#los angeles guitar quartet

[justforbooks]

Roy Ayers

Jazz-soul vibraphonist and band leader best known for his laid-back summer track Everybody Loves the Sunshine

When Ruby Ayers, a piano teacher, took her five-year-old son Roy to a concert by the Lionel Hampton Big Band in California in 1945, the boy showed so much enthusiasm for the performance that Hampton presented him with his pair of vibe mallets. Roy Ayers, who has died aged 84, would go on to blaze a trail as a vibraphonist, composer, singer and producer.

A genre-bending pioneer of hard bop, funk, neo-soul and acid jazz, Ayers was most famous for his feel-good track Everybody Loves the Sunshine, from the 1976 album of the same name.

He said that the song was recorded at Electric Lady Studios in New York on, naturally, a warm summer’s day. Among those who feature are Debbie Darby (credited as “Chicas”) on vocals and Philip Woo on piano, electric piano and synthesizer. Woo explained that Ayers did not like to work from charts or scores, with the song based around a single chord that the band in the studio then developed.

While it was never released as a single, Everybody Loves the Sunshine’s warm, jazz-soul sound has won it numerous admirers over the past 50 years. As well as being sampled hundreds of times, by artists including Dr Dre and Mary J Blige, the track has also been covered by musicians ranging from D’Angelo to Jamie Cullen.

Perhaps the sheer simplicity of the song’s structure explains its appeal to such a variety of musicians. The hazy chords set up a steady state condition that allows the performer room for manoeuvre. D’Angelo covered the song in sweaty desire; Cullen’s Live in Ibiza version is as light and moreish as your favourite ice-cream; the Robert Glasper Experiment cover is edgy, an exercise in deconstruction. Other notable versions include the electronica-infused track from the DJ Cam Quartet and the modern jazz take of trumpeter Takuya Kuroda.

Ayers was born in the South Park (later South Central) district of Los Angeles, and grew up on Vermont Avenue amid the widely admired Central Avenue jazz scene during the 1940s and 50s, which attracted luminaries such as Eric Dolphy and Charles Mingus. His father, Roy Ayers Sr, worked as a parking attendant and played the trombone. His mother, Ruby, was a piano player and teacher.

He attended Thomas Jefferson high school, sang in the church choir, and played steel guitar and piano in a local band called the Latin Lyrics. He studied music theory at Los Angeles City College, but left before completing his studies to tour as a vibraphone – or vibes – sideman.

His first album, West Coast Vibes (1963), was produced by the British jazz musician and journalist Leonard Feather. He then teamed up with the flautist Herbie Mann, who produced the “groove” based sound of Virgo Vibes (1967) and Stoned Soul Picnic (1968).

Relocating to New York at the start of the 1970s, Ayers formed the jazz-funk ensemble Roy Ayers Ubiquity, recruiting a roster of around 14 musicians. At this time he composed and performed the soundtrack for the blaxploitation film Coffy (1973), starring Pam Grier as a vigilante nurse. The Everybody Loves the Sunshine album was released under the Ubiquity rubric, reaching No 51 on the US Billboard charts, but making no impact on the UK charts.

His 1978 single Get On Up, Get On Down, however, reached No 41 in the UK. He also scored chart success with Don’t Stop the Feeling (1979), which got to No 32 on the US RnB chart and 56 in the UK. The track was featured on the album No Stranger to Love, whose title track was sampled separately by MF Doom and Jill Scott.

Ayers was a regular performer at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in London during the 80s and his shows there were captured on live albums. Other live recordings include Live at the Montreux Jazz Festival (1972) and Live from West Port Jazz Festival Hamburg (1999). Ayers played at the Glastonbury festival five times, with his last appearance there in 2019.

A tour of Nigeria with Fela Kuti in 1979, and a resulting album, Music of Many Colours (1980), was just one of many fruitful collaborations. Ayers also performed on Whitney Houston’s Love Will Save the Day (1988); with Rick James on Double Trouble (1992); and with Tyler, the Creator on Cherry Bomb (2015).

A soul-funk album, Roy Ayers JID002 (2020), was the brainchild of the producers Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad. The latter was a member of the hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest, who had sampled Ayers’ Running Away on their track Descriptions of a Fool (1989), and Roy Ayers Ubiquity’s 1974 song Feel Like Makin’ Love on Keep It Rollin’, from their 1993 Midnight Marauders album.

Ayers also collaborated with Erykah Badu on the singer’s second album, Mama’s Gun (2000). The pair recorded a new version of Everybody Loves the Sunshine for what would be Ayers’ final studio album, Mahogany Vibe (2004).

“If I didn’t have music I wouldn’t even want to be here,” Ayers told the Los Angeles Times. “It’s like an escape when there is no escape.”

Ayers married Argerie in 1973. She survives him, as do their children, Mtume and Ayana, a son, Nabil, from a relationship with Louise Braufman, and a granddaughter.

🔔 Roy Edward Ayers Jr, musician and band leader, born 10 September 1940; died 4 March 2025

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[dustedmagazine]

Steve Lehman Trio + Mark Turner — The Music of Anthony Braxton (PI)

Anthony Braxton’s reputation precedes him. His records can be experimental, bold, weird and sometimes all at once. He’s written scores for orchestras to play on two different planets at the same time, illustrated others with almost inscrutable drawings, and filed his work under a clinical numbering system that uses numbers instead of names: “composition #34."

They run into the 400s now, nearly as high as the number of records he’s released. For anyone new to him, it can be a challenge to find an entry point. Which makes records where other people interpret his music so valuable: they’re something of an easy gateway into a complex labyrinth.

Usually, they don’t veer too far astray: Tzadik released 2012’s Play Braxton in which three Braxton alumni (Marilyn Crispell, Gerry Hemingway, and Mark Dresser) played several of his tunes. In 2020, Cuneiform brought in the Thumbscrew trio, another set of alumni, for The Anthony Braxton Project. Now Pi Recordings has its own: Steve Lehman’s The Music of Anthony Braxton. It’s a different approach to some well-trod music, which is a good thing.

Here altoist Steve Lehman leads a quartet of drummer Damion Reid, bassist Matt Brewer and tenor saxophonist Mark Turner. This group plays through a set of mostly Braxton themes in front of a boisterous crowd in Los Angeles but also slips in two originals and a Thelonious Monk tune. In some ways it’s a very different approach to Braxton: there’s nothing here that plays chords, for one. And in Braxton’s music, a piano or a guitar is almost always at hand. And secondly, they approach the music in a straight-ahead manner, not one that gives it odd little flourishes.

The record opens with “Composition 34a” and the two horns playing a circular motif while the rhythm section swings. It opens into a fast tune where the players work around the theme and play in tandem giving the music a nice, punchy edge. Both horns take nice solos before the tempo slows down for the finish. The band also gets to stretch out on “Composition 40b,” too. Brewer opens the tune with a bass solo before leading the band into the theme. It’s another one that benefits from two horns and allows both Lehman and Turner to play lines that twist around each other before coming together for a few bars. And the tricky, stop-start rhythms of “Composition 23c” show this band opening in sync.

The two Lehman originals slot in nicely next to Braxton’s pieces. “L.A. Genes” lets the horns play complimentary lines before opening up room for solos. “Unspoken and Unbroken” starts with some playing by the horns before Reid moves into a quick, hip-hop rhythm. Both cuts are informed by Braxton’s music, but also hold their own. The set closes with the two horns dueling on opening of Monk’s hard-swinging “Trinkle, Tinkle,” which aside from showing off some nice playing helps put Braxton’s music in a context: suddenly his odd rhythms and phrases don’t feel so out of the tradition. 

Throughout this record, the band’s in good shape but Reid’s playing is one difference that stands out. When compared to Play Braxton, he keeps things simple: his drumming is precise without being esoteric, swinging while staying true to Braxton’s knotty rhythms. Hemingway, by contrast, has a tendency to tap at cymbals with his fingertips and to use a light touch to create gaps in the music, making him more of an acquired taste.

But all over the record this music is played like straight-forward jazz, with a blue chip approach that never feels cold, experimental or sterile. Instead the band swings and makes Braxton’s themes come alive in a way that Halvorson, Crispell, and sometimes even Braxton himself struggle with. Recommended.

Roz Milner

[slackville-records]

As the man who popularized the guitar in a jazz setting, his legacy lives on.

Charlie Christian was born on July 29, 1916 in Bonham, Texas but was raised in Oklahoma City from the time he was two years old. Charlie's immediate family were all musically talented - his mother played the piano; his father sang and played the trumpet and guitar; his brother, Clarence, played the violin and the mandolin; and his oldest brother, Edward, played the string bass. His parents made a living writing accompaniments for silent movies. At the age of twelve, Charlie was playing on a guitar that he had made from a cigar box in a manual training class. Charlie was actually first trained on the trumpet which was a huge contribution to his fluid single-note guitar style. Then, his father and brothers formed a quartet and Charlie got a real guitar. They performed in Oklahoma City clubs and Charlie even met Lester Young (tenor saxophonist) during one of his performances. Charlie was fascinated by Lester's style which helped in shaping his own stylistic development.

