Apr 15, 2025 11:44 AM
Blindfold Test: Ethan Iverson
Between last Christmas and New Year’s Eve, Ethan Iverson performed as part of the 31st Umbria Jazz Winter festival in…
Unraveling The mystique and influence of one of the most innovative musicians of the last century, Charlie Christian: The Genius Of The Electric Guitar (Columbia/Legacy) sheds a floodlight—musically and biographically—on the guitarist’s incandescent career, which ended at age 25. Gathered for the first time on a four-CD boxed set, the first comprehensive collection of Columbia recordings that Charlie Christian made while a member of Benny Goodman’s Sextet and Orchestra from 1939 to 1941 (with one side trip on the Metronome All Star Nine), will arrive in stores Sept. 24.
Beginning on his first Columbia recording date with producer John Hammond and the Benny Goodman Sextet in October 1939—which yielded “Flying Home,” “Rose Room” and “Star Dust”—the Texas-born, Oklahoma-raised Christian lays the groundwork that earned him a title usually reserved for Albert Einstein and Ray Charles. Genius tracks Christian’s 14 extant Columbia studio dates spanning 17 months through March 1941 (one year before his death), when he recorded “Solo Flight” with the orchestra, the signature by which the famed Gibson ES150 guitarist would be known. The first Goodman feature actually built around Christian, “Solo Flight” found him in transition to the nascent bebop movement, upon which fellow conspirator Thelonious Monk and others considered him a primal force.
Lavishly packaged in a boxed set designed to simulate the appearance of a vintage Gibson amplifier (the classic Amelia Earhart “Tweed” luggage finish), Genius is a major commemoration of Christian. The four discs present some 40 songs over the course of 98 tracks—17 of which have never before surfaced anywhere in the world, 27 of which have never before been issued in the United States.
“I’m certainly influenced by Geri Allen,” said Iverson, during a live Blindfold Test at the 31st Umbria Jazz Winter festival.
Apr 15, 2025 11:44 AM
Between last Christmas and New Year’s Eve, Ethan Iverson performed as part of the 31st Umbria Jazz Winter festival in…
“At the end of the day, once you’ve run out of differences, we’re left with similarities,” Collier says. “Cultural differences are mitigated through 12 notes.”
Apr 15, 2025 11:55 AM
DownBeat has a long association with the Midwest Clinic International Band and Orchestra Conference, the premiere…
“It kind of slows down, but it’s still kind of productive in a way, because you have something that you can be inspired by,” Andy Bey said on a 2019 episode of NPR Jazz Night in America, when he was 80. “The music is always inspiring.”
Apr 29, 2025 11:53 AM
Singer Andy Bey, who illuminated the jazz scene for five decades with a four-octave range that encompassed a bellowing…
Foster was truly a drummer to the stars, including Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and Joe Henderson.
Jun 3, 2025 11:25 AM
Al Foster, a drummer regarded for his fluency across the bebop, post-bop and funk/fusion lineages of jazz, died May 28…
Davis was a two-time Grammy winner for liner notes.
Apr 22, 2025 11:50 AM
Francis Davis, an august jazz and cultural critic who won both awards and esteem in print, film and radio, died April…
