Charlie Rouse (April 6, 1924 – November 30, 1988) was an American hard bop tenor saxophonist and flautist. 

Charlie Rouse was in Thelonious Monk’s Quartet for over a decade (1959-1970) and, although somewhat taken for granted, was an important ingredient in Monk’s music. Rouse was always a modern player and he worked with Billy Eckstine’s orchestra (1944) and the first Dizzy Gillespie ig band (1945), making his recording debut with Tadd Dameron in 1947. Rouse popped up in a lot of important groups including Duke Ellington’s Orchestra (1949-1950), Count Basie’s octet (1950), on sessions with Clifford Brown in 1953, and with Oscar Pettiford’s sextet (1955). He co-led the Jazz Modes with Julius Watkins (1956-1959), and then joined Monk for a decade of extensive touring and recordings. In the 1970s he recorded a few albums as a leader, and in 1979 he became a member of Sphere. Charlie Rouse’s unique sound began to finally get some recognition during the 1980s. He participated on Carmen McRae’s classic Carmen Sings Monk album and his last recording was at a Monk tribute concert.

~ Scott Yanow, All Music Guide

Read the rest of this entry »

Bobby Few

Bobby Few was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in a family of musicians: his father always listened to jazz, his mother played violin and his uncle the trumpet.

He came from a very religious family (his grand father was a Baptist minister) which, without a shadow of a doubt, nourished his music spiritually.

Bobby Few was only 7 when he studied piano and later musical theory and composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He had two private teachers of splendid reputation.

At 16, he started playing in jazz clubs in Cleveland, his hometown.

One evening, he met Ella Fitzgerald who was so touched by his tender age that she encouraged him to pursue his path.

Soon after, Bobby Few created his own trio and played throughout the USA.

In the early 60’s, urged by Albert Ayler, Bobby Few went to New York. There, he made a first record with Booker Ervin “The In Between” (BLUE NOTE) then a second one with Albert Ayler intitled “Music Is The Healing Force of the Universe” (IMPULSE), both recently reedited.

He also played with Brook Benton, a rhythm and blues singer, with whom he toured the world. Later, Bobby Few became Benton’s musical director. Moreover, he played in the 60’s at the Playboy club where they had a marvellous experience.

Then, concert after concert, Bobby Few worked with many prestigious artists such as Archie Shepp, Kenny Clarke, Frank Wright, Joe Henderson, Woody Shaw, Sunny Murray, Roland Kirk, Nat Adderley, Frank Foster, David Murray, Bill Dixon, Albert Ayler or Steve Lacy with whom he toured the world from 1980 until 1992.

During his rich and fruitful career, Bobby Few also took part in more than 70 recordings: the latest untitled “Kindred Spirits”, produced by Box Holder Records (New York), will be released in April 2005.

Bobby Few has lived in Paris since 1969, a town where he found his artistic and intellectual equilibrium. Since 1993, he has directed his own trio and quintet.

His musical influences are deeply rooted in jazz with musicians such as Erroll Garner, Thelonious Monk, McCoy Tyner or Cecil Taylor… However classical music has also played an influential role. Few says: “Classical music is one of the avenues leading to jazz because it gives a direction in the harmonic progressions of jazz.”

Thus, Bobby Few’s music is therefore the fruit of his numerous musical experiences. He is motivated by eclecticism, new sounds and new musical colours. He has succeeded in making us understand that music is universal. Thanks to his music, he sends us a message of peace, altruism and spirituality: he unites all peoples, whatever their colour, culture or origin.

Jazzed in Cleveland – Pianist Bobby Few

Story filed January 28, 2004

He was one of Cleveland’s leading jazz pianists in the 1950s and ‘60s, and later, Bobby Few became one of the most respected and busiest pianists in Europe. After moving to Paris in the late 1960s, Few has performed on more than 50 jazz albums.

via Jazzed in Cleveland – Part 82 – Pianist Bobby Few.

Soul jazz was a development of hard bop which incorporated strong influences from blues, gospel and rhythm and blues in music for small groups, often the organ trio which featured the Hammond organ. Important soul jazz organists included Bill Doggett, Charles Earland, Richard “Groove” Holmes, Les McCann, “Brother” Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff, Lonnie Smith, Big John Patton, Don Patterson, Shirley Scott, Hank Marr, Reuben Wilson, Jimmy Smith and Johnny Hammond Smith.

Tenor saxophone and guitar were also important in soul jazz; soul jazz tenors include Gene Ammons, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Eddie Harris, Houston Person, and Stanley Turrentine; guitarists include Grant Green and George Benson. Other important contributors were Alto saxophonists Lou Donaldson and Hank Crawford, trumpeter Blue Mitchell, and drummer Idris Muhammed (ne Leo Morris). Unlike hard bop, soul jazz generally emphasized repetitive grooves, melodies, and melodic hooks.

