So this is about a year late, but to all cliche about it: better late than never, right? So here it is the long awaited sixth link the The Jazz Chain. For people new to The Jazz Chain it’s pretty simple: I am taking a tour through Jazz through a six degrees of Kevin Bacon kind of model. I started with one of my favorite albums of all time in any genre: Art Blakey’s Orgy in Rhythm. Then I took one of the “sidemen” from that album, Sabu Martinez, and went and listened to one of his albums, one where he was the band leader: Sorcery! And that’s the pattern. For each album I listen to I pick one of the contributing players and listen to an album of their own and so on and so on. The last album in the chain was Johnny Girffin’s 1957 debut, Introducing Johnny Griffin. The drum player on that album was the legendary Max Roach and that is who we’re here to listen to today. With his album Drums Unlimited.
Continue readingTag Archives: Max Roach
The Jazz Chain – Link 5: Johnny Griffin
It’s time to forge the fifth link in our Jazz Chain. This time our musician and band leader is Johnny Griffin, the tenor sax player from the last featured album, Wilbur Ware’s The Chicago Sound, and our focus is his debut album, Introducing Johnny Griffin.1Which is actually the 2nd recording session he led, but it was published before his true first stint as leader, Johnny Griffin. That album included both Wilbur Ware and Junior Mance, who played with Griffin on The Chicago Sound. Of course, this means we have now come to our first album to use the very common titling trope of using the Band Leader’s name.2The album which originally caught my eye as a possibility for this entry was 1978’s Return of the Griffin which combines both the SFF and band leader titling tropes, but it’s not the easiest to find, unfortunately. It won’t be the last.
Introducing Johnny Griffin – Johnny Griffin – 1957