At the age of twenty-one he was playing electric guitar and leading a jump band. At the age of 23 (1939), Charlie was discovered by a talent scout, John Hammond, who had stopped in Oklahoma city to attend Benny Goodman's first Columbia recording sessions. Pianist Mary Lou Williams had actually recommended Charlie to John Hammond. Goodman was not very excited, this was due to the fact that Charlie was an unknown musician playing an electric instrument. The amplified electric guitar was fairly new at the time (trombonist and arranger Eddie Durham began playing it as a solo instrument in Jimmie Lunceford's band in 1935). It was essentially an amplified "f-hole," and it helped in making the jazz guitar solo a practical reality for the first time.

Previously relegated to a chordal rhythm style by the limitations of the acoustic instrument, jazz guitarists could now revel in the volume, sustain, and tonal flexibility provided by amplification. Charlie quickly realized the potential of the electric guitar, and developed a style which made the most of the unique properties of the instrument. When Charlie arrived in Los Angeles, he was only allowed a brief audition and he was not even allowed the time to plug in his amp. Goodman was not impressed so Hammond decided to sneak Charlie onstage later that night during a concert at the Victor Hugo. This made Goodman angry and he responded by launching into "Rose Room," which he assumed Charlie would be unfamiliar with. Charlie performed an impressive extended solo on the piece. This impressed Goodman and Charlie was let into the band.

Charlie was a hit on the electric guitar and remained in the Benny Goodman Sextet for two years (1939-1941). He wrote many of the group's head arrangements (some of which Goodman took credit for) and was an inspiration to all. The sextet made him famous and provided him with a steady income while Charlie worked on legitimizing, popularizing, revolutionizing, and standardizing the electric guitar as a jazz instrument.

After working at nights with Goodman, Charlie would seek out jam sessions. He discovered a club in Harlem, Minton's, located on New York's West 118th Street. At Minton's Charlie played with such greats as Dizzie Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk, Joe Guy (trumpet), Nick Fenton (bass), Kenny Kersey (piano), and Kenny Clarke (drums). Charlie impressed them all by improvising long lines that emphasized off beats, and by using altered chords. He even bought a second amp to leave at Minton’s. Jamming sessions would usually last until about 4 A.M. and Minton’s became the cradle of the bebop movement. Charlie's inventive single-note playing helped popularize the electric guitar as a solo instrument and helped usher in the era of bop.

In the summer of 1941, Christian was touring the Midwest when he began showing the first signs of tuberculosis. He left the tour and was admitted to the Seaview Sanatorium on Staten Island. While he was there, he died on March 2, 1942 at the age of twenty-five.

Charlie Christian’s most familiar recordings are those with Benny Goodman which were available on vinyl for years ("Solo Flight") and which are now available on cd as "Charlie Christian: Genius of the Electric Guitar." There are recorded sessions from when he played with members of the Goodman and Count Basie bands, Lester Young, and numerous artists at Minton's. Charlie Christian had an immense influence on the development of BeBop and the transition from Swing to BeBop.

Source: All About Jazz

[palilalia]

PAL-087 Ava Mendoza LP/CD

"The Circular Train"

Ava Mendoza has never made an album quite as personal as her second solo full-length, The Circular Train. Through her decades of collaborations with Nels Cline, Carla Bozulich, William Parker, Fred Frith, Matana Roberts, and Mick Barr — plus years leading her power trio Unnatural Ways and playing in Bill Orcutt’s quartet — the guitarist’s name has become synonymous with virtuoso technique, raw passion, and visceral resonance, a player pushing the edges of the guitar’s possibilities. Along the way, from 2007 to 2023, Mendoza was writing these slow-burning, incandescent songs. The Circular Train is comprised solely of her single-tracked guitar playing and, on two songs, her corporeal singing. Her first solo LP of original material since relocating from California to New York City a decade ago, much of The Circular Train was honed amid pandemic years that clarified the virtues of slowing down. This expressive avant-rock is a definitive introduction to one of the most uncompromising and inquisitive visions in creative music. Mendoza’s thrilling melange of free jazz, blues, noise, classical training, and blazing experimental rock’n’roll all coheres with ecstatic feedback, with picking and solos that crest with shimmer. Sometimes she sounds like a one-woman Sonic Youth with guttural and poised vocals that equally evoke Patti Smith and blues greats like Jessie Mae Hemphill. Conceptually, The Circular Train is presented as a psychogeographical train ride through certain of Mendoza’s musical homelands. The songs draw on ancestral and recent familial memories, notably of her parents’ roots in mining towns — in her father’s home country of Bolivia and mother’s hometown of Butte, Montana, each country with its own history of colonialism, racism, forced labor, the eradication of culture and the subsequent excavation of it. These adventurous songs were composed in cars and planes, in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, in Los Angeles and upstate New York — which is to say in motion. “Ride to Cerro Rico,” named for the mountain and silver mine at the center of Potosi, Bolivia, was inspired by Mendoza’s great grandmother’s life there in a Quechua mining family. “Dust From the Mines” drew from that history as well as Mendoza’s familial lineage of miners in Montana, building up to stunning swaths of shredded iridescence. “Pink River Dolphins” was inspired by a visit to the Amazon rainforest, swimming with dolphins alongside her father — the pink bufeos that inhabit both Bolivia and Columbia — and the song is dedicated to the memory of Mendoza’s late friend, the Colombian-American trumpeter jaimie branch. They shared a fascination with those intelligent and agile creatures who often communicate by echolocation. “Make a sound, it comes back around,” Mendoza sings, and later, “Echo, echo/The answer in a sound,” evoking what branch knew well: through music we navigate life. The Circular Train contains one cover, “Irene, Goodnight,” composed by Gussie Lord Davis and popularized by Leadbelly; Mendoza has been performing it for over 20 years. Almost as deeply embedded in her repertoire is the penultimate track, “The Shadow Song.” “Treat your shadow kind and it might treat you good,” Mendoza sings on this song that she’s been reworking for over a decade, an emblem of devotion. “Treat your shadow kind and it might treat you right,” she repeats, becoming a blues mantra. What is a shadow self if not one’s secret world, which, once laid bare, awaits an echo, a return? — JENN PELLY 

[screamingforyears]

IN A MINUTE:

A NEW MUSIC ROUND_UP…

“ALL WEEKEND” is the lead single/track from @cindytheband’s forthcoming EP titled ‘Swan Lake’ (10/4 @toughloverecords) & it finds Karina Gill’s San Francisco-based project, rounded out here by guitarists Oil Lipton/Stanley Martinez, bassist Will Smith & drummer Mike Ramos drowsily dream_poppin across a hazy 3:42 clip of jangled Indie.

“MOURNING HAZE” is the first taste of @glare.tx’s forthcoming debut LP (TBA: @sundaydriverecords@deathwishinc) & it finds the Texan quintet of Austin Barrientos, Chris Rez, Homer Solis, Jes Morales & Toni Ordaz dream_gazing across a 3+ mins of spaciously surging & six-string slangin AltRawk.

@nat.walker.music is here w/ a brand new standalone single titled “BLACK DIAMONDS” & it finds the Los Angeles-based artist setting the nighttime vibe, w/out overstaying its welcome, across an economically sound 2 min clip of instrumentally intoxicating, moodily minimalistic & boom_bappin LoungePop.

“CLICHÉ TOWN” is the second single from @sunsetrubdown’s forthcoming LP titled ‘Always Happy To Explode’ (9/20 Pronounced Kroog) & it finds the British Colombian quartet of Spencer Krug (keys/guitar/vocals), Camilla Wynne (keys/Omnichord/vox), Nicholas Merz (bass/vox) & Jordan Robson-Cramer (drums/guitar/vox) bringing the balladeering goods across 6 somberly sprawled minutes.

“YOU ARE COVERED IN BROOKLYN AMBER” is the lead single/title-track from @wanderingyearsmusic’s forthcoming EP (9/12 @candlepin_records @betterdayswillhauntyou) & it finds the Brooklyn-based Gene Stroman (vocals/guitar), Martin Besa (guitar), Kenny Hamilton (bass/vox), Justin Hla-Gyaw (guitar) & Alex Alfaro (drums) EMOtionally folking & slow_coring across 5 earnestly plaintive minutes. 📷: @kasey___k .

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet - Roulette, Brooklyn, New York, March 27, 2023 / Tiny Desk Concert

Here's what I wrote about Bill Orcutt's Music for Four Guitars for Aquarium Drunkard's year-end roundup: "A multitracked electric guitar masterpiece, [it] offers a richly layered trip. As with everything Orcutt does, there’s a wild intensity at work, but the interlinked compositions here could also work as meditation soundtracks. Orcutt continues to surprise." 

Most surprising, perhaps, is that Orcutt managed to take Four Guitars on the road this year. He brought with him some serious underground ringers to bring this stuff to life: Shane Parish, Ava Mendoza and Wendy Eisenberg. Thanks to Parish's notations, the quartet hews closely to the original compositions, but in a live setting, things open up and flow, creating a truly heady listening (and viewing) experience. Knotty, gnarly, totally beautiful. The musicians also seem to be having a blast playing together, which is always a plus in my book.

