Category: General

There has been a page dedicated to Haywood Henry on this site for years, but I finally got around to looking him up and listening a bit. What an under appreciated player! Sound, feel, blowing – all top notch. Do yourself a favor and check out the video below with a short but excellent solo of his:

Intrepid baritonist, Andrew Gutauskas has released his second album titled, “Look Out!“. This comes after his first album “Look Up!” from 2017. Perhaps in the future we’ll see “Look Within!” to finish out the trilogy? [ Feel free to use that Andrew 😉 ]

Gutauskas is a wonderful player and composer and the music on this album is very uplifting and positive, much like the leader himself. The line-up is a baritone, bass, and drums with trombone added on some tracks. A classic no-chord sound harking back to the Gerry Mulligan / Bob Brookmeyer quartets, though the songs and playing here will sound a bit more modern.

Check out the video below for a taste of the album. And of course I’d encourage you to head over to Andrew’s BandCamp page to buy a copy!

Thanks again to Andrea Iurianello, we have another Ronnie Cuber transcription up. This is on the standard “Easy Living” from the album he did with string orchestra, that is very nice – Love For Sale.

The PDF is available for download on the transcriptions page and you can see the transcription author himself playing the solo below.

Anything related to Harry Carney is always welcome, so we’re very glad to announce that two new Carney transcriptions have been added to our repository. Thank you very much to Ben Huff!

The first is Agra, a classic Carney feature from Duke Ellington’s Far East Suite. And the second is from a somewhat lesser known, but still delightful album where the Ellington band played their own arrangements of music from Disney’s film, ‘Mary Poppins’. The Carney feature is on “Stay Awake”.

Head over to the transcriptions page and download them for yourself.

Regretfully I was not aware until now that Danny Ray Thompson passed away earlier this year. He was a very longtime member of the Sun Ra Arkestra and passed away in March of 2020. He was a part of the Arkestra for over 50 years. That even beats out Harry Carney’s over 40-year tenure with Ellington. I have to assume that’s the longest standing baritone player in a single ensemble. 

Both JazzTimes and the NY Times have nice articles on him, I’d encourage you to read them.

There aren’t too many opportunities to hear music that is being performed live these days. Fortunately for baritonists everywhere Frank Basile will be performing at Small Club in NYC this Friday September 18th and it will be live streamed. We recently wrote about the album that Frank co-led with Sam Dillon and this will serve as the album release celebration. We highly recommend the album, and of course definitely recommend checking out the stream!

Its 4:45pm-6:30pm Eastern Standard, and you’ll need to sign up for an account but its otherwise free at http://smallslive.com