Contents SPECIAL 2007 (By subscription or mail order )
The tenors of bop Dexter GORDON Sonny STITT Wardell GRAY Gene AMMONS The century of Johnny Hodges

Contents SPECIAL 2006 (By subscription or mail order )
Clifford BROWN Howard McGHEE Booker LITTLE Lee MORGAN Louis SMITH

Contents SPECIAL 2005 (By mail order )
	Art BLAKEY Sidemen of Art Blakey : Cedar WALTON, Bobby WATSON Coleman HAWKINS Bill COLEMAN Fats WALLER

i•	• Contents SPECIAL 2004 (By mail order ) Ray CHARLES David Fathead NEWMAN Earl HINES Sonny CRISS Jazz Dance : Gregory HINES, Frankie MANNING

i•	• Contents SPECIAL 2003 (By mail order ) Bud POWELL René URTREGER Garnet CLARKE Count BASIE Discography (3rd part) JAZZ DANCE

i•	• Contents SPECIAL 2002 (By mail order ) Art TATUM Phineas NEWBORN James WILLIAMS Count BASIE Discography (2nd part) Calendar 2001

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• Contents SPECIAL 2001 plus 2002 Calendar (By mail order ) Count BASIE Alber AYLER Uri CAINE John LEWIS Calendar 2001 Count Basie / The Kid From Red Bank One of the labours of a modern Hercles would probably be to write Count Basie's discography. The Count has recorded countless sessions, not always with his orchestra, during a musical career which spans 60 years and a recorded output almost as long (recordings stretch from 1929 to 1984). There already is a beautiful work, the 1350 pages of Count Basie A Bio-Discography by Chris Sheridan, which stands as a reference point in that field. Writing a discographical account of such a huge musical odyssey for a magazine format is a daunting and slightly presumptuous task… but it is essential indeed if one really wants to understand his work. The task proved stimulating enough to try and bring our noses to the grindstone, so you will find in the 2001 Jazz Hot special issue our version of one of the greatest recorded achievements in jazz. We also insisted on presenting a bibliography and a filmography, as well as a musical analysis by two prominent French Basie specialists, tenor saxophonist Michel Pastre (who leads his own big band featuring the early Basie songbook) and pianist Philippe Milanta, and a biographical essay about the art and life of one of the landmarks of the history of jazz, one of the true artists who popularised jazz and made it a universally acknowledged artform. Count Basie / Basie's Basement As Michel Pastre remarked, Philippe Milanta is one of the great connoisseurs of Basie's work and some even say that he is one the very few pianists who are actually able to play his music. He took part in the Masters of Jazz Series dedicated to the Count and is currently writing a book about him although it has momentarily taken a backseat to the development of his playing (q.v. his interview in Jazz Hot n°576). He accepted to talk about the Count for us. Albert Ayler / My Name is Albert Ayler 25th november 1970. A corpse is drifting in the East River, New York. Not very far from Williamsburgh Bridge where Sonny Rollins was solitarily practising 10 years earlier, playing ballads and standards, old and new tunes. The corpse bears the name of Albert Ayler, Afro-American saxophone player born in Cleveland, Ohio 34 years before, on 17 July 1936 in a middle-class family. On the unreal and misty banks, cops who have seen worse, peevish for getting up early in the prospect of a glacial wan and wintry day, circle around the corpse they have just hauled from the river. The forensic expert is working on it. Death by drowning, he says after a quick glance. The end of Albert Ayler's story sounds like the beginning of a novel by Ed McBain… Uri Caine / Philly Variations Although the dream of the US melting pot is more often than not a mere illusion, jazz has sometimes been the place where real and generous cultural human synthesis occurred. Uri Caine's story is a reflection of that. His original approach and the fact that he originates from the heart of the jazz tradition show how fertile jazz can be and how it can renew itself. We talked about Uri Caine in the editorial of our 572 issue and in the review of the festival of San Sebastian (issue n°575) where he let loose the manifold aspects of his invention with adventurous sincerity. The depth of his inspiration incline us to think that we should be talking about him again… John Lewis / The Tempered Keyboard John Lewis is the epitome of the second half of the XXth century. The Modern Jazz Quartet was the heart of his musical experiments and gave him the opportunity to share a real-time experience of the keenest musical research with Milt Jackson, Percy Heath, Kenny Clarke and Connie Kay. He is a demure and discreet individual and his understanding of jazz is steeped in the tradition. With hindsight, his work within the Third Stream has become less ambiguous and comes out as a demanding and musically ambitious attempt to pay homage to the one music that was the foundation of his culture jazz. The trendy debates of the 50's have given way to the works themselves which now take their due place in the history of the music, in a civilisation rent by segregation, major political and ideological conflicts which could not leave philosophy of art aside.

