Terry Evans 1938-2018
The Mississippi-born soul singer Terry Evans, who died earlier this year at the age of 80, was responsible for one of the greatest vocal moments I ever heard in my life. As one of the singers who...
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Cecil Taylor, himself
(Photograph: Francis Wolff) Today’s news of the death of the great musical revolutionary Cecil Taylor at the age of 89 brought back the impact of his early recordings and the experience of hearing him...
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Betty Lavette, protest singer
Which activist was it who remarked, sometime in the early ’70s, that he’d forgive Bob Dylan everything if he’d just write one more good song against the Vietnam war? I forget, and it doesn’t really...
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Lewis Wright’s ‘Duets’
If he were not already a word-class vibes player, Lewis Wright would make a great commercial songwriter. Unlike most people who write jazz compositions, Wright seems to think first of all in terms of...
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A record shop life
The history of the British music scene from the 1950s onwards can be told through the story of the nation’s record shops, which is exactly what Garth Cartwright does in Going for a Song, his newly...
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Pohjola/Kallio: ‘Animal Image’
Four years ago, the gifted Finnish trumpeter Verneri Pohjola made his debut on the Edition label with Bullhorn, a small-group album of exquisite modern jazz in the line of descent from Herbie...
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Grant Green’s groove
What I’d give to be able to walk into a small club somewhere and discover Grant Green playing with a little band – just his guitar plus a tenor saxophone, B3 organ, bass guitar, drums and congas....
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Peter Hammill’s ‘From the Trees’
As skinny as a bread-stick, his white hair cropped almost back to his skull, an outfit of loose white shirt and trousers giving him (somewhat deceptively) the austere, elevated air of a Zen monk,...
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Nels Cline at the Vortex
When I told Nels Cline that there had been moments during the two sets he’d just performed with his quartet that had made me burst out laughing with sheer pleasure, he said that it was how he’d often...
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‘Dancing in the Dark’
One summer night last year a quartet led by the alto saxophonist Martin Speake, with Ethan Iverson on piano, played a version of “Dancing in the Dark” — the Broadway ballad, not the Springsteen song —...
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