WCLK AT 50 | LIL JOHN & HIS ALL-STAR BAND

To celebrate WCLK 91.9’s 50th Anniversary the Atlanta Jazz Festival is presenting WCLK At 50: Featuring Lil John Roberts with an Atlanta All-Star Band.

Award-winning drummer Lil John Roberts will lead an Atlanta All-Star Band including these outstanding musicians: Phil Davis, Rodney Edge, Tres Gilbert, Derek Scott, Miguel Gaeten, Melvin Jones, Joe Gransden, Kebbi Williams, Jamel Mitchell, Mike Burton, Saunders Sermons, and Daniel Wytanis.

There will be special guest performances by Kathleen Bertrand, Cleveland Jones, Rhonda Thomas, Imani Grace-Cooper, Julie Dexter, Tony Hightower, Dashill Smith, and Alexandra Jackson.

As the Narrator, Jon Goode will weave in stories about the history and legacy of WCLK. Lil John Robert serves as the concert’s Music Director. The event is Co-Produced by Jamal Ahmad, Lil John Roberts, and Ray Cornelius.

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STANLEY CLARKE

NEA Jazz Master and four-time Grammy Award Winner Stanley Clarke has attained “living legend” status during his over 50-year career as a bass virtuoso. He is the first bassist in history who doubles on acoustic and electric bass with equal ferocity and the first jazz-fusion bassist ever to headline tours, selling out shows worldwide. A veteran of over 40 albums, he won the 2011 Best Contemporary Jazz Album Grammy Award for The Stanley Clarke Band. Clarke co-founded the seminal fusion group Return to Forever with Chick Corea and Lenny White. In 2012 Return to Forever won a Grammy Award and Latin Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Forever.

Clarke’s creativity has been recognized and rewarded in every way imaginable: gold and platinum records, Grammy Awards, Emmy nominations, virtually every readers and critics poll in existence, and more. In 2022 Clarke was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts as one of its four new Jazz Master honorees. He also was Rolling Stone’s very first Jazzman of the Year and bassist winner of Playboy’s Music Award for ten straight years. Clarke was honored with Bass Player Magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award and is a member of Guitar Player Magazine’s “Gallery of Greats.” In 2004 he was featured in Los Angeles Magazine as one of the Top 50 Most Influential People. He was honored with the key to the city of Philadelphia and put his hands in cement as a 1999 inductee into Hollywood’s “Rock Walk” on Sunset Boulevard. In 2011 he was honored with the highly prestigious Miles Davis Award at the Montreal Jazz Festival for his entire body of work. Clarke has won Downbeat Magazine’s Reader’s and Critics Poll for Best Electric Bass Player for many years. In September 2016 he became a part of the permanent collection displayed at the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington DC.

Unable to tour most of 2020, Clarke’s Pandemic work has involved developing his web series, Stanley Clarke’s Bass Nation. The series premiered November 2020. The project is about the dynamics of the music industry, recording and performing, and includes Stanley’s conversations with noted musicians, gear reviews, play-throughs and performances.

Born in Philadelphia, Clarke has been a constant force of nature in American music since the early 1970s with the success of the jazz-fusion group Return To Forever. That accomplishment gave way to a number of extremely successful solo albums for Clarke. Along the way, he has collaborated with Quincy Jones, Stan Getz, Art Blakey, Paul McCartney, Jeff Beck, Keith Richards, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, The Police, Herbie Hancock and many more, and has shared the stage with Bob Marley and Miles Davis.

Clarke heads his own record label, Roxboro Entertainment Group. Five artists were chosen for its first releases; Lloyd Gregory, Sunnie Paxson, Ruslan Sirota, Kennard Ramsey and piano prodigy Beka Gochiashvili Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia. It will soon be releasing singer Natasha Agrama’s CD, The Heart of Infinite Change

Clarke believes in giving back to help young musicians hone their skills. He and his wife Sofia established The Stanley Clarke Foundation seventeen years ago as a charitable organization, which offers scholarships to talented young musicians.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Anne Mette Iversen was born March 15, 1972 in Aarhus, Denmark. She studied classical piano at the Royal Academy of Music in her hometown and bass at the Rhythmic Conservatory of Music in Copenhagen, Denmark and The New School University in New York City.

Living in New York City from 1998 to 2012 Iversen co-founded the Brooklyn Jazz Underground in 2006 and is co-owner of the related record label Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records, which was formed in 2008. She works as a sideperson in various settings and as a freelance composer.

Currently based in Berlin, Germany. Iversen was Composer in Residence for Sweden’s Norrbotten Big Band in 2016. Anne’s composing is recognized for her ability to integrate classical music with jazz ensembles. She is influenced by major classical composers as well as jazz and Brazilian artists and composers.

Bassist Anne Mette Iversen has recorded ten albums between 1998 and 2020 and continues to perform, record and compose.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Steve Davis was born March 14, 1929 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The youngest of 10 children, he became interested in music as a young teenager and was inspired by his older brother who also played the bass. He was part of a group of young Philadelphia jazz musicians that included saxophonists Benny Golson and John Coltrane. At age 16 he began playing with local big bands and dropped out of high school a year later to pursue a music career.

During the 1940s and 1950s he worked frequently playing with Philly Joe Jones and Jimmy Oliver among others. In 1960, he was briefly a part of the John Coltrane Quartet, before being replaced temporarily by Reggie Workman and permanently by Jimmy Garrison. He was the double bassist on the recordings of  My Favorite Things, Coltrane Plays The Blues and Coltrane’s Sound.

He also recorded as a sideman with Chuck and Gap Mangione on Hey Baby! In 1961 and with quartet fellow and brother-in-law McCoy Tyner on the 1963 album Nights of Ballads & Blues. Davis went on to play on several of James Moody’s groups. He worked throughout the 1960s as a freelancer in New York and as a side man appearing on albums by Kenny Dorham and others.

Moving to Rochester, New York in 1970 Steve played bass with the Gap Mangione Trio, Spider Martin Group and other local bands. He was a mentor to younger jazz musicians in Rochester and enjoyed passing on his knowledge. 1980 saw him beginning to suffer from emphysema and returned to Philadelphia.

Bassist Steve Davis, who was also known by his Muslim name Luquman Abdul Syeed, died on August 21, 1987 at the age of 58.

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The Jazz Voyager

Heading to the City of Brotherly Love for the next stop on the voyage of this traveller. The place I will be seated in for this week’s jazz performance is nestled in the Spring Garden neighborhood of Philadelphia and is called the South Jazz Kitchen. It’s known for the coolest jazz and Southern cuisine in the city.

Vibraphonist Chien Chien Lu and bassist Richie Goods collaborate on this stage for three nights with two shows per evening. When you put together an emerging contemporary percussionist and composer with the youngest bassist ever inducted into the Pittsburgh Jazz Hall of Fame and you get an exciting show and one you will never forget.

The venue’s address is 600 N. Broad Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19130. For those who want more info go to https://notoriousjazz.com/event/chien-chien-lu-x-richie-goods.

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