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• Contents SPECIAL 2000 (By mail order ) Billie HOLIDAY Boris VIAN Jacques PELZER Sal SALVADOR KANSAS CITY Ben WEBSTER Lester YOUNG Photo album 98 : David Sinclair Billie HOLIDAY Billie Holiday, who was dedicated the song « Lover Man » by songwriter Jimmy Davis (music by Ram Ramirez), has been a legend of jazz, but not only for musical reasons. While the gutter press usually relishes focusing on such considerations, her life is problematic to us because it was a troubled life. It made her a romantic figure, very much in the same way as Charlie Parker, Fats Navarro, Wardell Gray, Bud Powell or Dexter Gordon… to the extent that very few actually listened to the music. We chose to present a discography but one ought to bear in mind that such a tall figure as Billie Holiday cannot be reduced to her recorded output, even though her career has been relatively well documented. We present her work as leader and sidewoman which enables to have a better view of her career, of the people she encountered because - however incomplete they may be - recordings are documents which are left for us to understand how a musician developed. The chronological development is essential to the understanding of any historical fact ; it serves here to illustrate how her voice changed, what financial or mediatic pressures she had to face, what artistic choices she made, what personal problems were reflected in the choice of the songs, where she played etc. Although it needs the active imagination of the reader, names and dates, places and songs can draw an objective picture of her personality, her biography and some of the history of jazz. Boris VIAN An immense writer, inventor, journalist, musician, Boris Vian is impossible to describe so quickly. He took an important part in Jazz Hot and we wanted to celebrate one of the heros of our magazine. He died the same year as Billie Holiday and Lester Young and it seemed an apposite choice to feature them in the same issue, because they represent something of the essence of Jazz Hot and of jazz of course. His writing was the natural antidote to power and conformity. He had no theoretical standpoint, just his liveliness and natural instinct - people love him for himself, not because of fashion, media hype or advertisments. He is famous because people actually read and love his work not because some technocratic ass told them to. It is the same for jazz - people love it for what it is. For the freedom it offers. Some have tried to create a legend around Boris Vian which was but a transvestite of his real personality. His work speaks for itself. He stands like an elder brother to us and still helps us to remain enthousiastic in the face of adversity. We asked Nicole Bertolt, director of the Boris Vian Foundation, to talk about him. Her sensitivity gives us an impression of the real Boris Vian. Jacques PELZER He was among the first frantic musicians in Europe who jumped into be-bop aesthetics as defined by Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and other distinguished Mintonians. Jacques Pelzer encompassed the whole life of jazz in his own stylistic development - all the genres and temptations, aesthetic choices and contradictions, from bourgeois life to bohemia. One of the three mainstays of jazz in Liège (Belgium) with René Thomas and Bobby Jaspar he was also torn between music and illness. Some of his friends talk about him and suggest the script of a film which goes beyond fiction. Sal SALVADOR Sal Salvador died last September (Jazz Hot n° 565). This long and lively interview was done almost 20 years ago by Louis-Victor Mialy and we wanted to publish it as an homage to the great guitarist. Louis-Victor and Sal were good friends but unfortunately they won't share that interview together. Fate prevented it. Readers will nevertheless enjoy this account of his career, that of a great technician, a man and artist of great integrity and good spirit. KANSAS CITY Kansas City stands at a geographical and cultural crossroad between Chicago and New Orleans. One half of the city in Missouri and the other half in Kansas it went through a phase of industrialization at the beginning of the century which led to the development of leisure and music as a source of profit. Musicians were used as entertainers but quicly became the real centre of interest. The hot city of swing and blues is still alive ! Ben WEBSTER 'If you wanna hear somebody who's really great on tenor, go hear Ben !' Eddie Lockjaw Davis was a stalwart defender and admirer of Ben Webster. Unfortunately his exile in Europe probalby cost him some of his reputation although he his among the five great saxophonists of jazz - Sidney Bechet, Coleman Hawkins, Johnny Hodges and Lester Young - independantly from the further developments that were given by Charlie Parker or John Coltrane. Ben Webster was a pioneer and he was also one of the prominent tenors who made a break from the white tradition established by Wiedoeft and Trumbauer. Moreover he is at the crossroad between the two main stylistic streams of the saxophone, namely the Coleman Hawkins tradition vs the Bechet/Hodges school. Lastly, he came from the most fertile environment for expressivity and hotness - Kansas City ! Lester Young and Ben Webster became the two styles of tenor that one could hear in K.C. and the Southwest : the soft ones (Paul Quinichette) and the stocky ones (Dick Wilson, Henry Bridges, Herschel Evans). Lester YOUNG 'As far as I am concerned, I think Coleman Hawkins was the President first, right ?' said Lester himself at a time when Brew Moore, a presidential disciple (1924-1973), said that 'anyone who doesn't play like Lester is wrong !'. Lester's words serve to put into another perspective the fanatic admiration that he embodied. One of the major influences of Lester Young was Charlie Christian (1916-1942) who was equally the object of a cult (Jimmy Raney, Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow…) and of similar misunderstandings… One can't be held responsible for one's disciples !

