He will always be the Quiet Beatle. George Harrison stood still in the background of the Fab Four, perhaps the most musically talented, and likely the deepest and  most spiritual of the band. Today is the eighth anniversary of his death in 2001 from lung cancer, and Podcast 171 is dedicated to his memory.

Considered one of the greatest guitarists of the rock era, Harrison also carved out places in musical history for himself as one of the first Western musicians to play the sitar, and subsequently one of the first to bring world music into rock. He was the first great rock philanthropist, inventing the rock charity concert in 1971 with a benefit for Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden. Diversifying from music, he moved into film production and was instrumental in supporting Terry Gilliam’s film career, both within and without Monty Python. Jazz musicians have been drawn to both the melodic and spiritual nature of Harrison’s work, so click here to listen to:

Nina Simone – “My Sweet Lord/Today is a Killer” from Emergency Ward!  The great singer performed a medley of Harrison’s biggest solo hit, pairing it with a David Nelson poem. Nina was one of the most underrated interpreters of songs from the rock canon, recording masterful versions of songs by Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Harrison and the Bee Gees.

Joel Harrison – “Within You Without You” from Harrison on Harrison. No relation, but the jazz guitarist does have a great sense of George’s music in his improvisation. Here the Sgt. Pepper number gets a modal interpretation, courtesy of Harrison on guitars and voice; David Liebman on saxophone; David Binney on alto saxophone; Uri Caine on piano; Stephan Crump on bass; Dan Weiss on drums and Todd Isleron percussion.

Frank Sinatra – “Something” from Trilogy: Past, Present and Future. The second most covered Beatles song (after “Yesterday”), attracted a great singer like Sinatra, who called it "the greatest love song ever written" and made it a staple of his live shows.

BeatleJazz - “All Things Must Pass” from All You Need. The title track from Harrison’s three lp solo album that stands, along with John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band, as the finest work by an ex-Beatle. The group is Brian Melvin on drums/percussion and David Kikoski on piano. The album added guest spots by Toots Thielemans, Joe Lovano, Richard Bona and Larry Grenadier.

Monty Alexander – title track from Here Comes the Sun. Alexander has a flair for interpreting music from the likes of Bob Marley, and this quartet version of the Beatles classic shows he has a great sense of rhythm and timing. Alexander plays piano, Eugene Wright is on bass, Duffy Jackson plays drums and Montego Joe is on conga drums.

My friend Mary Lou sent me this link, which must be shared with all:

A pair of Johns Hopkins and government scientists have discovered that when jazz musicians improvise, their brains turn off areas linked to self-censoring and inhibition, and turn on those that let self-expression flow.

The joint research, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, and musician volunteers from the Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute, sheds light on the creative improvisation that artists and non-artists use in everyday life, the investigators say.

It appears, they conclude, that jazz musicians create their unique improvised riffs by turning off inhibition and turning up creativity.

The scientists from the University’s School of Medicine and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communications Disorders describe their curiosity about the possible neurological underpinnings of  the almost trance-like state jazz artists enter during spontaneous improvisation.

“When jazz musicians improvise, they often play with eyes closed in a distinctive, personal style that transcends traditional rules of melody and rhythm,” says Charles J. Limb, M.D., assistant professor in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a trained jazz saxophonist himself. “It’s a remarkable frame of mind,” he adds, “during which, all of a sudden, the musician is generating music that has never been heard, thought, practiced or played before. What comes out is completely spontaneous.”

Though many recent studies have focused on understanding what parts of a person’s brain are active when listening to music, Limb says few have delved into brain activity while music is being spontaneously composed.

Read the full article at Science Daily.

We all have much to be thankful for today, and so let us begin the day by sharing the sentiment of this song, written by Irving Berlin and sung by Erin Bode, the Official Song of Thanksgiving Day:

When I'm worried and I can't sleep
I count my blessings instead of sheep
And I fall asleep counting my blessings
When my bankroll is getting small
I think of when I had none at all
And I fall asleep counting my blessings

I think about a nursery and I picture curly heads
And one by one I count them as they slumber in their beds
If you're worried and you can't sleep
Just count your blessings instead of sheep
And you'll fall asleep counting your blessings

I think about a nursery and I picture curly heads
And one by one I count them as they slumber in their beds
If you're worried and you can't sleep
Just count your blessings instead of sheep
And you'll fall asleep counting your blessings

Twenty-four hours to go before the big Thanksgiving feast! What would go better with some turkey than some "Giblet Gravy" courtesy of George Benson.

