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Kevin Mahogany

With over ten recordings as a leader, vocalist, businessman and educator Kevin Mahogany has been the standard setter for jazz vocalists for three decades. His broad baritone was forged in his hometown: the legendary jazz metropolis known as Kansas City; where he learned to swing like Charlie Parker, shout the blues like Big Joe Turner, and cry a ballad like Lester Young; while, extending, elaborating and refining the jazz vocal legacies of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, Eddie Jefferson and Al Jarreau into the myriad, interwoven dimensions of music – from gutbucket, the Great American Songbook, and gospel, to Mingus to Motown.

Mahogany played the piano, clarinet and baritone saxophone before he started singing in high school. He played saxophone on his first professional gig with Eddie Baker’s New Breed Orchestra. Mahogany studied with local jazz legend Ahmad Aladeen at the Charlie Parker Academy, and matriculated at Baker University in Baldwin, Kansas, where he formed a jazz vocal choir and earned a BFA in Music, English and Drama in 1981. He returned home and joined a nine-piece horn band called Robinson-Pike. He later formed two R&B-centric bands; The Apollos and Mahogany. In1991, he toured with the NRE Trio, and was featured on pianist Frank Mantooth’s 1993 CD, Dangerous Precedent.

That same year, Mahogany released his debut recording, Double Rainbow, was released on the Enja label in 1993. Specializing in performing and seldom-heard songs, the stylistic range of Mahogany’s recordings range from the kinetic big band bravura of Pussy Cat Dues: The Music of Charles Mingus; which featured Mingus sidemen trombonist Jimmy Knepper, alto saxophonist Charles MacPherson with the WDR Big Band, to Pride and Joy, his ebullient Motown tribute featuring the music of Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Michael Jackson and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.

Mahogany published a magazine, The Jazz Singer and, with his business partner, Rick Cioffi, started his own Mahogany Jazz label, and recorded two recordings: Kevin Mahogany: Big Band, To: Johnny Hartman, a tribute to the exceptional vocalist who recorded with Dizzy Gillespie and John Coltrane, and The Coltrane Hartman Fantasy, Vol. 1, with tenor saxophonist Tony Lakatos, inspired by the legendary 1963 Impulse recording, John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman. In addition to being a trend-setting leader of the first order, Kevin Mahogany has also been an in-demand sideman and guest artist with a select cadre of jazz stars. He’s recorded with T.S. Monk (Monk on Monk), The Ray Brown Trio (Christmas Songs With Ray Brown), Marlena Shaw (Dangerous), Roseanna Vitro (Passion Dance), Carl Allen (Testimonial), Barbara Morrison (Visit Me) and Elvin Jones (It Don’t Mean A Thing).

Another Time Another Place - Happy Birthday Pamela Baskin-Watson

by Mary Foster Conklin
August 10, 2020

The show begins with birthday greetings to pianist and composer Pamela Baskin-Watson and vocalist Kevin Mahogany, with new releases from drummer Jeff Hamilton, pianist Christian Sands, vocalists Paulette McWilliams, Brenda Nicole Moorer, Susie Meissner and flutist Ragan Whiteside, plus more birthday shoutouts to pianists Hank Jones, Josh Nelson, Shamie Royston and Diane Moser. Thanks for listening and please continue to support all of these fine musicians, buy their recordings in this time of lockdown. Playlist Bobby Watson “The ...

Radio & Podcasts

“Old” School

by H William Stine
February 28, 2019

Old hat; same old same old; you can't teach an old dog new tricks. I don't get it why people are so negative about the word, old. Some of our greatest songwriters have used that word in some of their best songs. And some of our youngest singers are giving new voice to these old songs. I say, this grievous mistake must be corrected (or am I just up to my old tricks, trying to fill two hours with music? ...

Album Review

Kevin Mahogany: The Vienna Affair

Read "The Vienna Affair" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
February 20, 2016

Il numero dei cantanti jazz di sesso maschile è sempre stato esiguo rispetto al preponderante universo femminile, oggi più che mai. La recente scomparsa di Mark Murphy (il massimo vocalist moderno, già da qualche anno in semi-ritiro) ha accentuato la carenza anche se l'ingresso in scena di Gregory Porter ha portato una ventata d'aria fresca. Di Kevin Mahogany s'erano perse le tracce da qualche tempo ma questo disco dimostra il suo ottimo stato di salute ...

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Album Review

Kevin Mahogany: Kevin Mahogany Big Band

Read "Kevin Mahogany Big Band" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
March 14, 2005

Kevin Mahogany, the Kansas City cyclone, would sound terrific singing in the shower or standing on his head. The presence of a big band (actually four) on nine of the ten selections on his newest album is merely icing on the cake. No, this isn't actually “the Kevin Mahogany Big Band, but the four bands represented here will do quite nicely, thank you..

Mahogany is blessed with a voice that is instantly seductive--smooth as butter, sweet as honey and deep ...

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Album Review

Kevin Mahogany: Pride & Joy

Read "Pride & Joy" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
June 1, 2002

The Tamala-Motown songbook...

Kevin Mahogany is a bit of a quandary. A very fine jazz vocalist, Mahogany is not content just to recapitulate the standards. His current Pride & Joy and 2000's Pussy Cat Dues-- The Music of Charles Mingus are both tightly focused efforts intent on shining a light on little illuminated corners of jazz. Pride & Joy is a swinging tribute to Motown. Mahogany opens his tribute with a down-on-the-corner a cappella “Signed, Sealed, and Delivered." Marvin Gaye's ...

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Album Review

Kevin Mahogany: Pride & Joy

Read "Pride & Joy" reviewed by Dave Nathan

by Dave Nathan
May 19, 2002

Kevin Mahogany seems to have been focusing on very specific themes for his last three albums. My Romance dealt strictly with love songs and Pussy Cat Dues was dedicated to the music of Charles Mingus. Now for his first album for Telarc, the singer takes his rich baritone voice to the land of Motown's sophisticated R & B, honing in on a play list that recalls that style's heyday of the 1960's and 1970's, adding a jazz inflection to the ...

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Album Review

Kevin Mahogany: A Portrait of Kevin Mahogany

Read "A Portrait of Kevin Mahogany" reviewed by Dave Nathan

by Dave Nathan
January 1, 2001

On his 4th album for Warner Bros., Kevin Mahogany pulls all the genre stops and pays tribute to those by whom he clearly has been influenced. There's that funky R & B with Fats Domino's “I'm Walkin" with a raucous sax and Larry Golding's organ making the whole thing go. As much as any track, “I Love You More Than You Ever Know" reveals a Mahogany debt to Joe Williams where he and Golding's organ (again) merge to bring a ...

Birthday