And hey, the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet is playing in Los Angeles TONIGHT. I'd go if I were you.

[n4682]

loved your raut recs especially the violin concerto tysm :)))

general romantic / impressionist / modernist recs?

hey so sorry for responding late but i saw this and just kinda went a bit feral, so im sorry.

Alberto Ginastera

Piano Sonata No. 1 (Terence Judd [pfte.])

Piano Sonata No. 2 (Fernando Viani [pfte.])

Piano Concerto No. 1 (Sergio Tiempo [pfte.], Gustavo Dudamel [cond.] w/ Los Angeles Philharmonic)

Guitar Sonata (Aniello Desiderio [gtr.])

Harp Concerto (Nancy Allen [hrp.], Enrique Bátiz [cond.] w/ Orquesta Filarmónica de la Ciudad de México)

Alfred Schnittke

Concerto Grosso No. 1 (Gidon Kremer [vln.], Tatiana Grindenko [vln.], Heinrich Schiff [cond.] w/ Chamber Orchestra of Europe)

Concerto Grosso No. 2 (Oleg Kagan [vln.], Natalia Gutman [vcl.], Gennady Rozhdestvensky [cond.] w/ USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra)

Cello Concerto No. 1 (Natalia Gutman [vcl.], Gennady Rozhdestvensky [cond.] w/ USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra)

String Quartet No. 3 (Kronos Quartet)

Dmitri Shostakovich

Symphony No. 1 (there was a great recording but when i went to check the recording on yt it wasnt there and it sucks cause it was great)

Symphony No. 5 (Evgeny Mravinsky [cond.] w/ Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra)

Symphony No. 7 (Yevgeny Svetlanov [cond.] w/ USSR State Symphony Orchestra)

Symphony No. 9 (Rudolf Barshai [cond.] w/ WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne)

Symphony No. 15 (this one too dissapeared)

String Quartet No. 9 (Fitzwilliam Quartet)

Violin Concerto No. 1 (David Oistrakh [vln.], Dmitri Mitropoulos [cond.] w/New York Philharmonic)

Maurice Ravel

Violin Sonata No. 2 (Viktoria Mullova [vln.], Bruno Canino [pfte.])

Sonata for Violin and Cello (Jean-Jacques Kantorow [vln.], Philippe Muller [vcl.]

Introduction and Allegro, for Harp, Flute, Clarinet, and String Quartet (Skaila Kanga [hrp.], Academy of St. Martin in the fields)

Alborada del Gracioso (Fritz Reiner [cond.] w/Chicago Symphony Orchestra)

Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (Samson François [pfte.], André Cluytens [cond.] w/Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire)

Piano Concerto in G (Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli [pfte.], Ettore Gracis [cond.] w/Philharmonia Orchestra)

La Valse (solo piano version) (Seong Jin-Cho [pfte.])

Valses Nobles et Sentimentales (Louis Lortie [pfte.])

Franz Liszt

honestly too many to list here (hehe, liszt here) but heres just some of the ones (marked with Searle numbers)

S.126i, S.139, S.145, S.173, S.174i, S.177, S.178, S.206, S.216, S.217, S.242 (especially no. 20), S.244/12 + 15 + 19, S.252, S253, S.254, S.388, S.390i, S.392, S.393, S.394, S.400, S.409a, S.412iii, S.413, S.418, S.420 (hehe funny number), S.464 (yes i prefer the arrangements, fight me), S.513a, S.558/4 + 12, S.695c, S.697i (not the Busoni version), S.700

Other Composers

Bela Bartók - Piano Concerto No. 2 (György Cziffra [pfte.], Marco Rossi [cond.] w/Budapest Symphony Orchestra)

Olivier Messaien - Le Banquet Céléste (Gillian Weir [org.])

Samuel Barber - Piano Concerto (John Browning [pfte.], George Szell [cond.] w/Cleveland Orchestra]

Kaikhosru Sorabji - Sequentia Cyclica on Dies Irae (Johnathan Powell [pfte.])

Ferrucio Busoni - Piano Concerto (Marc-André Hamelin [pfte.], YL Male Voice Choir [chor.], Osmo Vänskä [cond.] w/Lahti Symphony Orchestra)

Sergei Rachmaninoff - Sonata No. 2 (Nikolai Lugansky [pfte.])

Marc-André Hamelin - 12 Études in All the Minor Keys (Marc-André Hamelin [pfte.])

Eugène Ysaÿe - Sonata No. 5 for Solo Violin (Hilary Hahn [vln.])

Oren Boneh - Sprout (Lung-Yi Huang [gzhn.] w/ C-Camerata Taipei)

Karol Szymanowski - Violin Concerto No. 1 (Lydia Mordkovitch [vln.], Vassily Sinaisky [cond.] w/ BBC Philharmonic Orchestra)

aaaand i think im going to end the list there because this took WAY too long

[moonfuzzblog]

Frankie and the Witch Fingers - Futurephobic (Official Video)

Los Angeles psych-punk quartet Frankie and the Witch Fingers have shared new track “Futurephobic” alongside an official video. The song is taken from their seventh studio album Data Doom, due September 1 via The Reverberation Appreciation Society / Greenway Records. FLOOD Magazine gave the video an early debut, describing it as “in line with the album title’s vintage dystopian sci-fi connotations, swapping weed-smoke riffs for frigid new wave pulses and staccato vocal deliveries.”

“The main riff was an idea we came up with during the writing process for our album Monsters Eating People Eating Monsters… but we kept it in our back pockets, as it wasn’t quite fitting in with the theme of that album,” the band explains. “When we started writing Data Doom, it reemerged very organically and everyone latched onto the idea surprisingly fast and ran with it. We expanded on the main riff and came up with the other parts and overall arrangement while writing with our new lineup in our studio in LA. The whole process went surprisingly smoothly. We added backing vocals and overdubs while on tour last year in Europe, doing all the passes to complete the song from various apart-hotels, attics in France and Amsterdam.”

Though they’re currently in the midst of a massive trek across Europe, the band recently announced an extensive run of headline U.S. tour dates for this fall, which include performances at such esteemed venues as Warsaw in Brooklyn and The Troubadour in Los Angeles. See below for the full list of currently-announced dates.

Through six progressively expansive albums, innumerable live dates on an ever-expanding list of continents, and performances with the likes of Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, Cheap Trick, ZZ Top and more (to say nothing of their impressive headline dates), Frankie and the Witch Fingers have earned their throngs of global fans with their ecstatically wild live shows and layered, visionary recordings. With Data Doom, the band is poised to welcome even more uninitiated into the fold – it’s their most eclectic work yet, while remaining undeniably cohesive, and they’re supporting it with the biggest headline shows they’ve ever played. 

Over the past decade Frankie and the Witch Fingers have operated as an outright force of nature, offering up a revelatory form of psych-rock that hits on both a primal and ecstatically mind-bending level. In the making of their new album Data Doom, the Los Angeles-based four-piece forged a sublimely galvanizing sound informed by their love of Afrobeat and proto-punk—a potent vessel for their frenetic meditations on technological change run rampant, encroaching fascism, and corrosive systems of power. Animated by the explosive energy they’ve brought to the stage in sharing bills with such eclectic acts as Ty Segall and ZZ Top, the result is a major leap forward for one of the most adventurous and forward-thinking bands working today. 

Rooted in the cerebral yet viscerally commanding songwriting of co-founders Dylan Sizemore (vocals, guitar) and Josh Menashe (lead guitar, synth), Data Doom marks the first Frankie and the Witch Fingers album created with bassist Nikki “Pickle” Smith (formerly of Death Valley Girls) and drummer Nick Aguilar (previously a touring drummer for punk legend Mike Watt). In crafting their most rhythmically complex work to date, the band drew heavily from each new member’s distinct sensibilities: Smith tapped into her extensive background in West African drumming (an art form she first discovered thanks to her music-instructor parents), while Aguilar leaned into formative influences like longtime Fela Kuti drummer Tony Allen. Self-produced by the DIY-minded band and recorded direct to tape by Menashe, Data Doom ultimately took shape through countless sessions in their Southeast L.A. rehearsal space, with Frankie and the Witch Fingers allowing themselves unlimited time to explore their most magnificently strange impulses.

Once again showcasing the expansive and fantastically eccentric musicality of past efforts like 2020’s Monsters Eating People Eating Monsters..., Data Doom encompasses nine high-wattage songs constructed with both dizzying intricacy and unfettered imagination. On “Mild Davis,” for instance, the band shares a gloriously spaced-out track inspired by a piece from Miles Davis’s early-’70s electric period, cycling through a vast whirlwind of rhythms and textures and wildly spellbinding guitar parts. “We worked on that for two weeks straight, puzzle-piecing together different parts into one very weird and stream-of-consciousness song that’s mostly in a 7/4 time signature,” Menashe recalls. Meanwhile, Sizemore’s lyrics shift between savagely despairing the state of the world and resolutely dreaming of a brighter future. “I wrote the lyrics to ‘Mild Davis' in a moment of feeling pessimistic about what technology is doing to our society, especially as AI is creeping to the forefront more and more,” says Sizemore. “But then the bridge comes from a more optimistic perspective, where it’s questioning whether we could reboot the whole system and start all over.”

