The Legacy series is Columbia’s vehicle for bringing back those classic records that brought many of us into the jazz fold in the first place. This one, the follow-up to Brubeck’s golden Time Out, contains two bonus tracks, “Slow and Easy,” an aptly-named tune that gave the group a breather from the odd-metered stuff on this record, and a live version of “It’s a Raggy Waltz” from a Carnegie Hall date in 1963 that is less controlled and more fun than the studio version. From the ebullient “Charles Matthew Hallelujah” to “Maori Blues,” it’s all here ready to replace your scratchy LP. Along with the original liner notes is a new essay from Brubeck in which he chronicles his feelings about this recording today-one which truly did look to the future.
Originally PublishedRelated Posts
Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee: Backwater Blues
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Jonathan Butler: The Simple Life
Jonathan Butler’s optimistic music belies a dirt-poor childhood growing up in a South Africa segregated by apartheid. Live in South Africa, a new CD and DVD package, presents a sense of the resulting inner turmoil, mixed with dogged resolve, that paved the way to his status as an icon in his country and successful musician outside of it. Looking back, the 46-year-old Butler says today, the driving forces that led to his overcoming apartheid-the formal policy of racial separation and economic discrimination finally dismantled in 1993-were family, faith and abundant talent.
“When we were kids, our parents never talked about the ANC [African National Congress] or Nelson Mandela,” he says. Butler was raised as the youngest child in a large family. They lived in a house patched together by corrugated tin and cardboard, in the “coloreds only” township of Athlone near Cape Town. “They never talked about struggles so we never knew what was happening.”
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Scott LaFaro
Previously unavailable recordings and a new bio illuminate the legend of bassist Scott LaFaro
Kurt Elling: Man in the Air
Nate Chinen makes the argument that Kurt Elling is the most influential jazz vocalist of our time