First I want to acknowledge that headline… that just happened… OK… Does it seem like we’re in a Billy Higgins trough right now? I don’t feel like he’s getting talked about a lot— the current […]
Category: Billy Higgins
What’s going on: my recording of Ornette Coleman’s Mothers of the Veil
While I was traveling recently, I got a note from a reader who had very kindly purchased my CD Little Played Little Bird, the music of Ornette Coleman, asking for some analysis and explanation of […]
VOQOTD: Lew Tabackin on Billy Higgins
“Playing with Billy was like heaven. He was the greatest collaborator in the history of jazz. He played exactly right for you at exactly the right time. His dynamics were perfect, he balanced his energy […]
Cracking 5/4: listening
Here’s the first in a series on playing in 5/4. Since everything in music follows from listening (and this is the easiest type of post for me to write), we’ll start with some recorded examples: […]
Two nice finds
Two nice things from Jazz Schmazz, a blog I’ll be checking in with real often from here on out. First is a transcription of Pete LaRoca’s fours on Homestretch, from Joe Henderson’s Page One… and, […]
Billy Higgins’ instrument
Here’s a nice follow up on my recent Billy Higgins solo analysis. I was just surfing around and getting discouraged at how little of value I was coming across, when I stumbled across this 2000 […]
Ron Carter on drummers
Here’s an excerpt from an old interview with Ron Carter, from Ethan Iverson’s Do The Math, concerning some of the great drummers Carter has worked with. Absolutely go read the whole conversation: EI: In the […]
Different values
I usually keep just one CD in my car for days or occasionally weeks at a time- recently for me it’s been Don Cherry’s Art Deco, an old favorite that had been languishing in the […]
Favorite albums: Billy Higgins
I guess I could’ve called this Higgins and Haden. These are four records from what is for me the classic phase of Higgins’ career in terms of his sound- he’s got that heavy-ish rivet cymbal […]