Those who only know Benson from his smooth jazz or Top 40 recordings don't realize that he was one of the funkiest and fastest guitar slingers in his early days. Here he plays with a team of top notch musicians in 1968 sessions, including Herbie Hancock (piano), Ron Certer (bass), Pepper Adams (sax) and Billy Cobham (drums). It's worth noting that three of the four - and Benson as well - are all Miles Davis Alumni.

Click here for a tune well suited to those last minute preparations around the ktichen. Cue it up and let the gravy fly!

I've blogged about the unique singer-songwriter Jacqui Naylor before, and this weekend I had the pleasure to speak with her in anticipation of her three night run at the Blue Note in New York with her trio.

One of the most versatile performers in jazz today, Ms. Naylor's set is as likely to include reimaginings of R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" as it is to have Gershwin tunes. And best of all, she and her trio have found a qay to capture the esence of the Great American Songbook with the groove of Classic Rock with something she calls "acoustic smashing". This takes the lyrics of a classic jazz song - say "Summertime" - and plays it out against the music of a classic rock song - in this case, "Whipping Post".

Interested? Click here and listen to the interview, which includes musical selections including:

 "My Funny Valentine" from You Don't Know Jacq. This is not your father's version of the jazz standard. Instead, a violin lead-in takes us to the groove from AC/DC's "Back in Black", while Jacqui croons the familar Rodgers-Hart melody.

"Summertime" from You Don't Know Jacq. As Jaqui points out in the interview, it's the Gershwin Brothers meet the Allman Brothers. And it works!

"Celebrate Early and Often" from You Don't Know Jacq. A Naylor-Art Khu original, which premiered when the singer and her pianist wed two years ago.

"Santa Claus is Coming to Town" from Smashed for the Holidays. After a few egg nogs, cue up Jacqui's version of this holiday classic set to the music of "Sweet Home Alabama". The party won't stop dancing.

Jacqui Naylor and her trio  play the Blue Note at 131 W 3rd Street  New York, New York November 24th-26th at 8pm and 10:30pm. Tickets: $15 Bar / $25 Table. Visit www.bluenote.net or call 212.475.8592.

Miles Davis was working with a large ensemble under the direction of Gil Evans as 1959 came to an end. Captivated by the machismo of bullfighting and charmed by Spanish music, Davis planned an album with Evans that would capture the spirit of that country.

Two weeks earlier, they had made an attempt to record Miles’ version of Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo’s classical piece for guitar and orchestra, “Concerto De Aranjuez”. Dissatisfied with the results, they adjourned and returned five days later. Davis was playing trumpet and flugelhorn, and among the nineteen musicians in the group were Davis regulars Paul Chambers (bass) and Jimmy Cobb (drums). Elvin Jones, who would go on to fame working with Miles’ sax player John Coltrane, played percussion.

Podcast 167 features the result of that session, as well as some background and resulting interpretations of the song. How significant is the recording? Read what Maria Schneider, no slouch as an arranger and conductor, wrote:

This is arguably the finest of Gil's and Miles' collaborations. There are countless details one could highlight, but I would like to touch on ... (one) particular point about this piece. It will be more deeply appreciated if you first take the opportunity to listen to the original guitar concerto as composed by Rodrigo. A comparison will illuminate Gil's unique gifts in writing all parts in a linear fashion. It's most notable that he manages to do this even in the bass line. The bass is never just relegated to playing roots, but rather lines—rich melodic lines. If you listen to the tuba line in the beginning, you'll catch one of these lines right from the start. And if you listen to the bottom parts throughout this work, you'll see that part of the translucence that Gil generally gets in his music is from freeing up the bottom and putting air in these low parts. Such attention to line-writing permeates every layer and can be heard throughout this piece.

Click here to follow along as Ms. Schneider suggests, and listen to:

John Williams –  "Concerto De Aranjuez" Beginning with one of the great classical guitarists of our time, here is a stripped down version of Rodrigo’s classic composition.

Miles Davis – "Concierto De Aranjuez (adagio)"   from Sketches of Spain. It is the adagio section that is the most familar, so Miles concentrated on that section in his reinterpretation. A masterpiece of nuance, and subtlety.

Jim Hall  -  from Concierto. An all-star band does their interpretation of the piece - Jim Hall (Guitar), Chet Baker (trumpet), Paul Desmond (sax), Sir Roland Hanna (Piano), Ron Carter (bass) and Steven Gadd (drums). Arranged for the album by Don Sebensky 

Chick Corea & Gonzalo Rubacala – “Concerto De Aranjuez/Spain” from Rendezvous in New York. Chick Corea, a Davis alumnus, wrote this composition as a variation on the Concerto. It begins with the adagio, and after the intro, the song switches to a fast, steady samba-like rhythm, in which the main theme and an improvisation part are repeated.Corea never goes too far a field, using a chord progression during the improvisation based on the harmonic progressions in Rodrigo's concerto. Originally written for Return to Forever, here it's played as an acoustic piano duet.