After opening on the epic majesty of “Empire,” Data Doom launches into the first song the band’s new lineup wrote together: “Burn Me Down,” an irresistibly jittery track that perfectly encapsulates the album’s transcendent collision of blistering riffs and polyrhythmic grooves. On “Electricide,” Frankie and the Witch Fingers unleash the LP’s most unabashedly punk offering, a bombastic rallying cry built on Aguilar’s breakneck drumming. One of several songs featuring Menashe on sax, “Syster System” slips into a hypnotically fluid tempo as Frankie and the Witch Fingers muse on the possibilities of partnership culture (a concept introduced by futurist Riane Eisler in her seminal book The Chalice and the Blade). “Riane Eisler talks about how our society has a very masculine energy that manifests as the need to exert power, which she refers to as dominator culture,” Sizemore explains. “The alternative to that is partnership culture, which has a feminine energy that’s more symbiotic with nature. The idea behind ‘Syster System’ is that if we could bring that energy into technology, it could help make everything more harmonious.” And on “Political Cannibalism,” Data Doom closes out with a dance-ready anti-anthem stacked with so many loopy details, such as a warped and otherworldly guitar part Menashe spontaneously composed in an attic in France.

To create the cover art for Data Doom (a co-release from Greenway Records and the Reverberation Appreciation Society), Frankie and the Witch Fingers reached out to Italian illustrator Carlo Schievano and UK-based graphic designer Jordan Warren, who then joined forces in assembling an elaborate mixed-media piece complete with its own language system and accompanying decoder. “It was really fascinating to see two different artistic voices working together to make something so unique, with all these hidden elements for people to figure out,” says Smith. Not only an echo of the album’s endlessly immersive quality, Data Doom’s visual component reflects the band’s devotion to unbridled collaboration in all aspects of the creative process. “There was no pressure and no real time constraint for this record, and because of that the creativity flowed in a very free way that probably wouldn’t have happened if we’d been on the clock in a studio,” says Sizemore. “It showed us that the more we take the time to communicate and share our ideas with each other, the more it feeds our creative energy and helps us to make something we’re all really excited about.”

[randomvarious]

Today's compilation:

Oldies But Goodies, Vol. 1 1987 Doo Wop / Pop / R&B / Rock & Roll

Alright, folks, this is probably the last time that I'm gonna be typing out the name Art Laboe for a long while. He's the legendary Los Angeles radio DJ who did a lot of things in his career, including pioneering the art of repackaging oldies hits into various artist compilations—a seemingly simple format that you've likely taken for granted your whole life. However, before Laboe's groundbreaking Oldies But Goodies series was launched in the 50s—a phrase that he himself apparently coined!—scratching one's own nostalgia itch was a much more laborious task than just throwing on a single record to relive some of your faves from years past.

Now, upon its release, this series wound up selling like hotcakes, and it ended up yielding 15 different volumes in total. But as years would go by, rather than releasing more and more volumes after 1985, Laboe's label, Original Sound, insisted on retooling and reissuing these same albums with different tracklists instead. So, this compilation here was released as the first volume in the series, but it's actually a 1987 CD reissue, and its tracklist is markedly different from the actual first volume that had initiated this whole phenomenon decades prior.

Still though, the album's pretty good. Its first half is dominated by sappy doo wop ballads, which is the type of doo wop that I'm not too big a fan of, but it branches itself out nicely in the second half, closing out with a run of four unmistakable killers: Chuck Berry's landmark 1955 debut record, "Maybellene," which was one of the first songs to show people what rock & roll guitar could truly be capable of; The Cadets' "Stranded in the Jungle," an off-beat, moving and grooving 1956 one-hit wonder novelty, with deep-voiced spoken-word verses and jaunty bouts of horn and piano on its choruses; Lloyd Price's superbly catchy and highly popular 1958 New Orleans R&B rendition of "Stagger Lee;" and Etta James' 1955 debut record that never got any play on pop radio because it was deemed too risqué, but crushed it on the R&B chart anyway, "Dance With Me Henry," aka "The Wallflower," aka "Roll With Me Henry."

So, overall, out of all the Oldies But Goodies that I've now had the pleasure of diving into, this 1987 reissue of Volume 1 is probably my least favorite. But its final quartet of tunes is really nothing short of fantastic, and I just wish that the album could've been made with that same consistency all throughout, like a lot of other releases in this essential series seem to be.

Definitely not done with checking out oldies altogether, but I think I'll be putting this specific, history-making series to bed for the time being. I plan on revisiting it again someday, but that day is an indeterminately long way's away.

Highlights:

Chuck Berry - "Maybellene" The Cadets - "Stranded in the Jungle" Lloyd Price - "Stagger Lee" Etta James - "Dance With Me Henry"

[jpbjazz]

LÉGENDES DU JAZZ

ROY AYERS, L’ICONOCLASTE DU VIBRAPHONE

« Roy Ayers était en quelque sorte le parrain du vibraphone contemporain. Il a apporté un élément différent à son son, par rapport à tous les autres. La musique de Roy est quelque chose que l’on peut écouter en jam et s’amuser, ou que l’on peut simplement écouter en arrière-plan. L’ambiance est toujours très forte. »

- Warren Wold

Né le 10 septembre 1940 à Los Angeles, en Californie, Roy Ayers était issu d’une famille de musiciens. Il avait trois soeurs. Son père, Roy Ayers Sr., était ferrailleur et tromboniste amateur. Sa mère Ruby était professeure de piano. C’est d’ailleurs sa mère qui avait familiarisé Ayers avec la musique alors qu’il n’était alors qu’un jeune bambin.

Enfant-prodige, Ayers avait grandi à South Park (qui s’est fait connaître plus tard sous le nom de South Central), un quartier qui était alors le centre musical de la Californie du Sud, ce qui l’avait mis en contact avec plusieurs grands noms du jazz, dont Lionel Hampton. Les écoles qu’Ayers avaient fréquentées (Wadsworth Elementary, Nevins Middle School et le Thomas Jefferson High School) étaient d’ailleurs toutes situées à proximité de la légendaIRE Central Avenue, qui était un peu l’équivalent de l’Avenue Lenox pour Harlem et de la rue State pour Chicago.

Après avoir d’abord joué  du piano à partir de l’âge de cinq ans, puis de la steel guitar quatre ans plus tard (il avait aussi chanté dans la chorale de l’église en plus d’expérimenter avec d’autres instruments comme la flûte, la batterie et la trompette), Ayers avait commencé à s’intéresser au vibraphone à l’âge de cinq ans après avoir assisté à un concert de Lionel Hampton avec ses parents. Après le concert, Hampton avait offert à Ayers ses premiers bâtons de vibraphone. Se remémorant sa première rencontre avec Hampton des années plus tard, Ayers avait précisé: “I got my first set of vibraphone mallets from Lionel Hampton when I was 5 years old, so I always wanted to be like Lionel Hampton. At one time, when I was very young, I was thinking I was going to be Lionel Hampton. My mother and father always played his music, so I was reared on Lionel Hampton.”

Mais même si Ayers avait toujours déclaré que le vibraphone était son instrument de musique préféré, ce n’est pas avant l’âge de dix-sept ans qu’il vraiment eu l’occasion d’en jouer après avoir fait la rencontre du vibraphoniste Bobby Hutcherson (les deux musiciens habitaient dans le même quartier). Les parents d’Ayers lui avaient fait cadeau de son premier vibraphone alors qu’il était encore adolescent.

Durant ses études secondaires, Ayers avait chanté dans la chorale de l’église et avait dirigé un groupe appelé The Latin Lyrics, dans lequel il avait joué de la steel guitar et du piano. L’école qu’Ayers fréquentait à l’époque, le Thomas Jefferson High School, avait d’ailleurs servi d’alma mater à plusieurs grands noms du jazz, dont le saxophoniste Dexter Gordon et le contrebassiste Charles Mingus. Ayers avait étudié par la suite la théorie musicale au Los Angeles City College.

DÉBUTS DE CARRIÈRE

Au début des années 1960, Ayers avait commencé à jouer régulièrement avec plusieurs musiciens locaux, dont plusieurs grands noms de la scène du jazz à Los Angeles comme Teddy Edwards, Chico Hamilton et Jack Wilson. Ayers avait fait ses débuts sur disque à l’âge de vingt-deux ans comme membre du groupe des saxophonistes Curtis Amy et Vi Redd.

En 1963, Ayers avait publié un premier album comme leader intitulé West Coast Vibes. Durant cette période, il avait aussi enregistré avec le Jack Wilson Quartet, Chico Hamilton et le Gerald Wilson Orchestra.

