Esther Phillips died 34-years ago today, on August 7th, 1984, aged just 48. Esther lead a storied, and troubled life. Aged just 13, Esther Mae Jones won an amateur talent contest in 1949 at the Barrelhouse Club in Los Angeles, owned by Johnny Otis. That started an on, off troubled working relationship between Otis and “Little Esther”. Over the next […]
CTI Artists on TV
Enjoy two great live performances from artists from CTI. Both comes from VHS tapes I managed to buy from ebay. I was hoping to avoid getting into converting VHS tapes, as they are often more trouble than they are worth. On the full length video of the 1976 awards, George Benson performs his hit “Breezin’” but his years of work […]
Happy Birthday Lonnie Smith
The doctor is in the house! Today is Lonnie Smith’s birthday, born July 3rd, 1942, for those that are counting, that makes Lonnie a tender 78 years old. I have a special place in my music pantheon for Lonnie, his track, Afrodesia was a dance floor classic in 1975 London. Lonnie’s only leader album for Creed Taylor was the 1971, […]
On This Day: Boscov’s, Reading PA
OTD: March 7th, 1974, Boscov’s department store, Americas largest family owned dept. store, was discounting their entire stock of CTI and Kudu albums. They ran this advert in the Reading Eagle that day. It would have been a great day to buy at 2020 $ values 🙂 I bought a few of these new in the UK, mostly from Hearsay […]
Happy Birthday – David Matthews
In 1975, Dave was playing Monday nights at the Five Spot cafe in New York, with a 12-piece combo band, when Creed Taylor offered him a position as house arranger for CTI. Dave would work for CTI as Chief arranger through until 1978, and record both modern jazz and some of the CTI jazz funk, disco classics. I’ll spend more […]
Happy Birthday – Ron Carter
Ron Carter is the a 4x nominated, 2x Grammy Award winner; The Guinness World record acknowledged most recorded bassist of all time; A National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master; a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the Music Department of City College of New York, having taught there for 20 years, and received an honorary Doctorate from the Berklee College of […]
Baddest – Grover Washington, Jr.
Baddest likely took its lead and title from earlier CTI albums, “The Baddest Hubbard” and “The Baddest Turrentine” and was the last in the line. Right at the point where the CTI Records was struggling financially, and Washington was leaving the label for Motown, a temporary stop before settling at Electra. His first Motown release, “Reed Seed” was as a […]