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Highlife (Sonny Sharrock Album)
''Highlife'' is a studio album by American jazz guitarist Sonny Sharrock. It was recorded at Jersey City's Quantum Sound Studio in October 1990 and released later that same year by Enemy Records. Critical reception In a contemporary review for ''The Village Voice'', Robert Christgau gave ''Highlife'' an "A" and called it a "gorgeously straightforward guitar record" from someone whose musical principles reflect "a genius son" of Jimmy Smith and Jimi Hendrix. He said Sharrock expresses his themes in a dignified manner, with variation in timbre more so than in harmony, while committing to both cacophony and melody in his exploration of jazz and rock traditions. Christgau named it the sixth best album of the year in his list for the Pazz & Jop critics poll. In ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'', jazz critic Francis Davis hailed ''Highlife'' as "instrumental-pop at its most energetic and uncontrived". She felt the "vivacious" record was more "pop" than "jazz" but nonetheless a "persuasive ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Sonny Sharrock
Warren Harding "Sonny" Sharrock (August 27, 1940 – May 25, 1994) was an American jazz guitarist. His first wife was singer Linda Sharrock, with whom he recorded and performed. One of only a few prominent guitarists who participated in the first wave of free jazz during the 1960s, Sharrock was known for his heavily chorded attack, use of feedback, and distorted saxophone-like lines. His early work also features creative use of slide guitar. Biography Early life and career Sonny Sharrock was born Warren Harding Sharrock on August 27, 1940, in Ossining, New York. He began his musical career singing doo-wop in his teen years. He collaborated with Pharoah Sanders and Alexander Solla in the late 1960s, first appearing on Sanders's 1966 album '' Tauhid''. He made several appearances with flautist Herbie Mann and an uncredited appearance on Miles Davis' '' A Tribute to Jack Johnson''. Sharrock first wanted to play tenor saxophone after hearing John Coltrane on Davis' ''Kind of Blue ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Cacophony
Phonaesthetics (also spelled phonesthetics in North America) is the study of the beauty and pleasantness associated with the sounds of certain words or parts of words. The term was first used in this sense, perhaps by during the mid-20th century and derives . Speech sounds have many aesthetic qualities, some of which are subjectively regarded as ''euphonious'' (pleasing) or ''cacophonous'' (displeasing). Phonaesthetics remains a budding and often subjective field of study, with no scientifically or otherwise formally established definition; today, it mostly exists as a marginal branch of psychology, phonetics, or poetics. More broadly, the British linguist David Crystal has regarded phonaesthetics as the study of "phonaesthesia" (i.e., sound symbolism and phonesthemes): that not just words but even certain sound combinations carry meaning. For example, he shows that English speakers tend to associate unpleasantness with the sound ''sl-'' in such words as ''sleazy'', ''slime'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
John Coltrane
John William Coltrane (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist, bandleader and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the Jazz#Post-war jazz, history of jazz and 20th-century music. Born and raised in North Carolina, after graduating from high school Coltrane moved to Philadelphia, where he studied music. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of Modal jazz, modes and was one of the players at the forefront of free jazz. He led at least fifty recording sessions and appeared on many albums by other musicians, including trumpeter Miles Davis and pianist Thelonious Monk. Over the course of his career, Coltrane's music took on an increasingly spiritual dimension, as exemplified on his most acclaimed album ''A Love Supreme'' (1965) and others. Decades after his death, Coltrane remains influential, and he has received numerous posthumous awards, including a Pulitzer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Pharoah Sanders
Pharoah Sanders (born Ferrell Lee Sanders; October 13, 1940 – September 24, 2022) was an American jazz saxophonist. Known for his overblowing, harmonic, and multiphonic techniques on the saxophone, as well as his use of "sheets of sound", Sanders played a prominent role in the development of free jazz and spiritual jazz through his work as a member of John Coltrane's groups in the mid-1960s, and later through his solo work. He released more than thirty albums as a leader and collaborated extensively with vocalist Leon Thomas and pianist Alice Coltrane, among many others. Fellow saxophonist Ornette Coleman once described him as "probably the best tenor sax, tenor player in the world". Sanders' take on spiritual jazz was rooted in his inspiration from religious concepts such as ''karma'' and ''tawhid'', and his rich, meditative performance aesthetic. This style was seen as a continuation of Coltrane's work on albums such as ''A Love Supreme''. As a result, Sanders was considered ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Musical ensemble, bands. Initiated in 1991, the database was first made available on the Internet in 1994. AllMusic is owned by RhythmOne. History AllMusic was launched as ''All-Music Guide'' by Michael Erlewine, a "compulsive archivist, noted astrologer, Buddhist scholar, and musician". He became interested in using computers for his astrological work in the mid-1970s and founded a software company, Matrix, in 1977. In the early 1990s, as compact discs (CDs) replaced LP record, LPs and cassette (format), cassettes as the dominant format for recorded music, Erlewine purchased what he thought was a CD of early recordings by Little Richard. After buying it, he discovered it was a "flaccid latter-day rehash". Frustrated with the labeling, he res ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Penguin Books
Penguin Books Limited is a Germany, German-owned English publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers the Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year."About Penguin – company history" , Penguin Books. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths (United Kingdom), Woolworths and other stores for Sixpence (British coin), sixpence, bringing high-quality fiction and non-fiction to the mass market. Its success showed that large audiences existed for several books. It also affected modern British popular culture significantly through its books concerning politics, the arts, and science. Penguin Books is now an imprint (trad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Jazz Fusion
