The Hampton Hawes album Spanish Steps was recorded in 1968 with Jimmy Woode on bass and Art Taylor on drums. Only a few years earlier Hawes had been an inmate of a federal prison in Fort Worth Texas where he had been sentenced to ten years imprisonment for possession of heroin. Whilst in the prison hospital he saw President Kennedy's inaugral speech on television, thought he looked liked a decent person and petitioned for Executive Clemency. He was successful and was released

On the evening of November 12th 1956 Hampton Hawes went into the studios of Contemporary Records in Los Angeles along with his regular bass player Red Mitchell, guitarist Jim Hall and drummer Eldridge Freeman. For the next few hours they recorded tunes almost as if they were playing a gig, with no retakes. The session ended sometime in the early hours of November 13th and had produced enough music for three albums. They were released over subsequent years as All Night Session

Back in the dark days of the pandemic, like many others I found myself with more time on my hands than usual, so decided to do some transcribing. I'd transcribed a lot when I was a student both as a way of working on my aural skills and also developing my vocabulary, and although I often still work out individual phrases from solos, I hadn't transcribed complete solos for quite a while. For the 2-5-1 jazz podcast I present with Simon Whiteside we had planned to do an in-depth

This is a walk around Soho visiting the locations of famous jazz clubs, some which closed many years ago, but some which are still...

Whilst researching the life of George Shearing for my 'Shades of Shearing' project I realised that there are still a number of sites in...

The sad death of Sinéad O'Connor earlier this year has inspired many people to revisit her back catalogue and inevitably her biggest hit 'Nothing Compares 2 U'. The song was released in early 1990 as the second single from her 'I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got' album, and became a worldwide hit, topping the charts in many countries and going Platinum in both the UK and the United States. Many people know that the song was originally written by Prince but are unaware of its or

I've started studying chess. I've known the rules since I was a kid and have played it for fun over the years, but although always...

Sonny Clark died of a probable heroin overdose in New York City in 1963 when he was only thirty two years old. In the ten years since he made his recording debut with The Teddy Charles West Coasters in 1953 he had participated in over fifty recording dates, most of them for the Blue Note record label. In fact there was a period in the late fifties when he was effectively the house pianist at Blue Note, recording sessions with among others, Buddy de Franco, Sonny Criss, Frank

Donald Fagen released Morph The Cat in 2006. It was the third part of his 'Nightfly' trilogy which followed Kamakiriad in 1993 and the...

Recently, whilst searching for clips of pianist Jimmy Rowles on Youtube I came across the album "Songs and Conversations" by Billie Holiday. Sometime in 1955 Billie Holiday rehearsed some songs with Rowles and bass player Artie Shapiro in Shapiro's living room for an upcoming show. The rehearsal was recorded and the tape was left running as the musicians chatted about the arrangements and told stories, swapped anecdotes etc. The tapes were eventually released in 1973 as the a