Art Blakey performing “A Night in Tunisia” Live in Belgium in 1958
“You can’t separate modern jazz from rock or from rhythm and blues - you can’t seperate it. Because that’s where it all started, and that’s where it all come from - that’s where I learned to keep rhythm - in church.”
Modern day drumming owes a great deal of debt to Art Blakey. Without this man and his innovations on the instrument, the concept of a drummer keeping time would be radically different. Some of the techniques he used have since woven its way into the language that drummers use to understand rhythm today. Here are some of his techniques decoded:
- The Press Roll Roar: - His press roll on the snare became his signature sound and this is how he would announce his presence on every recording. Listen to “Moanin’” or “A Night in Tunisia” and you’ll hear the command with, which he holds the rhythm groove.
- The Time: - The only way this man is capable of keeping time is if he emphasized on the 2 and 4 on the right-hand time pattern. Activation of this would only be possible through a whip-like wrist action which moves in a circular motion over the ride cymbal. Lastly, a biting hi-hat rhythm supports and blends with his solid cymbal work, which gives a strong sensation of forward momentum.
- The Afro-Cuban Feel: - The West African feel takes a dominant position in a lot of Blakey’s music and an in-dept analysis of his playing revealed that there should be at least one Afro-Cuban rhythm present in the song. It’s always there, shaping the groove, giving it that rolling, almost hypnotic momentum that keeps you locked in whether you realize it or not.
Art Blakey’s influence lives in the generations he shaped and the standard he set for what jazz could be. With The Jazz Messengers he built more than a band; he built a proving ground. That band contained members would go on to define eras all passed through his ranks, refined under his discipline, his intensity, and his belief in the music. He carried the spirit of hard bop across decades without dilution, keeping it urgent, alive, and rooted in something deeper than trend or popularity.
Gerry Mulligan directing a recording session in Los Angeles, 1953 (Photo Credits Unknown)
Welcome to The Legends of Music Fan Takeover with @ConcertPants !
Here’s why “Festival Minor” by Gerry Mulligan is so personal to him:
“New Years always marks the end of an extended holiday season which can sometimes feel like a moment of clarity after a lot of noise.
Gerry Mulligan’s “Festive Minor” feels like motion without chaos, like your mind finally coming back online after a heavy season.
Mulligan is one of those true jazz architects, a baritone sax player who helped shape the whole “cool jazz” sound and put together one of the first Jazz quartets without a piano. This song has been a favorite of mine since high school (I even did a presentation about it once for an English class my senior year). The call and response between Mulligan (on baritone sax) and Art Farmer (on trumpet) just flows like water and then comes together effortlessly.
The title of the song sounds contradictory but cannot be more true. The song is in a minor key, but sounds absolutely festive.
Joy with depth, light with shadow, hope that’s been earned. Jazz is always appropriate for a new year because: you don’t always have to know the whole plan, you just have to think about the next 8 bars.
What does a “fresh start” sound like for you?
#Music #Jazz #GerryMulligan
Duke Ellington & Ella Fitzgerald performing “It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” on the 7th of March, 1965 on the Ed Sullivan Show
Long before technique came to the forefront of singing, there was language. Ella Fitzgerald didn’t invent scat, but she sure did refine it into something complete that it felt definitive. What she did with it wasn’t novelty. It wasn’t playful filler between lyrics. It was articulation without words. Scat, in her hands, wasn’t improvisation for its own sake. It was structure moving in real time. Every phrase she built had direction. Every run carried internal logic. She treated syllables as instruments, not random sounds, but tonal decisions. Timing mattered. Breath mattered. Placement mattered. You can hear the discipline inside the spontaneity. Listen closely and the control is unmistakable. The pitch is exact. The rhythmic shifts are intentional. She could mirror a horn section or outpace it. She could take a standard and temporarily dismantle its melody without losing the thread. That requires more than talent. It requires listening to the band, to the space, to the audience, to the moment.
What made her singular wasn’t just virtuosity. It was clarity. She never used complexity to obscure emotion. The joy in her delivery wasn’t exaggerated. It was grounded. When she scatted, it felt less like showing what she could do and more like sharing what she heard. In the 21st century, where speed and vocal acrobatics are often separated from musical understanding, Ella’s recordings remain instructional. They remind you that improvisation is conversation, not competition. That freedom sits on top of structure. That mastery doesn’t need volume.
