Chris Connor died August 29th, 2009. Chris was the first of Creed Taylor’s production career and became a major success. Taylor and Connor would never work together after both leaving Bethlehem in 1956. Remarkably, Chris and Creed were both in their twenties at the time. Those Bethlehem releases were never marked, “produced by Creed Taylor” but it would eventually happen […]
Remembering Rudy Van Gelder
Rudy Van Gelder died August 25th, 2016. Rudy was as responsible for the CTI/KUDU sound, the sound of Creed Taylor’s “new jazz”, as anyone. Rudy didn’t play the instruments, he didn’t decide of the tracks, he didn’t do the arrangements, and the style of play, and overall sound wasn’t Rudy. He did though make sure that he captured every moment […]
One Night With Blue Note
Strictly not a Creed Taylor produced effort, but a tribute to Blue Note founders, Alfred Lion, Max Margulis, and Francis Wolff. Notwithstanding that, the recordings here were recovered from laserdiscs, and feature many artists, both leaders and sidemen that were signed to, or performed for CTI, including Freddie Hubbard, Ron Carter, Kenny Burrell, Grover Washington Jr, and many more. As […]
Happy Born Day – Bill Evans
A guest post by @Jazzman1108 on Instagram. Downbeat Hall of Fame pianist, composer and leader, jazz icon William “Bill” John Evans (August 16, 1929 – September 15, 1980) was born on this date in 1929. With the passage of time, Evans has become an entire school unto himself for pianists and a singular mood unto himself for listeners. There is […]
CTI on TV: Grover Washington, Jr.
Just a short post for this week to share this video. Thanks for the clue to the appearnce John. Grover Washington, Jr. Plays “In A Secret Place” the title song to his sixth and final studio album as a leader for CTI/KUDU, not including his 1977 album“Live At The Bijou”. Washington would return to CTI later in his career, as […]
Remembering Esther Phillips
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 […]
Spotify Does CTI
I’ve become a recent convert to Spotify, thanks to my Wife, and there are some great CTI Playlists on Spotify. My music collection spans some 4,500 albums, approximately two thirds are vinyl, of what’s left are of mix of CD’s and digital music MP3’s bought mostly from Amazon Music. I also have a home streaming music service, based on the […]
On This Day: Black Out
(You can play Black Out while you read, via one of these streaming services. Youtube Music is free, but is ad-supported) My enthusiasm for CTI, and all things Creed Taylor was driven by two amazing websites put together by jazz historian and CTI enthusiast Douglas Payne. A few years ago, I was fortunate to make contact with Doug, and while […]
On This Day: Motown Distribution
It was reported on October 13th 1974, Creed and his team had been convinced either through challenges with their own distribution, or by promises of greater sales, to form a distribution deal with Motown Records. What turned to be a short term deal, lasting only a couple of years had long term ramifications for both companies. As noted when CTI […]