Soul jazz was developed in the late 1950s, reaching public awareness with the release of The Cannonball Adderley Quintet in San Francisco, and was perhaps most popular in the mid-to-late 1960s, though many soul jazz performers, and elements of the music, remain popular. Although the term “soul jazz” contains the word “soul,” soul jazz is only a distant cousin to soul music, in that soul developed from gospel and R&B rather than from jazz.

Some well-known soul jazz recordings are Lee Morgan’s The Sidewinder (1963), Herbie Hancock’s Cantaloupe Island (1964) (which was popularized further when sampled by US3 on Cantaloop), Horace Silver’s Song for My Father (1964) (which was musically alluded to by Steely Dan with Rikki Don’t Lose That Number), Ramsey Lewis’sThe In Crowd (1965), and Cannonball Adderley’s Mercy, Mercy, Mercy (1966) (also popularized further when covered as a top 40 pop song by The Buckinghams).

The Soul Jazz vernacular was a major contributer to the evolution of Jazz-Funk in the 1970s.

Eddie Harris (b. Chicago, 1934 – 1996) was best known for playing tenor saxophone, though he was also fluent on the electric piano and organ. His most well-known composition was “Freedom Jazz Dance”, recorded and popularized by Miles Davis in the 1960s.

After college he was drafted into the United States Army. While serving in Europe he was accepted into the 7th Army Band, which also included Don Ellis, Leo Wright, and Cedar Walton.

After getting out of the army he worked in New York City before returning to Chicago, where he signed a contract with Vee Jay Records. His first album for Vee Jay, Exodus to Jazz included his own jazz arrangement of Ernest Gold’s theme from the movie Exodus. A shortened version of this track, which featured his masterful playing in the upper register of the tenor saxophone, was heavily played on radio and became the first jazz record ever to be certified gold.
Many jazz critics, however, regarded commercial success as a sign that a jazz artist had sold out, and Harris soon stopped playing “Exodus” in concert. He moved to Columbia Records in 1964 and to Atlantic Records in 1965. At Atlantic in 1965 he released The In Sound, a bop album which won back many of his detractors.

Over the next few years he began to perform on electric piano and the electric Varitone saxophone, and to perform a mixture of jazz and funk which sold well in both the jazz and rhythm and blues markets. In 1967 his album The Electrifying Eddie Harris reached second place on the R & B charts.
In 1969 he performed with Les McCann’s group at the Montreux Jazz Festival. Although they had been unable to rehearse, their session was so impressive that a recording of it was released as Swiss Movement, which became one of the best-selling jazz albums ever, also reaching second place on the R & B charts.
Harris also came up with the idea of the reed trumpet, playing one for the first time at The Newport Jazz Festival of 1970 to mostly negative critical feedback. From 1970 to 1975 he experimented with new instruments of his own invention (the reed trumpet was a trumpet with a saxophone mouthpiece, the saxobone was a saxophone with a trombone mouthpiece, and the guitorgan was a combination of guitar and organ), with singing the blues, with jazz-rock (he recorded an album with Steve Winwood, Jeff Beck, Albert Lee, Ric Grech, Zoot Money, and other rockers), and with comic R & B numbers such as “That is Why You’re Overweight.”

In 1975, however, he alienated much of his audience with his album The Reason Why I’m Talkin’ Shit, which consisted mainly of stand-up comedy, and public interest in his subsequent albums declined sharply. He continued to record into the 1990s, but his experimentation ended and he mainly recorded hard bop.

Discography

• Exodus to Jazz, 1961 VEE JAY Records
• Swiss Movement; 1969 (CD 1996); with Les McCann
• Come on Down, 1970 Atlantic Recordings
• Instant Death,1971
• In the UK.“ / Is It In; 1973 (CD 1999); with Albert Lee, Jeff Beck, Steve Winwood, Chris Squire, Alan White, Tony Kaye, Rufus Reid, Ronald Muldrow
• I Need Some Money; 1975; with Ronald Muldrow
• Bad Luck Is All I Have, 1975 Atlantic Recordings
• That is why you’re overweight, 1976 Atlantic Recordings
• How can you live like that; 1977
• I’m Tired of Driving; 1978
• The Real Electrifying, 1982 Mutt & JeffRecording Corp.
• People Get Funny, 1987 Timeless Records
• Live in Berlin, 1989 Timeless Records
• Live at the Moonwalker, 1990 Moonwalker Label (Suisa)
• Listen Here; 1993
• The Battle of the Tenors; 1994, with Wendell Harrison
• The Last Concert; CD 1997; with WDR Big Band