Jazz fusion (also known as jazz rock, jazz-rock fusion, or simply fusion) is a popular music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, amplifiers, and keyboards that were popular in rock began to be used by jazz musicians, particularly those who had grown up listening to rock and roll. Jazz fusion arrangements vary in complexity. Some employ groove-based vamps fixed to a single key or a single chord with a simple, repeated melody. Others use elaborate chord progressions, unconventional time signatures, or melodies with counter-melodies. These arrangements, whether simple or complex, typically include improvised sections that can vary in length, much like in other forms of jazz. As with jazz, jazz fusion can employ brass and woodwind instruments such as trumpet and saxophone, but other instruments often substitute for these. A jazz fusion band is less likely to use ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Brian Morton (Scottish Writer)
Brian Morton (born 1954) is a Scottish writer, journalist and former broadcaster, specialising in jazz and modern literature. Early life and education Born in Paisley, near Glasgow, and raised in Dunoon, Morton was educated at the University of Edinburgh and taught in the late 1970s at the University of East Anglia (under Malcolm Bradbury) and at the University of Tromsø in Norway. Writing and broadcasting From 1992 to 1997, Morton was the main presenter of ''Impressions''Brian Morton Penguin author page. . for , a fortnightly jazz and improvised music programme. For more than a decade Morton was a familiar voice on music programmes and features on other arts related subjects on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Richard Cook (journalist)
Richard David Cook (7 February 1957 – 25 August 2007) was a British jazz writer, magazine editor and former record company executive. Sometimes credited as R. D. Cook, Cook was born in Kew, Surrey, and lived in west London as an adult. A writer on music from the late 1970s until he died, Cook was co-author, with Brian Morton, of ''The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings'', which lasted for ten editions until 2010. His other books included ''Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia'', ''Blue Note Records: The Biographyand'', and ''It's About That Time: Miles Davis On and Off the Record''. Career Cook began as a staff writer for ''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') in the early 1980s. ''NME''s editor at the time, Neil Spencer, commented that he "would take on the pieces that the fashion-oriented shunned – a Roxy Music review, an audience with a fading star, a piece on the emergent sounds of Africa". He was later the jazz critic for ''The Sunday Times'' and a music writer for the ''N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
The Penguin Guide To Jazz
''The Penguin Guide to Jazz'' is a reference work containing an encyclopedic directory of jazz recordings on CD which were (at the time of publication) currently available in Europe or the United States. The first nine editions were compiled by Richard Cook and Brian Morton, two chroniclers of jazz resident in the United Kingdom. History The first edition was published in Britain by Penguin Books in 1992. Every subsequent two years, through 2010, a new edition was published with updated entries. The eighth and ninth editions, published in 2006 and 2008, respectively, each included 2,000 new CD listings. The title took on different forms over the lifetime of the work, as audio technology changed. The seventh edition was known as ''The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD'' while subsequent editions were titled ''The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings''. The earliest edition had the title ''The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, LP and Cassette''. Richard Cook died in 2007, prior to the com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Francis Davis
Francis John Davis (August 30, 1946 – April 14, 2025) was an American author and journalist known for having been the jazz critic for ''The Village Voice'' and a contributing editor for ''The Atlantic''. He also worked in radio and film, and taught courses on jazz and blues at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a 1994 recipient of the Pew Fellowships in the Arts. Background Francis John Davis was born in Philadelphia on August 30, 1946. He was raised in Southwest Philadelphia by his mother, who worked as a medical clerk, and his grandmother; he never knew his father. As a teenager, he worked part time at the Free Library of Philadelphia and graduated from John Bartram High School. He attended Temple University from 1964 to 1969. Career Davis worked as the jazz critic for ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' from 1978 to 1983. In 1987, when '' Fresh Air'' began broadcasting nationally with Gross as host, Davis served as the program's first jazz critic, hosting a weekly radio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
The Philadelphia Inquirer
''The Philadelphia Inquirer'', often referred to simply as ''The Inquirer'', is a daily newspaper headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded on June 1, 1829, ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' is the third-longest continuously operating daily newspaper in the United States. The newspaper has the largest circulation of any newspaper in both Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley metropolitan region, which includes Philadelphia and its surrounding communities in southeastern Pennsylvania, South Jersey, northern Delaware, and the northern Eastern Shore of Maryland. As of 2020, the newspaper has the 17th-largest circulation of any newspaper in the United States As of 2020, ''The Inquirer'' has won 20 Pulitzer Prizes. Several decades after its 1829 founding, ''The Inquirer'' began emerging as one of the nation's major newspapers during the American Civil War. Its circulation dropped after the Civil War's conclusion, but it rose again by the end of the 19th century. Originally sup ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