Contents SPECIAL '99 (By mail order ) George GERSHWIN 1st part : - La Symphonie du Nouveau Monde - Rhapsody in blue : biography - I got rhythm, I got music (1st part) : musicology - Discography (1st part) : They can't take that away from me (classical) - George Gershwin seen by : Leopold Godowsky III, Wynton Marsalis, Marcus Roberts - Gershwin's books : bibliography Erroll GARNERr : Play Misty / Discography Marcus ROBERTS : Blues for the new millennium Photo album 98 George GERSHWIN / I got rhythm, I got music Everyone knows the name of George Gershwin but hardly anyone knows what to make of it. Some would think of « The Man I Love » by Billie Holiday (1939) or « Lady, Be Good » by Ella Fitzgerald (1953), the Rhapsody in Blue by Paul Whiteman (1927) or by Michael Ray and Sun Ra (1980) or simply of the music featured in Woody Allen's Manhattan (1978). Whatever the connection we make with it the music is still here. Its depth lies in its pervasive tenderness and melodic evidence - it's the melody that suggests the chords, not the opposite. Gershwin' problem is that people liked him right from the off : classical and jazz critics alike felt that they ought to disagree or put forward reservations. He belonged to his time, his fans will say. He was only a fashionable musicians, opponents will counter. If one wants to understand his music rather than praise or indict it, one has to make allowances for the 'plural' context of music in New York (Manhattan and Harlem) at the beginning of the 20th century. That music was a music of the people in its essence. The music by Dvoràk, Gershwin or Ravel was learned but based on folk music and it aimed at talking to people. Whereas since 1947 the pseudo revolutionary ideology of culture advertised by the dodecaphonists and their followers (André Hodeir) has invaded music : true high-brow art should be severed from any folk roots. Nowadays, the main stream is that so-called 'plural' or 'contemporary' wave (they sometimes call themselves 'jazz'). Its 'plurality' could have been as open as its beginning of the century counterpart ; it would have produced a new Gershwin, a new Duke Ellington…But contrary to the current trend Gershwin or Ellington were not narrow-minded or racist, they didn't live off public funds and they loved their audience. Much like Louis Armstrong and his hit « What a Wonderful World », Gershwin got a posthumous hit with « Our Love is Here to Stay ». A piano virtuoso, he remains above all known as a composer with great melodic skill. It must be borne in mind that Gershwin preceded Ellington as far as composing pieces of some magnitude is concerned. As Black philosopher Alain Locke points out in his historical book The Negro and his Music (1936, Kennikat Press), in the period from 1915 to 1924 Black American music was working out and getting organized. The same structuring elements, mostly derived from spirituals, were leading to different sorts of music equally labelled 'jazz'. 