Soul jazz stood out from other previous jazz forms. Its melodies were simpler and more rhythmic compared to hard bop, and influences from gospel and R&B were evident. In more traditional jazz forms, soloists would follow walking basslines or metric cymbal rhythms. In soul jazz, they followed a whole groove, which encouraged a different style of phrasing. Soul jazz, also known as jazz-funk, can be traced back as far as the ...
‘Fusion’ can be applied to any music that blends two or more different styles, though it is normally used to describe the electronic jazz rock movement that emerged in the late 1960s. Some of the musicians expanded the boundaries of both jazz and rock, while others focused on producing sophisticated, but shallow, ‘background’ music. Although fusion records have never sold in huge quantities, the style has remained popular within the musical ...
Acid jazz is a lively, groove-oriented music style that combines elements from jazz, funk and hip hop, with an emphasis on jazz dance. The term ‘acid jazz’ was first used during the late 1980s, both as the name of an American record label and the title of a British jazz funk, ‘rare groove’ compilation series. Interest had originally been sparked by a thriving London club scene, where hip DJs were playing ...
Slick, ‘radio-friendly’ smooth jazz emerged in the 1970s, and it has continued to evolve ever since. The most artful examples can make for rewarding listening, while blander compositions can be recognized by any combination of musical clichés: light funk grooves, jazz chords, slapped bass lines, corny horn accompaniments and pedicitable solos. The style has drawn fierce criticism from jazz purists, but its unobtrusiveness has often made it popular with restaurants, wine ...
In our heads we can all imagine a noise called punk rock. It’s nasty, brutish and short. It’s played on cheap guitars at high speed. In fact it’s possibly played on cheap speed. The songs are basic to the point of wilful stupidity. If they have any message, it will probably be negative. The general effect will not be pretty or romantic. It might even be downright ugly. And yet this ...
Latin jazz is commonly defined as the fusion of American jazz melodies, improvisation and chords with Latin American rhythms, predominantly those of Afro-Cuban origin. How this marriage of styles occurred is also one of the most significant cultural musical exchanges in history. Mention the birth of Latin jazz to any aficionado of the art form and they will invariably reply with two names: Machito and Mario Bauzá. The former was born Francisco ...
The roots of punk lie in rock’n’roll, itself a rebellious spin-off from rhythm and blues. ‘Louie Louie’, written by Richard Berry in 1955 and a US No. 2 hit for The Kingsmen in 1963, is often cited as the first punk song with its raw sound and almost indecipherable lyrics (nonetheless investigated by the FBI for obscenity). The song was covered by American garage bands like The Wailers and The ...
In the mid-1950s, a cultural cross fertilization of Brazilian samba rhythms, American cool jazz and sophisticated harmonies led to the development of bossa nova. In the early 1960s the bossa nova movement swept through the United States and Europe producing a strain of Brazilian-influenced jazz that remains a vital part of the jazz scene. By the early 1950s, a few pioneering Brazilian composers began listening seriously to American jazz, particularly the limpid-toned ...
Jazz, blues, spirituals and gospel music, were rooted in the work songs of black labourers of the South. As Chet Williamson wrote ‘These were songs and chants that kept a people moving and advancing through dreadful oppression. These are the voices of those who harvested the fields, drove the mules, launched the boats, and hammered the rails.’ Based on the compelling rhythms, sliding-pitch intonation and overlapping call-and-response traditions of West African ...
It was in the rich cotton–producing Delta stretching from Mississippi to Tennessee that black labourers working the plantations gave ferment to an earthy style of music born out of African songs, chants, spirituals and gospel tunes that had been handed down for generations. They called it the blues. The man usually recognized as the first star of Delta country blues is Charley Patton. An acoustic guitarist of impressive facility with a ...
New Orleans is widely acknowledged as the birthplace of jazz, but it also produced its own indigenous brand of blues, which borrowed from Texas and Kansas City while also making use of Cajun and Afro-Caribbean rhythm patterns. A mix of croaking and yodeling, floating over the top of the music in an independent time scheme, Professor Longhair’s singular vocals added to his idiosyncratic charm. Influenced by New Orleans barrelhouse pianists Tuts ...
Although Texas has a rich legacy of acoustic country blues artists, its primary contribution to the blues was electric. An inordinate number of dazzling electric guitarists hailed from the Lone Star state, including T-Bone Walker, Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown, Albert Collins, Freddie King and scores of hotshot six-stringers still on the scene. Often accompanied by flamboyant showmanship, the Texas electric-guitar style has always been overtly aggressive and rhythmically driving. As Billy Gibbons, ...
A rollicking, fast piano style characterized by repetitive eighth-note bass figures in the left hand, meshed with sharp, bluesy single-note runs in the right hand, boogie-woogie was an infectious form that had an immediate appeal to dancers. While the left hand remained tied to the task of covering driving bass lines in a kind of ‘automatic pilot’ approach through chord changes (repeating continuous eighth-note bass figures in each different harmony), the ...
Chicago blues is a raw, rough-and-tumble music, defined by slashing, Delta-rooted electric slide guitars, raunchy-toned harmonicas overblown into handheld microphones to the point of distortion, uptempo shuffled rummers, insistently walking bass players and declamatory, soulful vocalists who imbued the tunes with Southern gospel fervour. It became a universally recognized sound by the 1960s, fuelling the British blues movement in the early part of the decade (spearheaded by Alexis Korner, Cyril Davies, ...
Infectiously swinging, full of good humour and hugely popular for its time, the jump blues movement of the pre-and-post-Second World War years was a precursor to the birth of both R&B and rock’n’roll. Kansas City was an incubator for jump blues in the late 1930s, via the infectious, rolling rhythms of Walter Page’s Blue Devils and the Bennie Moten and Count Basie bands. But in the years following America’s involvement in ...
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David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.