Après avoir abandonné ses études au Los Angeles City College en 1966, à l’invitation du contrebassiste Reggie Workman, Ayers s’était joint au quintet du flûtiste Herbie Mann dans le cadre d’une performance au Lighthouse Club d’Hermosa Beach, en Californie. Ayers avait fait partie du groupe de Mann durant quatre ans, enregistrant onze albums avec lui, dont Glory of Love (1967), Windows Opened (1968), The Inspiration I Feel (1968) et Memphis Underground (1969). Après avoir signé un contrat avec Atlantic en 1967 sous la recommandation de Mann, Ayers avait publié trois albums comme leader, tous produits par Mann: Virgo Red (1967), Stoned Soul Picnic (1968) et Daddy Bug (1969). Sur l’album Stoned Soul Picnic (dont la pièce-titre avait été écrite par Laura Nyro), Ayers avait joué de la basse électrique accompagné d’une section de cuivres qui imitait le son d’une chorale d’église.

Même si le répertoire des albums d’Ayers avec Atlantic était surtout composé de standards, il avait également enregistré des versions de chansons populaires comme "For Once in My Life" et "Wave." À partir de l’album Daddy Bug en 1969, Ayers avait commencé à interpréter un matériel plus éclectique composé de pièces comme "Bonita" d’Antonio Carlos Jobim et "Emmie’’ de Laura Nyro. En 1969 et 1970, Ayers avait également enregistré deux albums pour Columbia avec son quartet: All Blues et Unchain My Heart.

Après avoir quitté le groupe de Mann et signé un nouveau contrat avec Polydor Records en 1970, Ayers s’était installé à New York et avait formé son propre groupe, le Roy Ayers Ubiquity, un ensemble qui avait marqué ses débuts dans le jazz-fusion. C’est la gérante d’Ayers, Myrna Williams, qui avait suggéré le nom dy groupe.

Ayers avait choisi ce nom parce que le mot ubiquité impliquait de se trouver à plusieurs endroits simultanément. Le choix du nom du groupe se justifiait d’autant plus que la formation n’avait jamais bénéficié d’un alignement stable comme les autres groupes de l’époque. Parmi les musiciens qui avaient successivement fait partie du groupe, on remarquait de grands noms du jazz comme le contrebassiste Ron Carter, le saxophoniste Sonny Fortune et la chanteuse Dee Dee Bridgewater. Le claviériste Philip Woo, qui avait fait partie du groupe lors de ses dernières années d’activités et qui avait continué de jouer avec Ayers après la dissolution du groupe au début des années 1980, avait toujours été reconnaissant au vibraphoniste de l’avoir aidé à lancer sa carrière. Il expliquait: “Roy Ayers discovered me in Seattle in 1976 when I was 19. It is very unusual for an artist to pick up musicians while on tour, so I was very fortunate for this to happen. I was in local bands until then. I credit him for launching my career.”

Mais même si le groupe était très populaire et avait exercé une influence considérable, il avait dû faire face à une réception mitigée des critiques, car le son du vibraphone d’Ayers était souvent noyé dans l’instrumentation plutôt lourde des autres membres du groupe. Commentant une performance du groupe au club Village Vanguard de New York en décembre 1970, le critique John S. Wilson du New York Times écrivait:  “Even though Mr. Ayers gets a hard, heavy tone from his vibraphone, his playing is often buried under the eruptive power of his accompaniment or is absorbed by the very similar sound of the electric piano.”

D’origine allemande, les disques Polydor étaient encore à la recherche de leur propre identité, ce qui convenait parfaitement à Ayers, qui cherchait également à découvrir son propre style. Au début de la trentaine, Ayers était très ouvert aux nouvelles musiques et à l’évolution de la musique pop. Le répertoire du groupe était composé d’éléments de jazz, de funk, de rock, de R & B, de soul, de salsa et de tout autre genre musical qui avait influencé Ayers et dont il avait tenté de réaliser la synthèse dans sa musique. Des pièces comme "Pretty Brown Skin" et "The Fuzz" avaient aussi été très influencées par le mouvement psychédélique ainsi que par le funk et le R & B. Sur l’album de 1972 He's Coming, Ayers avait poussé l’audace encore plus loin en intégrant à sa musique des sonorités africaines. L’album comprenait également des versions très personnelles de succès comme  "I Don't Know How To Love Him" et "He's Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother". Ayers avait enchaîné l’année suivante avec Red Black and Green, un disque qui malgré le succès de sa chanson-titre, n’avait pu arriver à la cheville de l’album précédent.

En 1973, Ayers s’était fait connaître comme producteur, compositeur et arrangeur de la bande sonore du film Coffy, qui dénonçait la sous-représentation des Afro-Américains dans l’industrie cinématographique. L’album comprenait les grands succès "Coffy is the Color" et "Coffy Baby", qui mettait en vedette Dee Dee Bridgewater au chant. Réalisé par Jack Hill, le film mettait également en vedette l’actrice Pam Grier. La même année, Grier avait joué le rôle d’Elgin dans le film Idaho Transfer de Peter Fonda, qui mettait en vedette l’acteur Keith Carradine. Plus tard la même année, Ayers avait publié l’album  Virgo Red qui avait remporté un succès mitigé, même si la chanson "Love From the Sun" était rapidement devenue un classique très influent dans un style qui se ferait connaître plus tard sous le nom style acid jazz.

Du début au milieu des années 1970, Ayers était entré dans une période de transition avec des albums comme hange Up the Groove (1974), A Tear to a Smile (1975) et Mystic Voyage (1975). Ce dernier album comprenait la chanson ‘’Evolution’’, le succès disco "Brother Green (The Disco King)", ainsi que la chanson-titre de l’album de 1976 Everybody Loves the Sunshine. Des pièces comme "Take All the Time You Need", "Time and Space" et "A Tear to a Smile", qui étaient toutes dotées d’excellentes mélodies, étaient de bons exemples de l’évolution d’Ayers à l’époque. Commentant le succès remporté par la chanson ‘’Everybody Loves the Sunshine’’, Ayers expliquait: ‘’Cette chanson a tout changé pour moi, a déclaré Ayers (via The Guardian). C’est toujours la dernière chanson de mon spectacle. Les gens se joignent toujours à elle, et elle a été samplée plus de 100 fois, par tout le monde, de Dr. Dre à Pharrell Williams. Elle semble capter toutes les générations. Tout le monde aime le soleil, sauf Dracula.’’ Dans une autre entrevue réalisée en 2017, Ayers avait précisé: “It was so spontaneous. It felt wonderful. And I knew exactly how I wanted it to sound: a mix of vibraphone, piano and a synthesizer… I knew people would connect to it because everybody loves sunshine. It just felt like a perfect song.”

C’est d’ailleurs avec l’album Everybody Loves the Sunshine qu’Ayers avait enfin semblé trouver son propre son en combinant un style jazz-funk à un son plus R & B. En plus des propres compositions de Ayers comme "The Third Eye" et "The Golden Rod" , l’album comprenait une version de la chanson  "Walking" de Gino Vannelli. La même année, Ayers avait enchaîné avec Vibrations, un album qui comprenait des classiques comme  "Searching", "Vibrations" et "Better Days."

En 1977, Ayers avait produit un album du groupe RAMP intitulé Come into Knowledge. Mais malgré les aptitudes incontestables d’Ayers à produire de grands succès, les disques Polydor avaient très mal fait la promotion de ses albums, ce qui ne lui avait permis que de faire de rares apparitions à la télévision. À l’automne 1977, Ayers était retourné sous les feux de la rampe avec l’album Lifeline, qui comprenait l’un de ses plus grands ‘’tubes’’ en carrière, "Running Away", qui s’était hissé tant sur les palmarès disco que R & B. La version douce pouces de la chanson comprenait d’ailleurs un des meilleurs solos d’Ayers au vibraphone. Tous les albums d’Ayers au cours de cette période avaient été publiés sous le nom de son groupe Ubiguity.

À la fin de 1979, Ayers s’était classé pour la première fois au Top Ten du palmarès Hot Disco/Dance du magazine Billboard avec la pièce "Don't Stop The Feeling", qui avait également été le principal succès de son album de 1980 No Stranger to Love. La pièce-titre de l’album avait éventuellement fait l’objet d’un échantillonnage de Jill Scott sur la pièce "Watching Me", qui était tirée de son premier album Who Is Jill Scott? en 2001.

À la fin des années 1970, Ayers s’était lancé dans une carrière de producteur qui lui avait permis de signer des contrats avec ABC et les disques Elektra. Des albums comme RAMP's Come Into the Knowledge (1977) et Roy Ayers Presents Ubiquity étaient d’ailleurs devenus des classiques du genre. Ayers avait également continué à enregistrer des albums sous son propre nom.

Même si des titres comme Let's Do It (1978),  Fever (1979) et Love Fantasy (1980) n’étaient jamais devenus de grands vendeurs, Ayers disposait d’un auditoire fidèle et continuait d’être populaire. Au cours de cette période, Ayers avait également enregistré deux albums avec le tromboniste Wayne Henderson, mieux connu pour sa collaboration avec les Jazz Crusaders. Parmi les plus grands succès d’Ayers durant cette période, on remarquait "Kiss", "Sigh (And Feel the Vibration)", "Simple and Sweet" et "Is It Too Late To Try" qui étaient tous devenus des éléments essentiels de son répertoire. Si l’album de 1978 You Send Me comprenait une version très romantique de classiques de Sam Cooke, Ayers avait obtenu un plus grands succès encore avec la chanson disco "Don't Stop the Feeling" et des chansons comme "No Stranger to Love/Want You." 

