Forgotten Journal

People may be saying that Whitney Houston is more than ready for a comeback but maybe that’s strictly for the recording studio. The recovering crack-head performed for 30 minutes for a reported $3 million to a sold out crowd at the Plymouth Jazz Festival on Sunday. According to BV Buzz, her voice was anything but ok and that it became raspy by the third song. She was also unable to hit the big finish for ‘I Will Always Love You’. To add to that, she has no sense of geography as she kept shouting to the crowd “I love you Trinidad!” The thing is, she was in Tobago.

Category : Music Festival, Song, Whitney Houston, jazz

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Here’s a look at Beyonce and Adrien Brody on the set of ‘Cadillac Records’ in New Jersey on Monday. Beyonce stars as the legendary blues singer Etta James and Adrien plays the legendary record producer Len Chess. Etta spoke to PageSix about Beyonce portraying her saying “Etta James ain’t been no angel! I don’t think she looks like me, but that’s all right. They can fix that up.” Is that possible?

The film chronicles the rise and fall of influential R&B record label Chess Records. They will also shoot in Mississippi later this month. Mos Def, Jeffrey Wright, Emmanuelle Chriqui and Cedric the Entertainer co-star in the movie.

Category : Beyonce, Blues, Divas, Etta James, Record Label, jazz

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The diva has really done it this time! Diana Ross actually pissed off a crowd of 40,000 at the 2008 Air Jamaica Jazz & Blues Festival on Saturday where the 63-year old was booed and heckled by Jamaicans in attendance at Montego Bay after organizers told them that “to honor Miss Ross’ wishes, she will not be shown on the monitors”. That piece of news was met with a whole lot of hissing. The audience in the stadium-sized arena was unable to see the diva onstage but she wouldn’t allow to put her performance on the big screen but she would not go on stage if any cameras were present. The booing continued for her whole hour-long set when the crowd beyond the first section couldn’t even see her.

Category : Concert, Diana Ross, Music Festival, Performance, jazz

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Dave Brubeck’s latest solo piano offering ”Indian Summer” is a musical remembrance of things past - or as the jazz pianist describes it ”a sort of Indian summary” of his extraordinary life. It ranks as one of the most personal and intimate sessions in his 60-year recording career. Firstly not out of context, I am native of India and tough I now live out side the country I have experienced the heat of an ‘Indian Summer’ and let me tell you guys that it could be insanely hot and unbearable. So if Dave wants us to buy that CD he better think of a cool name that we can hear in pleasant weather and not something that’s related with heat and dust of India. No offense to India but the heat can leave a person dehydrated and exhausted quite a bit. If he wants to remember all the good things of the past then why Indian summer and why not the cool beaches of the Aussie Gold Coast, well him CD his name his wish.

Category : Classical Music, Concert, Music, Music Legends, New LP, Selebs, Song, jazz

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 By his 30th birthday, Max Roach was already considered the greatest drummer ever by his peers. By the time he died this week, the 83-year-old master percussionist was known worldwide as much more: innovator, activist, teacher, genius.

Roach, whose rhythmic innovations and improvisations defined bebop jazz during a career marked by expectations defied and musical boundaries ignored, died late Wednesday in a Manhattan hospital after a long illness.

No additional details were available, said Cem Kurosman, spokesman for Blue Note Records, where Roach played on seminal recordings with Thelonius Monk, Duke Ellington and Miles Davis. Roach was elected to the Downbeat magazine Hall of Fame in 1980, and the Grammy Hall of Fame 15 years later.

“Max was one of the founders and original members of the A-Team of bebop,” said fellow music legend Quincy Jones. “Outside of losing a giant and an innovator, I’ve lost a great, great friend. Thank God he left a piece of his soul on his recordings so that we’ll always have a part of him with us.”

In 1988, he became the first jazz musician ever honored with a MacArthur Fellowship receiving a $372,000 “genius grant.”

The creatively restless Roach, who debuted with Ellington’s band as a self-taught 16-year-old drummer in 1940, challenged his listeners and himself by making music that connected the jazz of the pre-World War II era with the beats of the hip-hop generation.

His place in the pantheon of jazz greats long since secured, Roach collaborated with drummers from around the world, with a string quartet that featured daughter Maxine, and with rapper Fab Five Freddy.

“I try to show my students the correlation between hip-hop and Louis Armstrong,” he once said. “That’s how well-rooted hip-hop is, coming out of an environment where people were denied any kind of cultural enrichment.”

Category : Memories, Music, News, Selebs, jazz

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In trademark shades and wide-collared open shirts, Kool & The Gang claim there is no age limit to being cool as the group returns with a new CD, its first studio album in 10 years.

Formed in New Jersey in 1964, the group has gone through several musical phases over the years, ranging from jazz to rhythm and blues, funk and disco. “Still Kool,” from Universal’s New Door Records.

Two of the four original band members, Robert “Kool” Bell, 56, and his 55-year-old brother Ronald (also known by his Muslim name, Khalis Bayyan), said the group has moved on since its 1980s hits like “Joanna,” “Celebration,” “Get Down On It” and “Jungle Boogie.”

After falling off the public radar in the 1990s, the group is hoping a new generation of young musicians that has joined the band’s 12-man lineup — including Robert Bell’s son Hakim and 23-year-old singer Jirmad Gordon — will bring the group new success.

Category : Classical Music, Memories, Music, New LP, News, Oldies music, Song, jazz

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