Tell me about the blues: Trane, Ornette, Hannibal
Where have we been? We started with Old School jazz, Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, and Henry Allen. Then we zipped ahead a couple decades to hear the very different blues of Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, and Frank Foster, blues shorn of much of the funk, but not the juice. The juice is always in the performer, not the specifications of the tune. Then we went back to fill-in the interval. Duke Ellington and Count Basie aren’t so far from Louis Armstrong but they work with the full force of a big band and so have more sonic resources and ...