Tune in for our forthcoming installment of All This Jazz, beginning at 10pm on Saturday the 23rd, right here on Public Radio 89.5-1. We'll also offer, as ever, a re-broadcast of ATJ on Sunday the 24th (at 7pm) on Jazz 89.5-2, which is Public Radio Tulsa's all-jazz HD Radio channel.
Each week, our program delivers modern jazz, both recent and classic, right up 'til midnight --- and in the second half of the show, again as ever, we offer a "theme" for our proceedings.
This time out --- with many of us looking forward not just to Thanksgiving but to the extended "holiday weekend" following it --- our theme will be Extended Works. We'll thus hear, among other great mega-tunes, a lengthy take by Dexter Godon --- live at the Village Vanguard in 1976, with Woody Shaw in the front line --- on "Gingerbread Boy," the Jimmy Heath standard, as well as a wonderfully engaging and meditative Blue Note track called "Search for the New Land" by Lee Morgan.
Also, in the first hour of our program, as both the nation and the world reflect on the life and legacy of John F. Kennedy --- half a century after that president's assassination in Dallas --- we'll hear music from a special, short-lived jazz combo that was active in and around Washington, DC, in the early 1960s: The JFK Quintet. This group's first album --- they only made two, as I understand --- was made in 1961 for the Riverside label. It's titled "New Jazz Frontiers From Washington," and it was re-issued by Concord / Original Jazz Classics in 1999. This write-up of that album comes from the Concord Music Group website: "The young men who comprised The JFK Quintet were looking for greater freedom of expression while never forgetting the elemental black music of their Southern upbringings. The result was a blues-inflected music under the spell of developments put forward by Ornette Coleman and by Miles Davis and Bill Evans in the Davis band that included John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley. It was Adderley who discovered the band in Washington, DC, and brought them to public attention by way of this recording. Saxophonist Andrew White went on to become one of the primary chroniclers and transcribers of Coltrane's work. Trumpeter Ray Codrington later recorded with Eddie Harris. Walter Booker, Jr., became Adderley's bassist. Inspired by President John F. Kennedy's concern with new ideas and new policies, they incorporated his initials into the name of their group."
New ideas, new music, and new favorites --- it's all on the agenda for the next All This Jazz.
