Word: saxes
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Even number five is the Sunday matinee with Donald Byrd and his Blackbyrds, Grover Washington and Webster Lewis. This youth movement should be taken with a skeptical glance. Byrd simply is not that good a trumpeter; Washington does not play that good a sax. Lewis is solid...
...music stands. Microphones arched overhead on long, angled booms. It was not the usual look of the West Ham Central Mission, a turn-of-the-century Methodist church in London's East End, but it has excellent acoustics and is sometimes used for recording sessions. Concertmaster Sidney Sax gave the signal for the orchestra to tune up. Then, from a double door, the frail, stooped figure began a slow walk to the podium, his right hand gripping a sturdy cane, his left on the shoulder of an associate. Carefully, the old man settled into his tall chair...
Assisted by Garth Hudson's swinging gospel organ and the mellow sax work of Tom Scott, Robertson injects a few woodsy rockabilly harmonies. Diamond polishes the whole thing off with the lush strings and clouds of sound that he loves in If You Know What I Mean - a showy, big-band production that clearly has the ring of yet more gold...
There has been a flourishing in instrumentation too. Anything that whistles or bleats has been electrified?flute, string bass, tenor sax. There are wah-wah pedals on trombones, electronic keyboards, Moog Synthesizers, Mini Moogs, Micro-Mini Moogs, and last ?and perhaps least?the Alembic Bass with Instant Flanger.* The new machinery is just one more example of how jazz keeps expanding. Says Deejay Charlie Perkins of Boston's WBUR, "Jazz is borrowing the whole electrical thing...
Thus, older jazz musicians today no longer hesitate to participate in the evolutionary process. Zoot Sims, 50, the veteran tenor saxophonist, now straddles all styles. Benny Carter, 68, has lent the silken sounds of his alto sax to the torchy voice of thirtyish pop singer Maria Muldaur. Drummer Grady Tate, 44, pounds out extraordinary admixtures of jazz beats and shifting, rocky rhythms...