Wednesday, December 08, 2010

Stoner with Strings

In the late '70s-early '80s, whenever I burned out on Detroit rock radio for the day (usually shortly after sundown), I would slide down to WJZZ (105.9 FM) and stay there until they drove me away with Manhattan Transfer or Al Jarreau.

Most of that old WJZZ playlist, as I remember it anyway, is well-represented on the new box set CTI Records: The Cool Revolution, which I picked up yesterday.

Creed Taylor, Inc. was as well known for striking album covers as it was for producing commercially-successful music that pissed jazz purists off.

Check out the blogger at the link for more of the story; or, if you just want to feel as cool and adult as Stoner did for minutes at a time at age seventeen, pick up a copy of Kenny Burrell's "God Save The Child" and give it a listen after dark.

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1 comment:

rocky dennis said...

Yeah, CTI was The jazz label of the 70s. It's too bad the collection doesn't include Hubbard's "Straight Life", one of the greatest jazz performances ever. My ears blister every time I hear it. I imagine as a jazz fan you already have the album.

I'm beginning to realize that disco wasn't a threat to rock music. Rock did just fine, but R&B (or what some people call soul) and jazz never recovered completely.