Doté d’un son de plus en plus identifiable à la fin de la décennie, Ayers avait également collaboré avec des chanteuses de tout premier plan comme Dee Dee Bridgewater, Chicas, Carla Vaughn et Sylvia Cox. Parallèlement à son jeu au vibraphone, Ayers avait aussi diversifié son arsenal en jouant de l’ARP, du Minimoog et d’autres synthétiseurs et pianos électriques. Au cours de cette période, Ayers avait également commencé à s’entourer d’autres compositeurs et arrangeurs comme Edwin Birdsong et William Allen.

À la fin des années 1970, Ayers avait fait une tournée au Nigéria durant six semaines avec le pionnier de l’Afro-Beat Fela Kuti, l’un des musiciens africains les plus populaires de la planète. En 1980, Ayers avait publié l’album Music of Many Colors in Nigeria, qui faisait le lien entre les cultures africaines et afro-américaines. La face A de l’album comprenait une performance du groupe d’Ayers, tandis que la face B mettait en vedette le groupe Africa '70. Continuant d’explorer la musique africaine, Ayers avait récidivé l’année suivante avec Africa Centre of the World, qui comprenait le classique "The River Niger." 

De plus en plus conscient du fossé existant entre la musique qu’il avait commencé à jouer à l’époque et la musique commerciale à laquelle il avait souvent été associé, Ayers avait expliqué en 1980 dans le cadre d’une entrevue accordée à Routes Magazine: "Commercialism has kept me from saying more than I have said. The system pacifies you. I don't get too revolutionary because of the possibility of alienating radio stations." 

En 1981, Ayers également produit l’album Africa, Center of the World avec le clarinettiste James Bedford et le bassiste William Henry Allen. On peut entendre Allen parler à sa fille sur la pièce  "Intro/The River Niger". L’album avait été enregistré aux Sigma Sound Studios, à New York. 

Retourné vers des compagnies de disques majeures en 1984, Ayers avait signé un nouveau contrat avec CBS et avait publié l’album In the Dark qui comprenait la pièce-titre ainsi que la ballade "I Can't Help It." Co-produit par Stanley Clarke, l’album qu’Ayers considérait comme un de ses meilleurs en carrière, avait été suivi l’année suivante de Hot, un album qui avait remporté un plus grand succès commercial. Le simple ‘’Hot’’ avait même fait l’objet d’un vidéo. Publié sous forme de douze pouces, le simple Love Is In The Feel avait fait la promotion du LinnDrum, un instrument qui était devenu extrêmement populaire chez les musiciens de pop et de jazz funk de 1982 à 1985. À l’époque, la musique d’Ayers avait bénéficié d’énormément de publicité grâce au disc jockey Robbie Vincent de UK BBC Radio 1.

Quant à l’album de 1987 I'm The One For Your Love Tonight, il avait connu un plus grand retentissement artistique que commercial, même s’il comprenait de grands succès comme "Blue Summer" et "Don't You Ever Turn Away", ainsi qu’une version de la chanson "I Can't Let Go" des Isley Brothers.

Au cours de cette période, Ayers avait aussi interprété un solo sur la chanson de Whitney Houston ‘’Love Will Save The Day"  tirée de son seconfd album platine Whitney. Le simple avait été publié par les disques Arista en juillet 1988. En 1982, Ayers avait publié l’album Feelin' Good qui combinait des chansons disco comme "Turn Me Loose" et "Our Time is Coming" à des ballades comme "Let's Stay Together.’’ Ayers avait aussi interprété sa propre version du standard "Stairway to the Stars." L’album était la dernière collaboration d’Ayers avec les disques Polydor et avait mis fin à une collaboration qui s’était prolongée sur une décennie.

Même s’il avait bénéficié d’une meilleure promotion chez CBS, Ayers avait signé un nouveau contrat en 1989 avec la compagnie de Georgie Ichiban. Fidèle à son habitude, l’album Wake Up comprenait des balades et des chansons de type psychédélique comme "Sweet Talk" et "Midnight After Dark".

DERNIERES ANNÉES

En 1992, Ayers avait publié deux albums, Drive et Wake Up, avec la compagnie de hip-hop Ichiban Records. L’année suivante, Ayers avait fait une apparition sur l’album Guru's Jazzmatazz Vol. 1, dans lequel il avait joué du vibraphone sur la chanson "Take a Look (At Yourself)". Il s’agissait d’un des premiers disques à combiner la performance d’un groupe de jazz avec une production de hip hop.

En 1994, Ayers avait également collaboré à l’album compilation de la Red Hot Organization intitulé Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool. L’album avait pour but de conscientiser la population et d’amasser des fonds dans le cadre de la lutte contre le SIDA qui affectait particulièrement la communauté afro-américaine. Le disque s’était mérité le prix d’album de l’année décerné par le magazine Time.

En 1995, Ayers avait publié deux albums: un premier sous son nom intitulé Nasté, ainsi qu’un second avec son ami Rick James. À l’époque, Ayers avait commencé à ralentir le rythme de ses enregistrements pour se concentrer davantage sur ses performances sur scène. Durant cette période, Ayers avait cependant publié quelques compilations sous son nom, dont Evolution: The Roy Ayers Anthology (1995) et Destination Motherland: The Roy Ayers Anthology (2003). En 2004, Ayers avait également publié une collection d’enregistrements inédits intitulée Virgin Ubiquity: Unreleased recordings 1976–1981 qui avait permis aux amateurs de se familiariser avec son processus créatif et d’entendre des prises inédites de ses albums classiques avec Polydor alors qu’il était au sommet de sa popularité. En 2015, l’étiquette australienne Raven Records avait publié une compilation qui comprenait les albums You Send Me, Fever et Love Fantasy, ainsi que des classiques comme "Keep Walking" et "No Deposit, No Return'' tirées du premier alnum d’Ayers avec Wayne Henderson.

Dans les années 2000 et 2010, Ayers s’était impliqué dans la ‘’House Music’’ (un style musical inspiré des DJ) et avait collaboré avec des maîtres du genre comme Masters at Work (dans le cadre d’un remake de la chanson "Our Time is Coming") et Kerri Chandler. En 2004, Ayers avait également collaboré avec la chanteuse soul  Erykah Badu ainsi qu’avec d’autres artistes comme la chanteuse Betty Wright dans de cadre de l’album Mahogany Vibes, son dernier véritable disque en carrière. Décrivant sa popularité auprès des jeunes, Ayers avait commenté en 2016: ‘’C’est merveilleux, le désir que les jeunes expriment à l’égard de ma musique. C’est merveilleux parce que ma popularité ne cesse de croître.’’

Dans le cadre du jeu vidéo Grand Theft Auto IV en 2008, Ayers avait joué le rôle de l’animateur de la station de radio fictive Fusion FM. En 2015, Ayers avait également collaboré avec Tyler sur la pièce ‘’Find Your Wings" tirée de l’album Cherry Bomb. Toujours au centre de l’actualité, Ayers avait été en vedette en 2018 dans Tiny Desk, la série de concerts du réseau NPR. Il avait également collaboré avec Adrian Younge et Ali Shaheed Muhammad dans le cadre de l’album Roy Ayers JID002, publié en 2020.

Ayers avait également fondé deux compagnies de disques, Uno Melodic et Gold Mink Records. Si la première compagnie avait connu un certain succès en publiant quelques microsillons, dont ceux d’Ethel Beatty, des Eighties Ladies, de Rick Holmes et de Sylvia Striplin (Give Me Your Love, 1981), la seconde avait fait faillite après avoir publié seulement quelques simples. Ayers avait d’ailleurs publié plus tard deux albums avec Uno Melodic, Silver Vibrations et Lots of Love (1983). La pièce "DC City" avait d’ailleurs remporté un grand succès et passait régulièrement à la radio.

Qualifié de ‘’parrain du Néo-Soul’’ par la chanteuse Erykah Badu, Ayers avait fait l’objet d’un documentaire intitulé The Roy Ayers Project dans lequel on le voyait travailler avec plusieurs artistes qui avait réalisé des échantillonnages sur sa musique. Le documentaire avait éventuellement été rebaptisé Roy Ayers Connection.

Roy Ayers est mort dans un hôpital de Manhattan le 4 mars 2025, des suites d’une longue maladie. La cause exacte de sa mort n’avait pas été dévoilée. Ayers était âgé de quatre-vingt-quatre ans au moment de sa mort. Il laissait dans le deuil son épouse Argerie (qu’il avait marié au début des années 1970), ses fils Mtume et Nabil, sa fille Ayana, ainsi qu’une petite-fille. Ayers avait également eu un fils, l’écrivain Nabil Ayers, qui était issu d’une relation antérieure. La fille d’Ayers, Ayana, lui avait servi de gérant durant une brève période peu avant sa mort.

