Yahoo! Radish

High-quality MP3s for your downloading pleasure. All jazz tracks.

Akiko Tsuruga
“Meanie Queenie” (mp3)
“DLG” (mp3)
from “Sweet and Funky”
(18th & Vine)


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Albert Ayler Quartet
“Angels” (mp3)
from “The Hilversum Session”
(ESP Disk)

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Gero
“Costa Del Sol” (mp3)
from “Déjà Vu”
(Karmatronic Sound Mgmt, LLC)

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Jackson Moore
“Alto Duet” (mp3)
from “Duos”
(Aletheia Records)

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Jeremy Pelt
“Suspicion” (mp3)
from “Identity”
(MAXJAZZ)

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Jodie Borlé
“Round” (mp3)
from “And Then I Did…”
(C4 Records)

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Mulgrew Miller
“Song For Darnell” (mp3)
from “Live at The Kennedy Center Volume Two”
(MAXJAZZ)

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Preservation Hall Jazz Band
“Complicated Life” (mp3)
from “Made in New Orleans: The Hurricane Sessions”
(Preservation Hall)

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Sathima Bea Benjamin
“If You Were The Only Boy In The World” (mp3)
from “Cape Town Love”
(Ekapa RPM)

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The Shook/Russo Trio
“Sweet Begonia” (mp3)
from “Introducing the FAB Trio”
(Summit Records)

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 In the last two years I’ve become a bigger fan of jazz than I thought possible. I find myself turning to the genre more each month than I had previously. It used to be that I listened to jazz in an intellectual sense only. Meaning, I focused on the technical brilliance required to perform this great American art form. A couple of years ago I had an epiphany, and jazz started to capture my emotions as well as my brain. I am not sure what triggered it except the fact that I started listening to more jazz via subscription music services. Having the freedom to listen without the worry of a bad purchase certainly played a large part in my “re-education”. Currently, jazz makes up a paltry 3% of record sales and it still amazes me that a jazz artist who spends a lifetime mastering their craft will never see album sales anywhere close to a corporate pop star. Will subscription services turn large numbers of music fans onto jazz? Probably not, but it played a big part for me, and hopefully there are more like me. A life without the joy this music can bring is a nightmare I don’t wish to ponder.  I did a search yesterday for “Greatest Jazz Albums” to poke around for playlist ideas, and came across Larry Jackstien’s homepage. Larry is a “prominent jazz musician, concert producer, fanatical CD collector and jazz fan. In addition, he also serves as Managing Director of Sales and Marketing for Snowbird Ski and Summer Resort, located near Salt Lake City, Utah”. Luckily for us, Larry has taken the liberty to list the “Best Jazz Albums of the Past 50 Years” on his site. This list currently includes 529 albums. It’s a treasure trove for those wishing to discover the best jazz ever recorded. This playlist contains a single track from only 40 of Larry’s picks. But at almost 5 hours, it’s a great start for the burgeoning jazz fan. Hopefully, you’ll find yourself going back to Larry’s page again and again. 

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Play I know it’s wrong, but I can’t help myself from feeling elated with the prospect of a dead, or dying, Fidel Castro. Although I know it’s dastardly to wish death on anyone, I also know that a dead Castro could lead to the fall of the communist regime in Cuba. In addition to freedom for the Cuban people, the collapse would also mean the removal of sanctions, and that means legal Cuban cigars, but more importantly, Cuba would be a new vacation option. The island would quickly move somewhere near the top of my vacation wish list. And to get myself ready for the prospect of enjoying that future Cuban vacation, I’ve built this playlist. It includes over 3 hours of the very best Afro-Cuban tracks I could scrape up on Yahoo Music Unlimited. As a variant of Latin Jazz, Afro-Cuban Jazz includes salsa, merengue, songo, son, mambo, and cha cha cha. It became popular in the late 1950’s and speaks to both the head and the feet. If you’re dreaming of a vacation in Cuba, this playlist is a must, and if you’re not, this playlist may change your mind.

