Art Blakey

Dropping into Moanin’ after The Sidewinder and Somethin’ Else feels like stepping into a room where the lights have just been dimmed and someone cracked a window for the night air. It’s still unmistakably a Van Gelder space—dark background, crisp outlines, the sense that each musician has been carved into the air with careful hands—but here the edges feel a touch more defined than on the Adderley record. You can …

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Announcing a new approach my listening: a monthly playlist of related albums that I will listen to and write about, discussing cultural connections, impressions, and backgrounds: I’ll tag this series. It’ll provide me with a focus each month, so I’ll know what I’m listening to throughout half the month, anyway. I’ll begin this experiment with a modest-sized list, say around ten albums, and go from there. I figure a …

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