The Jazz Lockdown Mix
To celebrate National Jazz Appreciation Month (and to offer some music since we're all stuck at home), Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa has provided us with a mix featuring Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Hank Mobley, and many more.
Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa is currently learning the Parasite score on tenor sax.
We’re living in extraordinary and unfortunate times; we’re in the middle of a global lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, a disease that has caught the planet’s social and economic structures unprepared and in denial, as it’s currently proving these systems obsolete and unsustainable. Our political leaders have failed to take actions to reduce the impact of the virus, or even slow its momentum, and more and more people are dying.
It’s up to us, the citizens of every nation, to follow the medical and scientific recommendations, do the responsible thing and practice social distancing. We still don’t know how long it will take for us to beat COVID-19, or to make the situation more manageable, but we will. Mankind has defeated worse pandemics, from the Black Death and subsequent bubonic outbreaks, to the 20th Century’s Spanish flu, and now we have the advantage of worldwide technology and communications to combat it together. We just need to act correctly and, for now, stay home.
But even in the middle of a quarantine, we can still have a great time and enjoy the great things humanity has to offer, especially all the great music we have created. And April is International Jazz Month, a perfect month to commemorate perhaps the most crucial artistic creation in American History, the first true modern American art form. From the beginnings of recorded music, jazz has been an essential part of our cultural production, and generations of brilliant musician have shaped the genre, taking it all over the world, crossing borders and expanding minds.
For this month’s mix, I decided to focus on the jazz music of the 1950s; arguably the most important in the genre’s History. This decade witnessed a paradigm shift, in which the traditional forms of jazz were being transformed and taken to wild new directions, new sub-styles and compositional schools of thought were built from the ground up, and the new possibilities of recording technology helped usher in the creative revolutions that would become omnipresent in the next decades, from the avant-garde wave to the golden age of Fusion. The mix has everything, from Bird and Diz' bebop masterpieces to Miles, Coltrane, Coleman and their innovations.
Enjoy the music, and please, stay safe and healthy.
Link:
Charlie Parker – Love For Sale
Sonny Stitt – Strike Up The Band
Sonny Criss – How High The Moon
Oscar Peterson – Night And Day
Dizzy Gillespie – Alone Together
Milt Jackson & The Thelonius Monk Quintet – Summertime
Clifford Brown – All Weird (Take 1)
Wynton Kelly – Summertime
Bud Powell – Un Poco Loco
Wardell Gray & Dexter Gordon – Homecoming
Jay Jay Johnson – Get Happy
Kenny Drew Trio – Bluesville
Mary Lou Williams – O.W
Duke Ellington – Perdido
Machito & His Afro-Cubans – Maní Picao
James Moody – Mambo With Moody
Modern Jazz Quartet – Milano
Frank Foster & George Wallington – How I Spent The Night
Art Tatum – Blues In B Flat
Donald Byrd – Star Eyes
Horace Silver & The Jazz Messengers – To Whom It May Concern
Dexter Gordon Quartet – Confirmation
Sonny Rollins – St. Thomas
Thad Jones – April In Paris
Hampton Hawes – Takin’ Care
Cecil Taylor Quartet – Bemsha Swing
Sahib Shihab – Rockaway
Coleman Hawkins – Chant
Hank Mobley Quintet – Funk In Deep Freeze
Johnny Griffin – The Congregation
Max Roach + 4 – Body And Soul
Art Taylor – Exhibit A
Thelonius Monk – Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are
Ella Fitzgerald & Duke Ellington – I’ve Got Nothing But The Blues
Herbie Mann & Buddy Collette – Theme From ‘Theme From’
Yusef Lateef – Blues In Space
Ahmed Abdul-Malik – Farah Alaiyna (Joy Upon Us)
The Chico Hamilton Quintet – Gongs East
Blue Mitchell – Big Six
Steve Lacy – Four In One
Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers – Moanin’
Cannonball Adderley – Somethin’ Else
Mal Waldron Trio – With A Song In My Heart
Art Farmer – ‘And Now…’
John Coltrane – Slowtrane
Paul Chambers – Visitation
Charles Mingus – Fables Of Faubus
Wynton Kelly Sextet – Keep It Moving
Sun Ra – Ancient Aiethopia
Ornette Coleman – Peace
Miles Davis – All Blues
Abbey Lincoln – Come Sunday
Ben Webster – Budd Johnson
Lou Donaldson – Blues Walk
Jimmy Smith – Lover Man
Nina Simone – Little Girl Blue