Word: jazze
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...many jazz musicians found themselves marginalized by rock and soul. Then in 1970 Miles Davis received the first gold record of his life, for Bitches Brew, a sonic eye opener that experimented with electric instruments and rock and funk rhythms--a strange, primal, remarkable album. Soon, however, a whole generation of musicians was squandering its talents on increasingly vapid (though profitable) jazz-rock hybrids that came to be called fusion. Known today as smooth jazz, or as "that crap they play when Regis and Kathie Lee go to commercial," fusion continues to thrive; it even has its own Billboard chart...
...unsmooth jazz has grown restive again. Recent months have seen a number of albums push the boundaries of the music, making thoughtful attempts at mixing jazz with contemporary pop or, even more promisingly, world music. And so on one hand you have woodwind player Don Byron cutting Nu Blaxploitation (Blue Note), an album of overtly political funk and rap; it's not an entirely felicitous concept, but what a treat to hear Byron's clarinet--the fuddy-duddy instrument of Woody Allen!--snaking in and out of dark, fertile electric grooves. On the other hand you have saxophonist David Murray...
...Jazz musicians are also beginning to grapple with the wealth of potential standards written after 1960, an off-and-on trend renewed in earnest a few years ago when vocalist Cassandra Wilson turned the Monkees' Last Train to Clarksville into a torchy, caramelized ballad nearly worthy of Billie Holiday. Herbie Hancock followed with The New Standard, an entire album of rock-era tunes in which he improvised on changes derived from the Beatles, Sade and Kurt Cobain, among others. Joshua Redman's forthcoming Timeless Tales (for Changing Times) (Warner Bros.) covers similar ground, with songs by Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder...
Another kind of agenda is advanced by Danilo Perez's Central Avenue (Impulse!), one of the fall's most passionate and enjoyable albums. Perez wants to broaden the Latin jazz palette beyond Cuba to embrace the entire hemisphere. And why stop there? In one cut, the 32-year-old pianist works in motifs from his native Panama as well as Brazil, Cuba, the Middle East (via Spain) and, thanks to the contributions of a tabla player, India. Perez sees a pendulum effect at work: after a period of retrenchment, jazz, as it often has been in the past...
This vocalist had the misfortune to come of age in the early '60s, just when male jazz singers were going out of style. Unrecorded for 22 years, Bey, now 58, issued a comeback CD, Ballads, Blues and Bey, in 1996. On this follow-up, he makes dramatic use of his four-octave range against spare but inventive arrangements of tunes from the further reaches of the great American songbook. On ballads, Bey's voice can have a humanizing tightness, a vulnerability that draws a listener in. But when the tempo quickens he can really belt it out: the New York...