Email Author Francis Davis

2005 Stories by Francis Davis

• Illicit Cherry For Sale on the Dark Side of the Web, We're Not Telling Where

  published May 10, 2005

  The pope's car, Britney Spears's home pregnancy test, a grilled cheese sandwich bearing the image of the Virgin Mary, stolen credit cards, guns,... More >>

• Free Again

  published April 12, 2005

  The French were smitten with bebop after hearing Dizzy Gillespie's big band in 1948. Their first exposure to free jazz came after a... More >>

• An After-the-Fact Transitional Figure Shows the Way With His Horn

  published April 12, 2005

  Trombonist Grachan Moncur III recorded two albums of his own compositions for Blue Note in the 1960s and appeared as a sideman on two by Jackie... More >>

• Avant-Gardist Makes the Most of Eclecticism, Passion, and Restraint

  published April 12, 2005

  Every record collection should include at least one version of "Tico Tico," and have I got a goodie for you—ripping, dramatic, and only... More >>

• Resist Labels, Reverse Roles

  published March 15, 2005

  Dave Douglas and Dave Holland are among the latest to start their own imprints, a current trend in jazz with roots in the 1950s, when Dizzy... More >>

• Another Former Micro is Heard Angling and Chuckling

  published March 15, 2005

  Thelonious Monk believed a song was only as good as its bridge: "For the outside to sound good, you've got to make the inside sound good," he once... More >>

• Like Father, Like Son, Though the Resemblance Isn't Identical

  published March 15, 2005

  A somewhat overlooked gift of John Coltrane's was his ability (even more so than most jazz icons) to mesmerize lay audiences, who could get off on... More >>

• Version-A-Ning

  published February 15, 2005

  Last summer, a gifted young pianist and composer sent me and everyone else in his address book an e-mail urging us to show up for a concert he... More >>

• Young Pianist Jason Moran Plays the Blues—But Conceptually, of Course

  published February 15, 2005

  Jason Moran does a bit of versioning on Same Mother. The centerpiece of the young pianist's "blues" album is his version of Albert King's... More >>

• Guy With Ponytail Celebrates America's Bard—Selflessly

  published February 15, 2005

  You can't be too careful with Walt Whitman, or maybe you can. In reading him aloud, much less setting him to music, he can come off sounding like... More >>

• Old School

  published January 18, 2005

  Inasmuch as subcultures have a way of first surfacing via oddball chart hits, novelty and innovation can amount to the same thing in pop. Itself... More >>

• Artie Shaw

  published January 18, 2005

  Ever the iconoclast, Artie Shaw lent his name to a ghost band while he was still alive. That was in 1984, 30 years after he put away his clarinet... More >>

• A Suitably Pyrotechnic Revisitation of Coltrane's Signature Testimony

  published January 18, 2005

  Released on both audio and video in one package, Branford Marsalis's live version of A Love Supreme gets it right. Coltrane's four-part... More >>