Le chanteur de rap Pharrell Williams a mentionné Ayers parmi ses principales influences. Aujourd’hui considéré comme un des plus grands innovateurs du mouvement Acid Jazz, Ayers avait souvent été décrit comme en avant de son temps. Il était lauréat du Congress of Racial Equality Lifetime Achievement Award. Plusieurs artistes hip hop ont réalisé des échantillonnages sur la musique d’Ayers, dont Mos Def, Dr. Dre, 2pac, Kendrick Lamar, A Tribe Called Quest, Pharrell Williams, Kanye West, Common et Tyler, the Creator, Puff Daddy, Tupac Shakur, Deee-Lite, Snoop Dogg et Mary J. Blige (qui avait cité son succès de 1976 ‘’Everybody Loves the Sunshine’’ dans sa chanson ‘’My Life’’). À elle seule, la chanson ’Everybody Loves the Sunshine’’ avait été échantillonnée plus de deux cents fois.

Ayers avait publié plus de quarante albums sous son nom (dont vingt-deux durant sa collaboration de douze ans avec Polydor), en plus d’avoir enregistré dix albums avec son groupe Ubiquity. Il avait également collaboré avec de nombreux artistes, dont  Jack Wilson, Rick James, Whitney Houston, George Benson, le chanteur de rap Guru, le James Taylor Quartet et Fela Kuti. Au cours de sa carrière, Ayers s’était produit devant des millions de spectateurs à travers le monde, dont au Japon, en Australie, en Angleterre et dans plusieurs pays d’Europe.

Le vibraphoniste Warren Wold avait rendu hommage à Ayers en ces termes: ‘’Roy Ayers était en quelque sorte le parrain du vibraphone contemporain. Il a apporté un élément différent à son son, par rapport à tous les autres. La musique de Roy est quelque chose que l’on peut écouter en jam et s’amuser, ou que l’on peut simplement écouter en arrière-plan. L’ambiance est toujours très forte.’’ Le producteur Adrian Younge avait ajouté: “Roy Ayers is largely responsible for what we deem as ‘neo-soul’. His sound mixed with cosmic soul-jazz is really what created artists like Erykah Badu and Jill Scott. It was just that groove. That’s not to say people around then weren’t making music with a groove, but he is definitely a pioneer.”

Reconnu pour avoir contribué à populariser la ‘’feel-good music’’, Ayers avait déclaré: "I like that happy feeling all of the time, so that ingredient is still there. I try to generate that because it's the natural way I am". Très influencée par les musiques du monde, le style d’Ayers était une combinaison de funk, de salsa, de jazz, de rock, de soul et de rap.

En 2022, le fils d’Ayers, le musicien et producteur Nabil Ayers, avait rendu hommage à son père dans son autobiographie intitulée “My Life in the Sunshine: Searching for My Father and Discovering My Family.’’ Lorsque le magazine Memory Makers avait demandé à Ayers quel serait son héritage comme musicien, il avait simplement répondu: ‘’There’s an old saying, when you do what you do, you do it to others too. My legacy is that I can make everybody happy. Everybody, even the negative ones.”

©-2025, tous droits réservés, Les Productions de l’Imaginaire historique

SOURCES:

HENKIN, Andrew. ‘’Roy Ayers, Vibraphonist Who Injected Soul Into Jazz, Dies at 84.’’ New York Times, 6 mars 2025.

JABBI, Jonsaba. ‘’Roy Ayers, Legendary Vibraphonist who brought the Funk into Jazz, dies at 84.’’ Jazz.FM91, 6 mars 2025.

‘’Roy Ayers.’’ Wikipedia, 2024.

‘’Roy Ayers.’’ All About Jazz, 2024.

[dustedmagazine]

Jeff Parker ETA IVtet — The Way Out of Easy (International Anthem/Nonesuch)

The Way Out Of Easy is the second album by Jeff Parker’s ETA IVtet. The combo, which comprises Parker on guitar and electronics, Anna Butterss on double bass, Josh Johnson on alto sax and electronics, and Jay Bellerose on drums, took its name from ETA, the Highland Park, Los Angeles oyster bar where it held down a periodic gig on Monday nights devoted to open-ended sets that were both unscripted and unified in intent. Like its predecessor, Mondays At The Enfield Tennis Academy (Eremite), it’s a double LP that captures the band stretching out and seeing where the vibe takes them.

The fact that the IVtet was able to sustain such a run says something about what making music this way means to its members. Not only does it take commitment to reconcile calendars beholden to the touring schedules of Tortoise, Robert Plant and Makaya McCraven, among others. It’s absurdly difficult even for players working at that level to get a regular gig in LA. It’s an industry town, and anyplace that capital concentrates, it’s liable to hog art’s oxygen. ETA, which had neither a stage nor a PA, was one of the very few places in LA where one could go to hear bands make music in real time, and when it closed at the end of 2023, the city’s heads mourned.

One ETA regular was a lapsed studio engineer named Bryce Gonzales. Burned out on the computer-bound processes of modern recording, he had dropped studio work in favor of hand-building compressors and preamps. When he heard Parker and crew at ETA, he found himself lured back into recording by the challenge of capturing a live band in a very particular and unforgiving setting. Gonzales’ liner notes for The Way Out Of Easy go into detail about the mixer that he built specifically for this job, which he has now performed twice for the IVtet, but you don’t need to know anything about signal paths to grasp what he ultimately learned from the journey; that in order to capture the band’s essence, you have to keep out of the way of their real-time rapport. Producers tend to be dubbed honorary bandmembers when it is obvious how they’ve shaped a record’s sound; Gonzales earns said honor by making sure by leaving no trace of his fingerprints.

Played back-to-back, the new album doesn’t sound drastically different from Mondays At The Enfield Tennis Academy. Once more, Parker’s unfussy and adroit guitar playing suspends lyric phrases within a matrix bound by Butterss’s supple lines, the peanut butter and jelly tonal compound of Johnson’s combination of sax and signal processers, and Bellerose’s endlessly inventive rhythmic variations. But the feel is different, not in kind but in quality. The quartet’s already natural grooves and spaces feel more like the product of a single organism, breathing and flexing in response to collective effort. Each reed + circuit smear, each contrapuntal bass figure, chain of plucked phrases that don’t change until they do, and each shift of percussive emphasis adjusts the music as inevitably as a rock thrown into one end of a pond ruins the sleep of the frogs on the other side. Parker gets plenty of cred for the production acumen he has exercised with Tortoise and the New Breed; his work with the ETA IVtet affirms his mastery of making music that feels and is felt in real time.

Bill Meyer

[sinceileftyoublog]

Square Roots 2024: 7/13-7/14

Big Star Quintet's Jody Stephens

BY JORDAN MAINZER

One of this year's Square Roots headliners is calling it quits after their upcoming album and current tour, and another hasn't really been a proper incarnation of itself for a decade and a half. Nostalgia be damned, this past weekend, both X and Big Star Quintet beat the heat and sounded as good as ever. Okay, my in-person experience with X is limited to Riot Fest 2017, I never got to see Big Star, and otherwise, all I have are each band's multiple live albums to wonder what they might have been like in their heyday. Hindsight aside, X's cowpunk momentousness and Big Star Quintet's glorious sky-high rock and roll rendered them the unabashed standouts of a weekend that featured guitar music heavyweights new and old.

X's John Doe & Exene Cervenka

X has released only one song from their final record Smoke & Fiction (Fat Possum), and they did perform a few new chuggers during their Saturday night headlining set. But from the moment Exene Cervenka, John Doe, Billy Zoom, D.J. Bonebrake, and touring drummer Craig Packham entered the stage to Link Wray's "Rumble", you knew their focus would be the past: "You're Phone's Off The Hook, But You're Not", "In This House That I Call Home", and "Because I Do". Yes, Zoom whipped out his saxophone and Bonebrake his vibes; Cervenka and Doe's contrasting vocal timbres gave the whole set an rousing feel, as if the sonically diverse voices in the crowd were meant to shout along with them. They did, to the stuttering "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts", and some of the more musically inclined, limber set goers perfectly air-drummed Packham's choppy thwacks on "Los Angeles". If X is truly leaving us, they're at least still having a blast.

Big Star Quintet's Chris Stamey

Big Star Quintet, meanwhile, may have only one member of the original power pop quartet in drummer and vocalist Jody Stephens, but they feel more Big Star than, say, the current Beach Boys feel like the Beach Boys. (I know, that's not a high bar to clear.) But at least two of the members have direct connections. Jon Auer (The Posies) was part of the reformed Big Star from 1993 until 2010, when the deaths of Alex Chilton and Andy Hummel effectively ended the band. Chris Stamey briefly played bass for Chilton in the late 70s before embarking on his own musical career with The dB's. And while R.E.M.'s Mike Mills (who participated in a Chilton tribute concert during SXSW 2010) couldn't join the Quintet in the Chicago area, not one, but two members of Wilco (bassist John Stirratt and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone) rounded out the lineup and provided a wonderful local connection to boot.