How’s this for a swinging session? Fifty years ago today, Dizzy Reece (trumpet) Hank Mobley (tenor sax) Wynton Kelly (piano) Paul Chambers (bass) and Art Taylor (drums) cut six tracks at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in New Jersey that would make up the album Star Bright.  All of the players were band leaders in their own right, and Chambers and Kelly had played instrumental roles (pardon the pun) on Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue earlier in the year. Click here to listen to the 22^nd take of the day, the aptly titled Reece composition called “Groovesville”.

Born in Jamaica in 1931, Reece spent much of the Fifties in Europe, recording with English musicians and never really getting much buzz in the States. He moved to New York in 1959, fresh from playing with Donald Byrd and cut the first of four well-received albums for Blue Note. A true hard bop trumpeter, he never became as well-known as peers like Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan, and recorded few sessions as a bandleader after 1962. Check out the terrific Mosaic Select collection of Reece’s Blue Note recordings to get a feel for how talented he really was.

I couldn’t let the 40^th anniversary of “Sesame Street” go by without dropping in a list of famous jazz musicans who have swung through the block during the venerable show’s time on PBS:

Ray Barretto: Appeared in the mid-‘70s to explain Latin rhythm.
Tony Bennett: Taped an appearance in '95 singing a remake of "Little Things" with Lexine.
George Benson: Made several appearances in the early ‘80s, performing "A Friend for All Seasons" (with Olivia), "The Greatest Love of All" and "The Alphabet Song."
Cab Calloway: Appeared in several clips that debuted in '81 including "Hi-De-Ho Man" with the Two Headed Monster and “I Want to Count" with The Count.
Herbie Hancock: Made an appearance in the ‘80s in which Maria and the kids visit him in the studio. The segment closes with a rendition of the "Sesame Street Theme" as played by Hancock.
Diana Krall: Performed "Everybody's Song" with Elmo and a group of Muppets in '01.
Branford Marsalis: Appeared in the role of Forrest Wimbledon, a jazz musician who plays at Birdland with Hoots the Owl.
Wynton Marsalis: Appeared multiple times in the ‘80s. In one segment, Hoots gets into a musician's duel with Marsalis; in another, Marsalis performs at Birdland with Duck Ellington and the Sesame Street All-Animal Jazz Ensemble
Tito Puente: Guest starred in ’93 in multiple segments, including one in which his dance music eventually wins over Oscar the Grouch. Years later, he was parodied as Tito, the world's greatest timbale-playing bat.
Diane Schuur: Appeared in '96 singing “From Your Head" with Elmo.

One of the greatest jazz appearances – a Buddy Rich versus Animal drum duel – did not appear on “Sesame Street”, but on “The Muppet Show”, making it ineligible for inclusion.

For me, the best musical moment came when Hoots the Owl schooled Ernie on what it takes to play the saxophone. Click here and enjoy the video of “Put Down the Duckie”. How many celebrities can YOU name making cameos in the clip?

Old friend (and bass master) David Chevan dropped me an email this week to remind me of another major project making its premiere this weekend:

This coming Saturday and Monday, The Afro-Semitic Experience
will be premiering our new work, "The Road That Heals the Splintered Soul" in Hartford and Kalamazoo.  This extended work was composed by the group over the past year and a half.  We have been rehearsing, revising and getting things ready and we are very excited about these two  premieres.  I think this is some of the most energetic, melodic, fun, and simultaneously spiritual and contemplative music we have ever created—but I leave that for you to judge.  I do know that the process has made us tighter as a band—musically and spiritually. 

As a bonus for his friends and fans, David has given us an mp3 of a track not included on the CD, which can now be ordered from Amazon. Click here to listen to "Heaven's Gate", and prepare for another exciting and moving release from an unjustly underrated band.

In case you haven't read the New York Times story today, Wolfgang's Vault, the wonderful online resource for concerts recorded during or by Bill Graham's staff and consultants, has begun streaming music from the 1959 Newport Jazz Festival. Performances available so far include sets by Count Basie, singer Dakota Staton and Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, featuring Lee Morgan.

More is to come soon, as are famous performances like Miles Davis' legendary set at Tanglewood in 1970 when he shared a bill with Santana.

Visit early and often to listen to these unearthed gems.

Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers were in a state of flux in late 1959. Bobby Timoons, the piano player who wrote the iconic "Moanin'" for their 1958 release had left the band to go on the road with Cannonball Adderly. Benny Golson was also gone, after having contributed "Along Came Betty" to the Moanin' album. Replacing him was the 25 year old Wayne Shorter, who had been making a name for himself in Maynard Fergusons band.

