Word: jazzing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Widely known as a towering figure in pro basketball and a devout convert to the Islamic faith, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is less famous as an amateur musician. The son of a trombonist, the 7-ft. 2-in. Milwaukee Bucks center is a longtime jazz devotee who plays the piano, drums and reeds for relaxation...
When the Modern Jazz Quartet was formed in 1952, it was a musical revelation. Bop, with its honks and squawks and dissonances, was at the height of its popularity. Dizzy Gillespie was king...
With the passage of time, the quartet -Pianist John Lewis, Bassist Percy Heath, Drummer Connie Kay and Vibraharpist Milt Jackson-became a phenomenon of a different sort. It stayed together for 22 years, longer than any other jazz ensemble. Last week, during an emotional yet curiously subdued evening at Manhattan's Avery Fisher Hall, the group confirmed that it was disbanding and gave a final concert...
...Lewis and Jackson announced titles, Lewis losing his professorial calm and struggling visibly to control his voice, the program moved from MJQ interpretations of jazz standards and blues adaptations of Bach through its own classics-The Golden Striker, The Legendary Profile, Bags' Groove. An expanse of heads nodded rhythmically until a galloping accelerando brought the audience to their feet. The cliche goes that MJQ is a hybrid of jazz and chamber music. Indeed, in their dark business suits, the men looked too sensible to be jazz players. The crowd cheered, not because of virtuosity or precocity, but because...
...Lucius Beebe and a chuff of Cervantes thrown in. Frimbo-the "world's greatest railroad buff'-is the brain child of Rogers E.M. Whitaker, who has himself bumpety-thumped across 2,334,000 miles of rails from Moscow, Russia to Moscow, Ill. By inventing Frimbo-lexicographer, gourmet, jazz fan, connoisseur of contessas and, of course, compulsive investigator of trains-Whitaker has transmuted what might have been a soda-water sermon on the glory and decline of the trains into a Jules Vernean adventure that takes him from the Casbah to the Caspian Sea, Buffalo to Kyoto...