'Jazz' was then a purely fashionable word. (One might argue with reason that the history of the word has come full circle given its extensive use to sell any 'jazzy' item). The word came to prominence before Schaefner, Pannassié, Hammond, Delaunay or Simmen used it to refer to 'Hot Music' which was only one of the genres depicted by the term. Hot Music itself was not so well-known at the time of the Gershwin. From 1926 and even more so since 1929 the New York forms (rag, stride, symphony) fusioned with the New Orleans and Chicago styles (more specifically hot) : jazz was born. It was born out of very specific conditions that only happen once. It all happenned after Gershwin had matured into a significant and successful composer. All the same, Gershwin's musicianship was to provide that revolutionary music with songs whose melodic and rhythmical elements were perfect foils for hot and swinging expression. Gershwin himself might not have used the term 'swing' and would probalby have talked of 'rhythm' : he never thought of himself as a jazzman (contrary to some contemporary musicians) but was never alien to the jazz planet, even from a purely pianistic point of view (cf « Sweet and Low Down » or « That Certain Feeling », London 1926). Marcus ROBERTS / Blues for the new millenium Marthaniel Marcus Roberts was born on August 7th 1963 in Jacksonville. The musical culture of his family is deeply marked by gospel. When he won the 1987 Thelonious Monk Institute competition it looked like an apposite nod to Monk who embodies for Roberts the ultimate level of accomplishment in art. Marcus Roberts is rarely to be heard at all in concerts and especially in Europe, so we had to go and annoy him in his hometown, where he lives with his family, rehearses, composes arranges his music. Jacksonville is not a typical Florida town although it sits next to the ocean. With about 300 000 citizens, it is rather unexceptional and a long way from the usual route of tourists or jazz life. Marcus Roberts has chosen to stay away from New York, the music business and the media - he judges the value of his work by the time he spends toiling at it, not by the mention of his name in papers. He thinks of himself as a jazz musician but, like Wynton Marsalis (who contributed to launching and directing his career), he has a double musical life and gladly confronts the classical repertoire at the fringe of jazz - Gershwin for instance. He was a mite surprised that a French magazine should travel such a long way to talk about jazz and welcomed us in the house of his brother, S. Eugene Roberts who assists him with his business. We sat in a modest living-room with pictures of important family events and talked about the guiding forces of his career. Not a very talkative character when asked about his personal life or his family environement, he quickly becomes impassioned as soon as music is the topic. Erroll GARNER / Play Misty « Hooch, man, You're a genius ». Jimmie Smith (dm) Like Louis Armstrong or Thelonious Monk, Erroll Garner stands as one of the rare breed of musicians immediately identifiable by the most casual listener. Most like all geniuses, "Hoochie-Coochie-Coo" sounds like a born classic who carved his musical language with a deeply original and natural piano style. With the magical touch of poets and conjurers, he makes the old sound new and the odd sound familiar, giving change its aura of permanence and making fleeting moments eternal. The extraordinary originality of his playing could be descibed as revolutionary but revolution was indeed for him a way to pay homage to tradition. It is thus natural that Time has in no way altered the power of his music and that we should still be deeply affected by its balance, its blossoming sensitivity, gusto, openness and lambent lyricism. Power and nuance dovetail into rhythmic and harmonic figures of bold complexity that work out with self-evident simplicity. Who wouldn't acknowledge Milt Jackson's apt description of Garner as "fun master" ?