She mattered because she expanded what a voice could be inside jazz. Not just as an interpreter, not just singer, but instrumentalist in full dialogue with the ensemble. There’s no need to exaggerate her impact. The recordings speak with enough authority.
#Music #DukeEllington #EllaFitzgerald
Buddy Rich performing a drum solo Live at The Hague in ’78
In 1942, Rich and his teacher created what was to become the defining book on modern drumming named: “Buddy Rich’s Modern Interpretation of Snare Drum Rudiments”. Now here are a couple of quotes from Buddy’s teacher Henry Adler on the drummer:
“The kid told me he played better than (Gene) Krupa. Buddy was only in his teens at the time and his friend was my first pupil. Buddy played and I watched his hands. Well, he knocked me right out. He did everything I wanted to do, and he did it with such ease. When I met his folks, I asked them who his teacher was. ‘He never studied’, they told me. That made me feel very good. I realised that it was something physical, not only mental, that you had to have.”
Finally in an interview with Modern Drummer magazine, Rich said this about practicing: “I don’t put much emphasis on practice anyhow. I think it’s a fallacy to believe that the more you practice, the better you become. You can only get better by playing. You can sit in a basement with a set of drums and practice rudiments all day long, but if you don’t play with a band, you won’t learn style, technique, and taste, and you won’t learn how to play for a band and with a band. It’s like getting a job, any kind of job, it’s an opportunity to develop. And practice, besides that, is boring. I know teachers who tell their students to practice three, four, six hours a day. If you can’t get what you want after an hour of practice, you’re not going to get it in four days.”
#Music #BuddyRich
“Confessin’” by the Paul Chambers Quartet
Paul Chambers was the quiet architect of modern jazz bass. He didn’t just keep time, he redefined it. His playing bridged eras, linking the swing foundation of the 1940s with the harmonic sophistication of the hard bop and modal movements that followed. In every collaboration he has been a part of, Paul grounded the chaos without ever restraining it. What made Chambers unique wasn’t just technical brilliance, but balance. His tone was full yet articulate, his phrasing elegant but muscular. He could outline a chord progression with such clarity that horn players could take flight without fear of falling. And when he soloed, it wasn’t indulgence, it was conversation. Each note felt deliberate, sculpted, lyrical. He made the bass sing in complete sentences.
Listen to Kind of Blue or Blue Train and you’ll hear his genius in restraint. Those walking lines that feel effortless but carry entire harmonic structures. He had a gift for giving music shape without ever demanding credit. His bow work, almost orchestral in its control, gave him a voice that few jazz bassists have ever matched. Chambers’ contribution was foundational. He took the bass from accompaniment to expression, from pulse to poetry. He was a musician who didn’t need the spotlight because he was the one who built it. In the language of jazz, his playing became punctuation as it was the breath between ideas and the structure behind freedom.
#Music #PaulChambers
Return to Forever performing “Medieval Overture” Live on the Old Grey Whistle Test
This right here is Jazz-Fusion personification. Return to Forever wasn’t just a band, it was an idea: that jazz could be both cerebral and explosive, spiritual and electric. Founded by Chick Corea in the early 1970s, the group became one of the cornerstones of the jazz fusion movement, standing alongside Weather Report and the Mahavishnu Orchestra in redefining what instrumental music could do. As a group, Return to Forever was formed by Chick Corea in the early ‘70s following a brief period where he was a member of Miles Davis’s group that produced Jazz-Fusion records such as “In A Silent Way” and “Bitches Brew”. Following that, Chick came to a realization that he wanted to communicate better with his audience and thus sought to create a more accessible style of music than avant-garde jazz. What he ended up creating was a jazz fusion group named “Return to Forever” that ended up becoming one of the core Jazz-Fusion groups of the decade.
#Music #JazzFusion #ReturnToForever #ChickCorea #AlDiMeola #StanleyClarke #LennyWhite
George Benson performing “Breezin’” Live on the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1977
What made George Benson great as a guitarist wasn’t just his technique, it was his control over the tone, time, and intention of his playing. Then comes his touch. Benson’s right hand is one of the most refined in jazz guitar history. He could generate warmth, clarity, and swing without force, letting the note bloom rather than attack. His lines never sound rushed or crowded; they sit perfectly inside the groove. That sense of time is relaxed but precise and this is what allowed him to move so fluidly between hard bop, soul jazz, and later pop without ever losing credibility.
