Category: Transcriptions

New Transcription Roundup

I don’t always post when there’s a new transcription now that we have over 150, but there have been a few recent entries I want to highlight.

First a neat (and fast!) Bruce Johnstone solo from a Maynard Ferguson album on the song “Superbone Meets the Badman”. Thanks to Mattew Stevenson for this one.

There’s also a new Ronnie Cuber transcription on his tune, Passion Fruit. Giovanni Contri provided this one.

And lastly, and maybe most interestingly we have our first Bob Gordon solos care of Zachary Spondike! Bob Gordon is a very under-represented baritonist with an unfortunately short career but could play the hell out of the baritone. He died awfully young in a car accident, but the recordings we have are excellent. These two transcriptions – one on “Have You Met Miss Jones” and one on “Dot’s Groovy” both come from an album with Jack Montrose. You can read what Jack wrote about Bob Gordon on his page here.

Head to the Transcriptions Repository to grab these new solos, and enjoy them.

2 New Transcriptions, and a huge milestone!

There are two recent transcriptions added to the repository – Bastian Contreras delivered Pepper Adams‘ Falling in Love with Love from a Red Garland album, and an alternate transcription of Cecil Payne‘s solo on ‘Bringing Up Father’ from the album, ‘Patterns in Jazz’ care of Guillaume Orti. Head over to the page to have a look!

We now have over 150 transcriptions, for free, in the repository. And possibly more impressive – there are now over 500,000 downloads!

But possibly most importantly  – as of January 2024, this website has been online for 25 years! Head to the About page to read the history.

New Ronnie Cuber Transcription

Ronnie Cuber passed away a year ago. So its a nice little tribute to be able to add a new solo transcription of one of his classic solos over a blues. This one is Benny’s Back from George Benson’s Cookbook album. A great album featuring a young and fiery Ronnie Cuber. To my ear he’s really channeling a lot of Leo Parker here.

Head on over to the Transcriptions page to download and have a play through yourself.

New Leo Parker Transcription! and Leo related news..

Thanks to Aidan Sears we have our first new transcription addition in a while! Aidan sent in a chorus of blues from Leo Parker on the riff blues, “Leo Leaps In”, a short but incredibly joyous solo from a great album, “Back to Back Baritones”. Head over to the transcription repository to get a copy.

I’m sure you all have heard about the passing of the great Ronnie Cuber. Ronnie once told me in a lesson that he couldn’t listen to Leo Parker anymore because he would copy it so much! Incidentally the great baritonists, Jason Marshall and Frank Basile will be playing two nights this weekend to celebrate Ronnie Cuber at Cafe Bohemia in NYC – Friday and Saturday I believe. Both Jason and Frank are huge fans of Leo Parker and Frank has done quite a bit of work documenting all Leo Parker recordings.

In other Leo news, Leo P (not to be confused with the aforementioned Leo Parker) has won the 87th annual DownBeat Magazine Readers’ poll. I’m sure this will grind some people’s gears as Leo P doesn’t play strictly jazz and attracts a young following as much from his outfits, hair , and dancing as he does for his playing. I personally find his music a bit monotonous, but I am thrilled that a lot of young people find interest in acoustic music and instruments through him. Leo P is a fine baritonist and actually should get credit for incorporating some extended techniques into his playing in a very approachable way. Also we can hope that anyone that gets interested in the baritone through him will also branch out to other realms of the baritone and further inspiration found therein. So congratulations to Leo P, anyone hearing him for the first time should also definitely check out his main inspiration, the late great, Ronnie Cuber.

New Mulligan Transcription – Straight No Chaser

A new transcription has just been added to the transcription repository – and its a bit of a strange one. This transcription comes to us from Erik Robisch, thank you!

Gerry Mulligan fans will probably know of the album that features him and Thelonious Monk. Two seemingly very different players with different approaches, and boy does that show on this album. Monk being famously fond of dissonance and jagged lines and Mulligan opting for linear consonant melodies. I think its a safe assumption that this was a record company’s idea of ‘put two big names together and profit’ and thus I’m not sure the music was at the forefront of the intention here.

There’s a quote from mulligan that goes something like ‘playing with Monk’s comping is like falling down an elevator shaft’ or something to that effect. I think this is probably true in the best of circumstances, but listening to this album I can’t help but think that Monk is just intentionally messing with and vibing Mulligan. For example on the track where this transcription comes from, Monk plays a chorus of the head (Mulligan noodles) plays the head again with Mulligan, comps for 2 choruses then just lays out for the rest of Mulligan’s solo and the bass solo to boot. Mulligan did very little to interact or acknowledge Monk’s comping. After the bass solo, Mulligan tries to noodle a bit behind the piano solo but seems to give up and they just take the head out. An odd album – but if you’re interested in hearing what Mulligan does over the blues, head to the transcription repository and download yourself a copy. Have a listen down below.

2 More Pepper Adams Transcriptions!

Continuing with the recent theme of Pepper Adams (appropriate since his birthday was recently) there are two new transcriptions in the repository thanks to Noah Pettibon! More Pepper Adams news coming soon too.

The first is on the classic Monk blues “Straight, No Chaser” from a live TV broadcast in Sweden, and the second is from the great album “Jazzmen Detroit”. Enjoy them both below!