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Which Instruments are used in Jazz Music?

10th October 2019

As with all different genres of music, Jazz music tends to use a certain selection of instruments, known for blending that perfect jazz-style sound that has made the jazz genre so popular and well loved. Jazz is certainly known for a specific sound and style – and that’s what makes the music so well loved. 

However, because the genre of jazz music is so flexible and unpredictable, it’s a genre that generally tends to be quite experimental with instrument choices. This means that a lot of modern jazz try to vary their instrumental choices – saying that though, there does tend to be a few instruments that feature in the majority of jazz bands, so we’ll discuss these below in more detail. 

Jazz Musicians
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‘Ike’s Last Hurrahs’

23rd April 2019

Accounts of his short life usually stress he made a promising start to his career as a saxophonist, for in his early years he recorded on numerous occasions and became a principal soloist with the Cab Calloway Orchestra.  The second period of his career, which covers most of the 1950s, is seen as a bleak battle with a heroin addiction, few well paid jobs and few recording opportunities. Third, and finally, there is a golden sunset, where our saxophonist was able to make recordings and gave performances that showed him at his best.  Of course, real lives are never this simple or so neatly compartmentalised, and Ike Quebec’s was no doubt more complicated than this brief summary suggests, but I also suspect that most who knew Ike would recognise him from the picture we have painted.

Ike Quebec

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Jug – Gene Ammons

19th February 2019

“When I heard (Gene) Ammons play that saxophone, I knew that I was going to become a saxophone player.  There was no doubt in my mind about it.”
Johnny Griffin

“His big sound and driving beat established him as one of the giants of modern jazz saxophone.”
Leonard Feather and Ira Gitler

In August 1947 Albert Ammons, whose business card read, “Albert C. Ammons – King of Boogie Woogie”, went into a Chicago studio to record for the Mercury label.  As he had done off-and-on during his career, Ammons would be recording with a group named as ‘Albert Ammons and His Rhythm Kings’, and guitarist, Ike Perkins, and bassist, Israel Crosby, who were part of the ‘Rhythm Kings’ when the group first recorded in 1936, would be part of the 1947 ensemble. But the twenty-two year-old tenor saxophonist was new to the group.  The tenor player was Albert’s son, Gene.

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…and finally ‘Lotus Blossom’

19th April 2018

I travelled with a young saxophonist who had never seen the great man before. The journey was uneventful and we arrived on time at Preston railway station. Then we made our way to Preston’s Guild Hall for the second concert of the evening. In a foyer we came across a large crowd of people facing closed doors that led into the auditorium. The doors were manned by a number of ushers and security staff. Word quickly spread that the start of the first of the evening’s concerts had been delayed and that the first concert would end in about thirty or forty minutes. As a result, the second house would be starting late. The ushers and security staff, more than willing to try to explain what had caused the delay, went through the foyer chatting to groups and answering our questions.

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The Duke, Hawk and maybe Lorenzo

23rd March 2018

According to John Chilton, despite all the musicians who met up at the recording studio on that August afternoon being “hard bitten veterans who had made thousands of records between them”, nevertheless the occasion “seemed special”.  This was going to be no ordinary recording session; it would involve two musical legends who, or so they insisted, had been intending to get together for decades. But record producer Bob Thiele had finally made it happen.  The date was 18th August, 1962.

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‘Jaws’

23rd February 2018

“I didn’t buy an instrument for the sake of the music…I wanted the instrument for what it represented. By watching musicians I saw that they drank, they smoked, they got all the broads and they didn’t get up early in the morning.  That attracted me.  My next move was to see who got the most attention, so it was between the tenor saxophonist and the drummer.  The drums looked like too much work, so I said I’ll get one of those tenor saxophones.  That’s the truth.”

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