Multi-talented pianist, composer, arranger and producer Bob James was a veteran of CTI and his own Tappan Zee label when he signed with Warner Bros. Records in 1986. At the time, the label boasted such crossover-jazz artists as fellow former CTI All Star George Benson, the Yellowjackets, Al Jarreau, Randy Crawford, Michael Franks and David…
Revisiting “The Chicago Theme” – Hubert Laws (1975)
In May 1975, CTI Records released jazz flautist’s Hubert Laws’s album The Chicago Theme. Advance copies of the record immediately attracted the attention of New York-area DJs, who dug in to disc’s first cut, its title track. “The most talked-about new record this week,” wrote Vince Aletti in his May 17, 1975, Record World column…
Empire Jazz (1980)
Empire Jazz was part of an extensively-targeted multi-media marketing blitz by 20th Century Fox, the distributor of the 1980 Star Wars sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, and RSO, the record label that originally released composer John Williams’s double-disc soundtrack album from the film. RSO, which stands for the Robert Stigwood Organization, it should be remembered,…
Eliot Tiegel on Freddie Hubbard’s “Windjammer” (1976)
By way of introduction, I must confess that I am a long-time superfan and champion of Freddie Hubbard’s woefully-derided 1976 album Windjammer. Hubbard, fronting a group of familiar-sounding studio cats, is at the top of his game here, blowing beautifully over Bob James’s electric charts. Everything clicks here, with the possible exception of the regrettable…
Alexander Zonjic with Bob James
Surprisingly, for anybody who knows the music of Canadian-born Alexander Zonjic (b. 1951), the classical and smooth-jazz flautist began his musical life as a rock guitarist. Zonjic purchased his first flute for all of nine dollars and soon became something of a prodigy on the woodwind instrument. Growing up in Windsor, Ontario, Zonjic eventually relocated…
Making Spirits Bright – 2024
Looking back over 2024 brought to mind a joke from the great animated TV series “Archer”: “That got dark.” But there was nothing funny about so much of what happened this year. The smiles all but disappeared. So, why not go in to the holiday season with music that can bring back some of the…