Review: EC3 | It’s All About The Rhythm
Appropriately titled, It’s All About The Rhythm, the drummer you know as EC3 takes us on a whirlwind ride across the global rhythmic landscape. He does this because it is his obsession with jazz and his attire is reminiscent of yester-year when musicians were sharp dressed men.
Choosing to hang with pop, jazz, Latin, Broadway and Motown luminaries like Pedro Flores, Kurt Weill, Stevie Wonder, Frank Foster, Burt Bacharach and Mario Bauza as well as pianists Kenny Barron, Herbie Hancock and Cedar Walton who more than adequately provide the landscape to accentuate his talents.
But it is his arrangements that move us beyond the borders of the music constructed by their greatness and prompts multiple listens. His selection of musicians and the configurations he employs exhibit his playfulness within the madness. From trio to sextet, one begins to truly appreciate not only the individual contributions each musician has brought to the birth of this project but the genius behind the trap.
Surprises in this offering are weaved in the tapestry of the music taking you on an unexpected journey into the abyss. So to say he plays well with others is an understatement and I implore you to take a moment and put some enjoyment in your travels.
carl anthony | notorious jazz | october 13, 2013
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Arthur Tatum, Jr. was born in Toledo, Ohio on October 13, 1909. His father was a guitarist and his mother played piano. A prodigy with perfect pitch, Tatum learned to play by ear, picking out church hymns by the age of three, learning tunes from the radio and copying piano-roll recordings his mother owned. As a child he was also very sensitive to the piano’s intonation and insisted it be tuned often. He developed an incredibly fast playing style, without losing accuracy.
Suffering from infancy with cataracts that left him blind in one eye and only very limited vision in the other, Art had a number of surgical procedures to improve his eye condition but lost some of the benefits when he was assaulted in 1930. He enrolled in the Columbus School for the Blind and studied music, piano and learned Braille. Drawing inspiration from pianists James P. Weldon and Fats Waller, who exemplified the stride piano style, he also identified with the more modern style of Earl Hines.
By the age of 19, he was playing with singer Jon Hendricks at the Waiter’s and Bellmen’s Club. As word of Tatum spread, national performers including Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Joe Turner and Fletcher Henderson when passing through Toledo would make it a point to drop in to hear the piano phenomenon. However, the major event that propelled his meteoric rise to success was his appearance at a 1933 cutting contest at Morgan’s Bar in New York City that included Waller, Johnson and Willie “The Lion” Smith. Standard contest pieces included Johnson’s “Harlem Strut” and “Carolina Shout” and Fats Waller’s “Handful of Keys.” Tatum triumphed with his arrangements of “Tea For Two” and “Tiger Rag”, in a performance that was considered to be the last word in stride piano. Tatum’s debut was historic because he outplayed the elite competition and heralded the demise of the stride era.
Tatum went on to have a prolific performing and recording career being widely acknowledged as one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time. The virtuoso, while piano was his most obvious skill, he also had an encyclopedic memory for Major League Baseball statistics. Art Tatum passed away at age 47 from kidney failure on November 5, 1956 in Los Angeles, California.
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From Broadway To 52nd Street
Plain And Fancy opened at the Mark Hellinger Theatre on January 27, 1955 and ran for 461 performances. Albert Hague & Arnold B. Horwitt composed the music and the show starred Richard Derr, Shirl Conway, Will Able, Gloria Marlowe, Fletcher Rodgers and Barbara Cook. Bea Arthur was an understudy and Carol Lawrence was in the chorus. A favorite jazz tunes came from this musical was Young And Foolish.
The Story: New York City sophisticates Dan King and Ruth Winters travel to Bird-In-Hand in the Amish country of Lancaster County, PA to sell a piece of property to Jacob Yoder, who in turn intends to present it to his daughter Katie and her intended Ezra as a wedding gift. While there, they become involved with local villagers, including Hilda Miller, who mistakes Dan’s kindness for romantic overtures. Ezra’s banished brother Peter returns to claim the hand of his childhood sweetheart, Katie.
Broadway History: Previously, regardless of the size of the venue, a theatre was not considered Off-Broadway if it was within the “Broadway Box” (extending from 40th to 54th Street, and from west of Sixth Avenue to east of 8th Avenue, and including Times Square and 42nd Street. The contractual definition changed this to encompass theatres meeting the standard, which is beneficial to these theatres because of the lower minimum required salary for Actors’ Equity performers at Off-Broadway theatres as compared with the salary requirements of the union for Broadway theatres. Examples of Off-Broadway theatres within the Broadway Box are the Laura Pels Theatre and the Snapple Theater Center..
A number of Off-Broadway musicals have had subsequent runs on Broadway. These have included musicals such as Hair, Godspell, A Chorus Line, Little Shop of Horrors, Rent and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee to name a few. Other productions such as Stomp, Blue Man Group and Altar Boyz have run for several years Off Broadway. The Fantasticks, the longest running musical in theatre history, spent its original 42-year run Off Broadway.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Nancy Kelly was born on October 12, 1950 in Rochester, New York and at the age of four began studying piano, clarinet, drama and dance with private instructors, and voice at the Eastman School of Music. By sixteen she formed a combo and performed in clubs around Rochester.
The early Seventies saw her joining a rock band as lead singer and touring the East coast and Midwest. She enjoyed the freedom of improvising and soon gravitated to jazz, once again forming her own group. Gaining a reputation she began performing on the West coast, the Far East and Europe and regularly performs in New York City at the Blue Note, Birdland and Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola at Lincoln Center.
Nancy has appeared on the stages of numerous jazz festivals, sung with symphony orchestras, and has been named “Best Female Jazz Vocalist” twice in the Down Beat Readers’ Poll. He debut cd “Live Jazz” reached #11 on the Billboard charts, followed by three ore with “Born To Swing” and “Well Alright” featuring tenor saxophonist Houston Person.
A four-year stint at Jewels Jazz club in Philadelphia between 1982 – 86 helped to revitalize jazz in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Subsequently jazz musicians Al Cohn, Jack McDuff, Etta Jones, Shirley Scott and Joey DeFrancesco became favorites of audiences bringing together students and professional people.
Nancy Kelly continues to perform and swing with her signature smoky, take-no-prisoner, back to the roots style delivering authentic expression of real emotion.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Curtis Amy was born on October 11, 1929 in Houston, Texas and learned how to play clarinet before joining the Army. During his time in service he picked up the tenor saxophone and after his discharge he enrolled and graduated from Kentucky State College.
Working as an educator in Tennessee while playing in mid-western jazz clubs for a time and in the mid-1950s, Amy relocated to Los Angeles and signed with Pacific Jazz Records. By the mid-60s he spent three years as musical director for Ray Charles’ orchestra, together with his wife and singer Merry Clayton, and Steve Huffsteter.
Curtis lead his own bands and recording albums under his own name, Amy also did session work and played the solos on several recordings, including The Doors song “Touch Me”, Carole King’s “Tapestry”, and Lou Rawls’ first albums, “Black and Blue and Tobacco Road”; with Dexter Gordon in the Onzy Matthews’ big band as well as working with Marvin Gaye, Tammy Terrell and Smoky Robinson.
Soul jazz and hard bop tenor saxophonist Curtis Amy, a part of the West coast jazz scene who explored other musical mediums, passed away on June 5, 2002.
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