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Play  The 1930’s were years marked by worldwide suffering caused by the great depression. About two months before the clock struck midnight on January 1, 1930, black Thursday happened. The great Wall Street crash of ‘29 ushered in an economic depression that would last most of the decade and the Dow Jones Industrial Average would not return to it’s pre-crash levels for 25 years. The 30’s were a time of pain and hardship and a period that would see nations march into yet another world war. However, one of the cultural benefits was the amount of great music produced in the 10 years between 1929 and 1940. Music experienced a boom during the 1930’s, in part, because musicians could draw on the creative energy created by hard times and partly because audiences were hungry to escape the dim realities of life. This energy between artist and audience sparked a creative explosion that gave us some of the most memorable songs ever written. This playlist contains 95 of these classic standards as performed by a diverse cross-section of jazz artists that span the last 75 years. From early jazz pioneers like Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, to golden age legends like Coltrane and Monk, to classic crooners like Sinatra, Bennett and Mel Torme, to modern day torch singers like Norah Jones and Diana Krall. This 6+ hour playlist provides an excellent overview of not only the music of the 1930’s, but a glimpse into how these timeless tracks have been interpreted over the years.

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Play It! Here’s a great Jazz playlist created by someone who knows Jazz. Nine time Grammy award winner, Wynton Marsalis. His celebrity playlist includes the giants: Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Booker Little, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie and more.

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Play It! The arrival of Wynton Marsalis on the scene in 1979 was the beginning of a renaissance in jazz that was to involve a reappraisal of the acoustic jazz tradition that had been left stranded with few exceptions in the late ’60s and ’70s, when fusion and the avant-garde held sway. [more]

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Play It! A remix is an alternate mix of a song different from the original version, made using the techniques of audio editing. It may incorporate elements of dance music and is often used to create an upbeat version of a song for playing by disc jockeys in nightclubs. This playlist features remixes of Jazz greats like Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Nina Simone, Cal Tjader, Billie Holiday, Archie Shepp, Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker, George Benson and more.

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Play It! Man, I’ll tell ya what. Sometimes you just have to turn off the rock and roll and kick back with some cool piano jazz. This radish is just the ticket if you’re with me on that. Bill Evans, Vince Guaraldi, Chick Corea, Thelonious Monk, The Bad Plus, George Shearing, The Dave Brubeck Quartet, Ramsey Lewis, Oscar Peterson and more.

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Play It! Of the top 10 Jazz albums currently on the Billboard Jazz Album chart, Yahoo Music Unlimited has 9 of them. This playlist features all of these in order, starting with the current number one, It’s Time by Michael Buble. Be sure to check out the new release by Elvis Costello and The Metropole Orkest titled My Flame Burns Blue and if you haven’t heard it, the Thelonious Monk Quartet With John Coltrane album At Carnegie Hall, is an absolute gem of a recording made in 1957, but only recently discovered.

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Play It! The Canadian born, Oscar Peterson, played with just about everyone who was anyone in the jazz world in the course of his career. An amazing soloist, he could also fill oceans of space with his tasteful left hand chord coverage. This is what made him uniquely suited for small trio settings. Throw legendary bass player, Ray Brown, into the mix and you’ve got something truly priceless. Hat Tip: Pantagruel

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Play It! Leon “Bix” Beiderbecke grew up with an amazing natural ear for music. He taught himself to play cornet and piano but never learned how to read music. In between getting kicked out of military school and drinking so much prohibited alcohol that he died, Bix had six years of productivity before he died in 1931 at age twenty-eight. Known for his beautiful improvisation and his solid tone, he made a huge splash on the hot music scene. Hat Tip: Pantagruel

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Play It! Miles’ music continues to grow in its beauty, subtlety and sheer magnificence. Bitches’ Brew is a further extension of the basic idea he investigated in his two previous albums, Filles De Kilimanjaro and In A Silent Way. In a larger sense, however, the record is yet another step in the unceasing process of evolution Miles has undergone since the Forties. The man never stops to rest on his accomplishments. Driven forward by a creative elan unequaled in the history of American music, he incorporates each successive triumph into the next leap forward. [more] -Langdon Winner, Rolling Stone, May, 28 1970

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