Blakey brought Shorter, trumpeters Lee Morgan and Dizzy Reece and bassist Jymie Merritt to Rudy Van Gelder Studio, in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, fifty years ago today. Behind the ivories was Walter David, Jr. who was fresh from a truimph in Donald Byrd's group in a series of shows in France.

Davis stayed only briefly with the Jazz Messengers, replaced by Timmons and Cedar Walton through the mid-sixties glory days of the band. Davis woudl retire briefly during this time to work as a tailor, before returning for a series of albums with Sonny Rollins in the 1970's.

Click here to listen to the title track of the album, "Africaine". That's Reece playing congas on the track, working clsoely with the indominatble Blakey as a pair of percussionists.

Since his debut in the late 1980’s, Kurt Rosenwinkel has emerged as one of the finest jazz composers and soloists of the day. Rosenwinkel’s recorded music has gone from standards and bop-influenced stylings to eletronica touched with hip-hop influences over his almost fifteen year career as a leader. His latest release finds him returning to classic tunes in a trio setting for the first time in a decade.

Born in Philadelphia, Rosenwinkel dropped out of Berklee in 1990 to join vibraphonist Gary Burton’s band, following in the footsteps of guitar gods like Larry Coryell, Pat Metheny and John Scofield. Tenure as a sideman for drummer Paul Motian allowed him to further develop his unique guitar style, which merges a sustained, legato sound with a full, deep tone.

It was his time playing at Small’s, a Greenwich Village nightclub that was a veritable incubator for jazz talent in the 1990’s that propelled him to a greater following. There Rosenwinkel played (and later recorded) with artists who are now recognized as the very best at their craft, including pianist Brad Mehldau, drummers Brian Blade and Jorge Rossy, saxophonist Joshua Redman, organists Sam Yahel and Larry Goldings, bassists Larry Grenadier and Avishai Cohen, and especially saxophonist Mark Turner, with whom he has had a long collaborative relationship.

Joining Rosenwinkel on tour for hte album will be Eric Revis (Branford Marsalis, Joey Calderazzo)  on bass and Rodney Green (Diana Krall, Greg Osby) on drums. Revis and drummer Eric Harland recorded Kurt Rosenwinkel Standards Trio Vol. 1: Reflections with him in New York over three days in June. That album, overdue at this point, will be mostly classic ballads like “You Go to My Head” and “More Than You’ll Know” and compositions by jazz legends like Thelonious Monk.

Reflections will appear on the wommusic imprint, an extension of the partnership between Rosenwinkel and his manager, Anders Chan-Tidemann. Rosenwinkel has explored a number of innovative ways to get his recorded music to the public. Selling primarily through digital portals like his website, iTunes and eMusic, he emphasizes forging direct relationships with his fans. This process began successfully last year when his critically acclaimed double live CD “The Remedy” was released on the innovative Artistshare.   He has also recorded as a leader for traditional jazz labels like Criss Cross and Verve.

Rosenwinkel left New York behind in 2003 to serve as a professor at the Jazz Instute Berlin. He now lives in Switzerland with his wife and small child. His stated musical influences include Keith Jarrett’s “American Quartet” with Dewey Redman, Miles Davis’ Second Quintet with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, and Ornette Coleman’s 1962 Trio. Interestingly, none of these groups had guitar players.

It’s Hallowe’en again, and so it must be time for the annual Straight No Chaser Spooky Song Showcase. Podcast 166 features a scary cross section of sinister titles, so click here to enjoy: 

Eldar – “The Exorcist” from Virtue. Hopefully you listened to my interview with this 22 year old piano wizard, who announces himself as a major composer and performer with this new album. 

Dom Minasi – “Just One More Bite” from The Vampire’s Revenge. This 2006 release was inspired by Ann Rice’s “Interview With the Vampire” novel. Guitarist Minasi writes with wit and just a touch of mayhem on this tune.  Steve Swell, Herb Robertson and John Gunther stand out on the track, as do Carol Mennie’s wordless vocals.

Wayne Shorter – “Witch Hunt” from Speak No Evil. The penultimate Blue Note session – Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, Ron Carter and Elvin Jones. So good it’s scary. 

Miles Davis – “Prince of Darkness” from Sorcerer. Miles second great quintet recorded this Wayne Shorter tune in New York in 1967 - Davis on trumpet, Shorter on tenor, Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, and Tony Williams on drums. The title is a reference to Miles himself, and became a nickname of sorts for the notoriously moody artist.