Big Star Quintet's Pat Sansone

The Quintet was celebrating the 50th anniversary of Big Star's sophomore masterpiece Radio City, but on Sunday night, they didn't adhere to any self-imposed rules and play the album front-to-back. Instead, before even mentioning Radio City or playing any of its songs, they started their set by banging out 9 (!) straight from Big Star's debut, #1 Record, switching off lead vocals and instrumentation. Stirratt unleashed a feverish falsetto on "In The Street", immediately answering the question of who would sing "September Gurls" when the band inevitably played it last. Sansone and Auer gorgeously harmonized on the ripping rocker "Don't Lie To Me", while Stamey provided some welcome quietude on "Give Me Another Chance" and "Watch the Sunrise". The band itself was in sync, but not stuffy, deft enough to tackle the funk-to-stadium rock breakdowns of Radio City's "O, My Soul", loose enough to adhere to the snappy ramshackle spirit of the harmonica-imbued "Life Is White".

Big Star Quintet's Jon Auer

When Stephens sang, though, it felt a little bit like time stopped, and not because he brought the house down or anything. (His voice does remain strong!) He dedicated "The India Song" and "Way Out West" to Hummel, stating, simply and heartbreakingly, "He was a close one to me." And when the rest of the band stepped up to the microphone with acoustic guitars in hand, and it was clear they were to play the beloved "Thirteen", Stephens admitted, "I remember being 13, don't you? I was really uncomfortable with myself, but it makes for a great song!" Here was the last remaining connection to one of the greatest bands in American history, still vulnerable, reminding you that no matter how old you get or how long certain songs and records have been around, the emotions never die.

Sansone

Lydia Loveless

Oh, I'll throw in a bonus weekend standout: the great Lydia Loveless, less than a year removed from their sixth LP, Nothing's Gonna Stand in My Way Again (Bloodshot). The record is classic Loveless, heartbroken, all while dealing with the trials and tribulations of life both regular ("Toothache") and time-specific (pandemic isolation). Their high and lonesome twang pervaded each song, save for Nothing's "Poor Boy", during which Loveless belted, showing off their vocal chops. "Sex and Money" proved to be the cheeky live anthem you knew it was going to be the first time you heard it. At the same time, Loveless continued to give their previous album Daughter its due. (Introducing "Wringer", Loveless quipped that it was "from Daughter, which came out in 2020, which means it was very successful...everybody was out doing stuff, money burning holes in their pockets.") From the prickly guitar strums of "Say My Name" to the deliberate drum beats of "Don't Bother Mountain", the latter of which saw Loveless switch to synth, their performance of the Daughter songs showcased that it's Loveless' most thematic and instrumentally diverse album to date. That's not a small feat, with a catalog as deep as theirs.

Loveless

Loveless

[palilalia]

Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet May 5 2023 Los Angeles @ 2220 Arts May 6 2023 San Francisco @ The Lab

[screamingforyears]

IN A MINUTE:

A NEW MUSIC ROUND_UP...

“DRAINED” is a brand-new standalone single from @bedrest_band & it finds the Los Angeles-based quartet of @bbqchkn_, @daveyducks, @soundslyk_paul & @careezybringing the drowsily dour goods across 2+ mins of EMOtionally contemplative & alt_rocking PostPunk which is further fleshed out in @gnarloswright’s aesthetically apt video treatment. 

“NO GOOD” is the official lead single/track from @christopher_david_owens’ forthcoming solo LP titled ‘I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair’ (10/18 @truepanther) & it finds the San Francisco-based singer-songwriter indie_rocking & guitar_poppin across 3 ½ wistfully ramshackle’d minutes.

“BUS” is the lead single from @naked_roommate’s forthcoming LP titled ‘Pass The Loofah’ (10/25 @troubleinmindrecords) & it finds the Oakland-based sextet of Amber Sermeno (vocals), Andy Jordan (synth/beats/vox), Mig Zamora (guitar/synth/beats/vox), Alejandra Alcala (bass/vox), Geoff Saba (tenor/alto sax/percussion) & Jeanne Oss (tenor sax/diva vox/percussion) percolating across 4+ mins of body_moving & new_waving ArtPunk.

“CALL IT OFF” is the latest single from @_sacredskin_’s forthcoming LP titled ‘Born In Fire’ (9/13 @artoffact_records) & it finds our Los Angeles-based Brians (DaMert/Tarney) linking up w/ the inimitable vocalist/Loveline operator @icanthearcassandra 🪩⛓️⚡️to bring the sensually synthetic goods across 5 aesthetically dialed mins of vivacious NüWave. 📷: @james.grossiii .

“SONIC GUT” is a choice cut from @therealwarmachine’s new EP titled ‘browser’s castle’ ( @candlepin_records) & it finds the Boston-based outfit projecting “the future, the light & the truth” across 3 ½ scrappily slacker’d & EMOtionally post_gazing minutes.

[krispyweiss]

Los Straightjackets at Natalie’s Grandview, Columbus, Ohio, May 8, 2024

Give Los Straitjackets an unlistenable number - “My Heart Will Go On,” say - and they’ll give fans a thick slab of irresistible instrumental surf rock in return.

Celine Dion’s “Titanic” abomination signaled the homestretch of the Columbus, Ohio, stop on the masked quartet’s 30 Años de Los Straitjackets tour May 8 inside a sold-out Natalie’s Grandview. Theme songs from “Batman” and “Midnight Cowboy” followed with guitarists Eddie Angel and Greg Townson playing in twin harmony over tight rhythmic flooring from Pete Curry on bass and drummer Chris Sprague.

Performing at the confluence of musical seriousness and playful showmanship, Los Straitjackets’ gig dealt in all-inclusive entertainment. So it was that the band - clad head-to-toe in black with matching medallions around their necks, their heads under individualized Lucha Libre wrestling masks and crammed on to the postage-stamp-sized Charlie’s stage in the smaller of Natalie’s two concert spaces - formed kick lines, struck exaggerated wrestling-ring poses and even incorporated a squeaking rubber chicken into “Itchy Chicken.”

They paired such shenanigans with musicianship 180 degrees removed from the hilarity, such as when Angel, alone on stage save for a dancing Sprague, offered snippets of “The Last Time,” “Ticket to Ride” and “Rumble” between lighting-fast improvisation. The guitarist later launched a mas-cowbell gag in which he and his bandmates ripped into bits of “Low Rider” and “Don’t Fear the Reaper” for the punchline.

Introduced by a red-suited hype man 90 minutes before the final encore, the Trashmen’s “Surfin’ Bird,” featuring the evening’s only vocal courtesy of Sprague, the Straightjackets set the crazy tone early with the originals “Pacifica” and “Outta Gear,” the latter featuring Angel striking his sparkly axe and running his fingers over the top of the neck with virtuosic precision and thrilling sounds. They cooled things down with the sock-hop, slow-dancer “April Showers;” nodded to their inspiration on the Ventures’ “Driving Guitars (Ventures Twist);” and offered familiar-to-everyone melodies such as “Love Potion Number Nine” and the ironically titled “Sing, Sing, Sing.”

The penultimate “Tailspin” found Sprague coming out from the kit to play lead guitar; Angel switching to bass; and Curry bashing away on the drums. It seemed designed to underscore that behind the ridiculousness of it all, Los Straitjackets - who also serve as Nick Lowe’s go-to touring band - are about musicality first and last.

Grade card: Los Straightjackets at Natalie’s Grandview - 5/8/24 - A

See more photos on Sound Bites’ Facebook page.

5/9/24

[lboogie1906]

Jimmie Noone (April 23, 1895 – April 19, 1944) was a jazz clarinetist and bandleader. After beginning his career in New Orleans, he led Jimmie Noone’s Apex Club Orchestra, a Chicago band that recorded for Vocalion and Decca. Classical composer Maurice Ravel acknowledged basing his Boléro on improvisation by him. At the time of his death, he was leading a quartet in Los Angeles and was part of an all-star band that was reviving interest in traditional New Orleans jazz in the 1940s.

He was playing professionally with Freddie Keppard in Storyville, replacing Bechet. In 1916, when Keppard went on tour, he and Buddie Petit formed the Young Olympia Band, and he led a small ensemble (clarinet, piano, drums) unusual for its time.

He played with Kid Ory and Oscar Celestin until the Storyville district was permanently closed. He rejoined Keppard and the Original Creole Orchestra on the vaudeville circuit until the group broke up the following year.

He moved to Chicago, where he studied with symphony clarinetist Franz Schoepp. He played for two years at Chicago’s Royal Garden Cafe with Paul Barbarin, King Oliver, Bill Johnson, Lottie Taylor, and Eddie Vinson. He joined Keppard in Doc Cook’s dance orchestra, in which he played saxophone and clarinet for six years.

He started leading the band at the Apex Club at 330 E. 35th Street, one of a wealth of Jazz Age clubs on Chicago’s South Side. His Apex Club Orchestra was notable for its unusual instrumentation—a front line consisting of clarinet and alto saxophone, who worked with him in Doc Cook’s band, with piano (Earl Hines), drums (Ollie Powers, succeeded by Johnny Wells), and guitar (Bud Scott).

He signed with Brunswick Records and was assigned to their Vocalion label. The first session yielded “Four or Five Times” backed with “Every Evening (I Miss You)”, which was a best seller. #africanhistory365 # africanexcellence