Jazz and Blues

Bassist and composer Evan Flory-Barnes is the Featured Seattle Artist at this year's Earshot Jazz Festival and is playing six concerts at various locations during the festival, each with a different ensemble and distinct music.  

Here’s a perfect example of a song that changed with the times, and was at the cutting edge of those changes.

Drummer and singer Rabon Tarrant recorded “Blues With a Feeling” in 1947, a time when big band swing music was in transition to rock and roll. This version straddles both genres with the beat of rock and roll, but the more jazzy instrumentation of piano, sax and trumpet.

The drums known as timbales are yet another example of the uniquely Cuban inclination to mix European instrumentation with African rhythms.  Timbales fuel Cuban dances like the Danzón and the Mambo, and are widely used in Salsa music, Latin jazz and rock.

It’s no wonder that pianist, Bill Charlap, loves the music that has come to be called The Great American Songbook—the songs of great Tin Pan Alley composers such as Jerome Kern, George Gershwin and Irving Berlin.  

He grew up with it. 

Pianist Sumi Tonooka was born in Philadelphia and has spent most of her career playing, touring and recording while based on the East Coast.  On this week's Jazz Northwest, she talks with Jim Wilke about her development as a musician and how and why she recently moved to Seattle.  

If I had to pick one person to represent Delta blues at the peak of its expression, it would be Robert Johnson.

Saying that he was a superlative guitar player, impassioned singer and masterful lyricist seems barely adequate to convey the importance of the work he accomplished in his 27 years. Many of his songs became not only blues standards but would be a huge influence on rock music.