Jazz On The Beach 92 & Blues Beach 28
Jazz On The Beach 92 & Blues Beach 28
Pete La Roca, blues meets rap and hip hop
On this week’s Jazz On The Beach show there are two excellent hard bop tracks featuring the great drummer Pete ‘La Roca’ Simms. The first is as sideman to alto saxophonist Jackie McLean on the deeply grooving Hip Strut from the New Soil album (Blue Note, 1959) which also featured trumpeter Donald Byrd, pianist Walter Davis Jr. and double bassist Paul Chambers.
The second is Lazy Afternoon from Basra (Blue Note, 1965), his first album as leader and featuring tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, pianist Steve Kuhn and double bassist Steve Swallow. By the late sixties La Rocca wasn’t prepared to play the new soul jazz and fusion, so with less work and a family to feed, he drove a cab, went to law school and by the early seventies had become a lawyer, eventually returning to play jazz on the side.
Also this week there’s more from the Puerto Rican tenor saxophonist Dávid Sanchez’s album Sketches of Dreams (Columbia 1995) with Bomba Blues. Speaking of return visits to the show there’s another from Raffy Bushman with Unit 31 from the pianist’s recent Silver Lines album, and a second from Glasgow based Azamiah featuring vocalist India Blue with Celesta from the In Phases album just released on DJ Rebecca Vasmant’s Rebecca Records. And always happy to grab another chance to play tenor saxophonist Ruben Fox’s wonderful So Much Joy from his digital-only album Introducing… Ruben Fox, featuring the vocalists Samara Joy, Vuyo Sotashe and Shenel Johns.
Listen to this week’s Jazz On The Beach on Mixcloud - here’s the link
On the last Blues Beach I played R.L. Burnside’s It’s Bad You Know which went down well with many of you. So this week we’re delving deeper into blues meets rap and hip hop territory with ZZ Top’s revamp of DJ DMD's 25 Lighters on I Gotsa Get Paid, Nas and his father Olu Dara on Bridging The Gap with its Muddy Waters Mannish Boy sample and G. Love’s Guitar Man featuring Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram and Alvin Youngblood Heart.
There’s also the great Joe Louis Walker’s Rain On My Mind, Johnny Winter’s I Love Everybody from his three-sided Second Winter album, Memphis guitar man Lonnie Mack with Soul Express, harmonica player James Harman with Bonetime and Lester Butler’s sensational The Red Devils’ with Automatic.
Listen to this week’s Blues Beach on Mixcloud - here’s the link
A few things you may like…
Simon Cooke was the MD of Ronnie Scott’s and epitomised what a great jazz club manager should be. These days he’s a sculptor with a studio on Eel Pie Island and his work is superb - look here
Tone Poets: When Joe Harley met Darrel Sheinman two audiophiles talking about Blue Notes from Universal’s new Everything Jazz website - read here
Here’s To Bop to Not to Be, a 1990 documentary about Dizzy Gillespie by Jan Horne
And finally….it’s always nice to come first in any chart even though Mixcloud’s Hard Bop chart is admittedly one of their lesser genres. But hey, who cares, we’re still hard boppin’ and proud of it!
Radio Times
Broadcasting live from Deal Radio, 69a High Street, Deal, Kent CT14 6EH
Listen live to Jazz On The Beach every Wednesday from 10.00pm - midnight and Blues Beach every other Thursday from 6.00pm - 7.00pm via the internet on DealRadio.co.uk or the TuneIn Radio app.
Alternatively, just ask your smart device to ‘Play Deal Radio’.
Catch Up on Mixcloud
All Jazz On The Beach shows - here’s the link
All Blues Beach shows - here’s the link