends: Stealin' Home: Jackie Robinson Suite

Read "Stealin' Home: Jackie Robinson Suite" reviewed by Chuck Koton

by Chuck Koton
August 8, 2022

Born in Mississippi in 1934 and raised in Dallas, Texas, cornet master and composer Bobby Bradford knows racism and segregation. When asked if Texas was completely segregated, Bradford said, “If there's a word stronger than 'completely,' that was Texas." In spite of the hate and discrimination of everyday life in the Jim Crow South, Bradford and his family were tuned in to events around the country that impacted African Americans. They “got the news from the outside world" from Black ...

Album Review

Roberto Miranda's Home Music Ensemble: Live at the Bing Theater; Los Angeles, 1985

Read "Live at the Bing Theater; Los Angeles, 1985" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
March 18, 2021

Roberto Miranda has appeared on almost one-hundred albums but has been lightly recorded as a leader, and inexplicably struggled to generate interest among labels. Dark Tree Records has released some great Horace Tapscott performances from the '70s and '80s. The label resurrected a Miranda-led session on Live at the Bing Theater; Los Angeles, 1985. Recorded at the USC campus auditorium, the sound is pristine, and the ambiance, eclectic and dynamic. Miranda studied bass with Ray Brown and Red ...

Album Review

Bobby Bradford / Frode Gjerstad / Kent Carter / John Stevens: Blue Cat

by John Sharpe
January 12, 2020

Following on from Day Two (2019), the Lithuanian NoBusiness imprint issues another archive tape by Detail, the collective founded by Norwegian reedman Frode Gjerstad and English drummer John Stevens. By 1991 when this live set was captured, original bassist Johnny Dyani had died and had been replaced by expatriate American Kent Carter. Also on the album and deserving top billing was special guest cornetist Bobby Bradford, a onetime sideman to Ornette Coleman, who had toured and recorded with the previous ...

Album Review

Bobby Bradford-Hafez Modirzadeh Quartet: Live At The Blue Whale

Read "Live At The Blue Whale" reviewed by Alberto Bazzurro

by Alberto Bazzurro
April 18, 2019

Bobby Bradford, classe 1934, un passato accanto ad autentici giganti, da Ornette Coleman (in particolare l'epocale Science Fiction, anno di grazia 1971) a John Carter (ripetutamente), tanto per fare solo due nomi, si unisce al più giovane sassofonista Hafez Modirzadeh per dirigere questo pregevole quartetto, nella cui musica (nello specifico ripresa dal vivo nel locale del titolo nel gennaio 2017) si colgono le stimmate di buona parte di quanto il jazz (almeno una sua importante costola) ci ha fatto respirare ...

Album Review

Bobby Bradford / Hafez Modirzadeh Quartet: Live At The Blue Whale

Read "Live At The Blue Whale" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
March 27, 2019

This is the third album from the fertile pairing of cornetist Bobby Bradford and reedman Hafez Modirzadeh. Each time they have been joined by a different rhythm section: Ken Filiano and Royal Hartigan on Live At The Magic Triangle (NoBusiness, 2017), and Mark Dresser and Alex Cline on Live At The Open Gate (NoBusiness, 2016). This time out the team stoking the engine room comprises bassist Roberto Miranda and drummer Vijay Anderson. In keeping with past sessions, everyone brings charts ...

Album Review

Bobby Bradford - Hafez Modirzadeh: live at the Blue Whale

Read "live at the Blue Whale" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
January 30, 2019

Cornetist Bobby Bradford (Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, John Carter) has been a pivotal figure in the “new" jazz leanings on the U.S. West Coast and the global panorama, performing with the best and brightest. Since 2016, Bradford co-leads a quartet with reedman and musicologist Hafez Modirzadeh (Amir ElSaffar, Rudresh Mahanthappa), supplemented by the strong and impassioned rhythm section, featuring A-list session artists, drummer Vijay Anderson and bassist Roberto Miguel Miranda. As expected, Bradford's masterful use of space allows ...

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Recording

John Carter - Bobby Bradford - Mosaic Select 36 (Mosaic, 2010)

Source: Music and More by Tim Niland
January 17, 2011

Clarinetist and saxophonist John Carter and trumpeter Bobby Bradford co-led an excellent band in the 1970's that was steeped in the free-bop of Ornette Coleman, but clearly taken in a unique and personal direction. This three disc compilation brings together the albums that Carter and Bradford recorded for Revelation Records, Seeking and Secrets, along with unreleased material including a fascinating duo performance. Seeking is a quartet album with the co-leaders joined by Tom Williamson on bass and Bruz Freeman on ...
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233

Recording

John Carter - Bobby Bradford Quartet - Seeking (Hatart 1969, 2001)

Source: Music and More by Tim Niland
January 2, 2011

Clarinetist and saxophonist John Carter and trumpeter Bobby Bradford led an excellent free-bop band in the vein of Ornette Coleman's pianoless quartet during the late 60's and 70's. Much of this material has been released on a recent Mosaic Select but this review comes from a HatArt reissue of this early album I found in the used bin at the Princeton Record Exchange. Joined by Tom Williamson on bass and Bruz Freeman on drums, the band called themselves The New ...
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291

Recording

John Carter-Bobby Bradford Quartet: "Seeking" on hatOLOGY 620

Source: All About Jazz
October 28, 2006

John Carter, Bobby Bradford, Tom Williamson & Bruz Freeman recorded January 16th, 1969 in Los Angeles. (reissue, remastered)

This was the debut on disc of the John Carter - Bobby Bradford Quartet (then under the cooperative name New Art Jazz Ensemble), and captures their marvelous cohesiveness, moral vibrancy, and quiet determination in equal measure.

Subsequent recordings (and there were precious few of them) may have widened our view of their talents slightly, but didn't necessarily alter any early assessment of ...
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