Second, his bebop vocabulary. Benson came up absorbing Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery, and the language of post-bop jazz. His single-note lines are harmonically sophisticated but melodically clear. Even at high speed, you can hear the sentence, not just the notes. He improvises like a horn player, shaping phrases with breath, space, and punctuation. Then there’s his octave work, which is often compared to Wes Montgomery but unmistakably his own. Benson used octaves not as a gimmick, but as a way to make complex ideas sound physical and vocal. They added weight without heaviness, clarity without simplification.
Finally, his ability to cross worlds without dilution. Benson didn’t abandon jazz when he embraced R&B and pop, he smuggled jazz inside it. His solos on radio hits are still harmonically rich, rhythmically sharp, and unmistakably him. That’s rare.George Benson’s greatness lies in this balance: virtuosity without excess, soul without sentimentality, and sophistication that never forgets the listener. He made the guitar sing not by forcing it, but by understanding exactly when to let it speak.
#Music #GeorgeBenson
Jaco Pastorius performing “A Portrait of Tracy” Live during Weather Reports performance in Germany in ’78
Jaco Pastorius didn’t “elevate” the electric bass he detonated every limitation the instrument had, then rebuilt it in his own image. Before him, the bass was support. After him, it became language, melody, rhythm, harmony, personality, and lead voice. His genius wasn’t a matter of technique alone, though he had more of it than anyone alive; it was the conviction that the bass could tell a story just as boldly as any horn, piano, or guitar.
What made Jaco so extraordinary was the honesty in his playing. Everything came from the core. Especially that fingerprint-fretless tone, the emotional phrasing, the fearlessness of stepping forward when tradition told him to stay in the background. He pulled notes like he was bending light. The harmonics on “Portrait of Tracy,” the explosive groove on “Come On, Come Over,” the rhythmic genius in his work with Weather Report. Absolutely none of it sounds dated because none of it was chasing a trend. Jaco played the way dancers move, the way poets breathe, the way storms build.
#Music #JacoPastorius
Herbie Hancock performing “Chameleon” Live on the 21st of Feb, 1975 on the Midnight Special
Head Hunters became a huge crossover hit thanks to its marriage of traditional jazz and the funk sounds of James Brown, and Sly Stone. Uncut magazine asked Herbie Hancock what inspired Head Hunters’ mix of the two genres? He replied; “Two things. One was my own background living in Chicago, which is a blues town. When I was a kid, even though my parents would play classical music on the radio, they also played jazz records, and of course I heard R&B records, which were a part of my generation at that time growing up in the ‘40s. So that was my roots.”
#Music #JazzFusion #HerbieHancockHerbie Hancock performing “Chameleon” Live on the 21st of Feb, 1975 on the Midnight Special
Head Hunters became a huge crossover hit thanks to its marriage of traditional jazz and the funk sounds of James Brown, and Sly Stone. Uncut magazine asked Herbie Hancock what inspired Head Hunters’ mix of the two genres? He replied; “Two things. One was my own background living in Chicago, which is a blues town. When I was a kid, even though my parents would play classical music on the radio, they also played jazz records, and of course I heard R&B records, which were a part of my generation at that time growing up in the ‘40s. So that was my roots.”
#Music #JazzFusion #HerbieHancock
Sony Rollins // “It’s not about your music. It’s about what makes your music your music. You’ve got to have a feeling like that. You have to have a reason for your music. Have something besides the technical. Make it for something. Make it for kindness, make it for peace, whatever it is. You know what I mean?”
#Music #Jazz #SonyRollins
Dizzy Gillespie performing “Tin Tin Deo” Live
“The whole essence of a Gillespie solo was cliff-hanging suspense: the phrases and the angle of the approach were perpetually varied, breakneck runs were followed by pauses, by huge interval leaps, by long, immensely high notes, by slurs and smears and bluesy phrases; he always took listeners by surprise, always shocking them with a new thought. His lightning reflexes and superb ear meant his instrumental execution matched his thoughts in its power and speed. And he was concerned at all times with swing—even taking the most daring liberties with pulse or beat, his phrases never failed to swing. Gillespie's magnificent sense of time and emotional intensity of his playing came from childhood roots. His parents were Methodists, but as a boy he used to sneak off every Sunday to the uninhibited Sanctified Church. He said later, "The Sanctified Church had deep significance for me musically. I first learned the significance of rhythm there and all about how music can transport people spiritually."
The Rough Guide to Jazz describing Dizzy’s sound as a Jazz Trumpeter
#Music #Jazz #DizzyGillespie
