Category: News

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.

As of today, September 22nd, 2020 JazzBariSax.com will no longer serve Google Advertisements. The only revenue stream will be via affiliate links from products purchased through links users opt to click on at this site. All remaining hosting, domain, and bandwidth fees will be paid for by myself.

Nobody likes ads, and we certainly don’t need to have more of them from Google.

Enjoy the site, ad-free.

Andrew Hadro
Curator, JazzBariSax.com

JazzBariSax has joined instagram! We’ll be posting interesting pictures and sharing the best baritone content around. @jazz_barisax !

Check it out.

C.G. Conn made saxophones for many decades. Some of their best horns were produced in the late ’20’s and 30’s, decades before Selmer made a decent horn. And the characteristics of the Conn seem to really fit well with many baritonists. Players like Gerry Mulligan, Harry Carney, Ronnie Ross and many others used Conn’s as well as many modern day players. Perhaps its the style of projection, and large sound that Conn’s can produce. Regardless a lot of you out there love Conn’s as do I.

Well for us fans of the Conn, there is a new website and Instagram profile to enjoy. Its called “Connsortia” and has some great content. It has many photos of different engravings used on Conn saxophones, some of them stock, some of them incredible custom engravings of beautiful nature scenes or portraits. There are dozens of comparison photos of the famous “naked lady” or “lady face” engraving – I had no idea there was so much variety! There is a also a great deal of information about the master engravers. The site has other oddities like Billy True’s patented contraption to play 3 saxophones at once.

There are other sites out there too if you’d like to go down this rabbit hole (I do!), to learn about the history and see photos such as:
http://momie.org/cgconnartistengravedportraitinstruments.html
https://bassic-sax.info/pix/index.php?/category/369
http://saxpics.com/?v=man&manID=3

The Connsortia site is a sub-site of Getasax.com which is a reputable site that deals largely in vintage horns. Enjoy!

Baritonist Kevin Goss has a new album out. It features some great and varied baritone playing with mostly original compositions that pay homage to some of the baritone greats. Kevin is a very able saxophonist and one of several baritonists in Canada doing fine things.

To me his sound has a mix of Pepper Adams, with some Joe Temperley vibrato, but  a melodic intuition that is maybe more reminiscent of Mulligan. Overall its definitely worth a listen. So head on over to his bandcamp page to listen or pick up a copy:

https://kevingoss.bandcamp.com/releases

I’d like to thank Jorge Retamoza for sharing two new transcriptions to the repository. Two very different solos but both from two great baritonists.

First is a Gerry Mulligan solo from what I always thought was one of Gerry Mulligan’s more interesting albums. Its called “Close Your Eyes and Listen” and its from a collaborative album Mulligan made in the 70’s with Argentinian Tango master, Astor Piazzolla. The music is beautiful and the arrangements are excellent. There is some tinge of unfortunate 70’s era percussion and sounds but overall I think the album is beautiful and Mulligan’s lyrical playing worked really well with Piazzolla’s tango.

The second solo is a Pepper Adams solo. Its the title track from his album, “Urban Dreams”. Not much to add here other than its great to have another classic Pepper solo in the mix. Urban Dreams is one of the later recordings he made as a leader.

Head on over to the Transcriptions page and check them out.

The total download count for the Transcription repository has surpassed 300,000! That’s a lot of baritone solos! Looking  forward  to the  next 300,000!

-Andrew Hadro
Curator, JazzBariSax.com