Born: December 12, 1943, Buffalo, New York, U.S.Died: December 17, 1999, Manhattan, New York, U.S. (Age 56) This year marks 22-years since the sudden passing of Grover Washington Jr. I’ve written many times about Grover in the past[1]Grover Washington Jr. – Creed Taylor Produced (ctproduced.com), especially my 2020 remembrance tribute […]
My Career, My Music, My Sidemen – ‘Bijou’ and Philly
I’ve written about Grover Washington Jr. numerous times[1]Grover Washington Jr. – Creed Taylor Produced (ctproduced.com), including on his born-day in 2020. In that article I pulled together various threads to document how Grover got his chance to record for and be produced by Creed Taylor. This article originally appeared in […]
Dr Smith Has Left The House
Success takes the right people, with the right skills, at the right time and the right place. You can’t copy or replicate success. And so it was that in 1965, having left Jack McDuff’s Quartet, George Benson set out on his own. Benson hired Buffalo NY native, Lonnie Smith to […]
Farewell, But Not Goodbye, Doc Gibbs
The last few weeks have bought sad news of the passing of more people from the jazz world. Of course all the major websites and even traditional news outlets covered the death of legendary jazz elder, George Wein. Many also covered the loss of George Mraz, double bass, and occasional […]
Remembering Grover Washington, Jr.
Just 5-days after celebrating his 56th birthday, Grover had a heart attack in the green room, after performing and recording four songs for “The Saturday Early Show”, at CBS Studios in New York City. He was pronounced dead at 7:30pm that day, December 17th, 1999, St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New […]
The Grover Washington Birthday Playlist
Playlist and notes for Happy Born Day: Grover Washington, Jr. – Creed Taylor Produced (ctproduced.com) # Title Artist Notes Time 1 Who Is Sylvia Johnny Hammond Recorded just a month after Grover’s “Inner City Blues” album, and before the album was released, Washington was again sideman to Hammond for his […]
Happy Born Day: Grover Washington, Jr.
Unusually, I have two audio tracks to celebrate Grover Washington’s birthday. A full mix of tracks that Grover played on, I tried to pick less well known tracks rather than the GWJ classics. At the end of the post is retrospective by Christian McBride, show host of WBGO Jazz 88.3FM‘s […]
Record Store Day 2020 – dot.next
Record Store Day 2020 turned into three days due to Covid-19, and a fourth day is coming. Black Friday 2020 is November 27th. Currently there are some 133 releases scheduled for that day, including a few of interest. The releases are the usual spread of old tracks never released, tracks […]
On This Day: Mr Magic run ends
The October 23rd, 1975 issue of Jet Magazine was the last to list Grover Washington, Jr “Mister Magic” as #1 in their Soul Brother Jazz chart. The album had been #1 in their jazz chart for a remarkable 3-months. It first entered their chart in the August 15th issue, and […]
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 […]