Five new composers bring jazzleadsheets.com to 1000 songs!

jazzleadsheets.com now has one thousand songs available! Bringing us to that number are eleven songs by five newly added composers, covering a wide range of styles and dates.

Two of these composers are tenor saxophonists who have sometimes been overlooked because they spent most of their careers playing in big bands; each recorded only one LP as a leader. Tenor saxophonist Frank Socolow, whose centennial is coming up later this year, worked with both swing and bebop bands. His album "Sounds By Socolow" contains his only three recorded compositions. The blues Farfel, the "rhythm changes" head Miss Feingold, and Little Joe (based on Charlie Parker's Confirmation) are all bright-toned medium-up swingers in a "cool school" style. A condensed score is available for the sextet arrangement of Farfel. Eric Dixon, best known for his work with Count Basie, is represented by two songs which were originally arranged for the Basie band. The bouncy medium-up Wash was only recorded in a big-band setting, but our lead sheet shows it works as a combo song as well. Blues For Ilean, written by Dixon for his wife, is a hip blues head in the Basie style, with a two-chorus "shout" section; we have a concert condensed score and parts for the sextet arrangement from Dixon's own album.

Two more composers are trumpeters who have had extremely eclectic, ambitious careers as both players and composers. Michael Philip Mossman is perhaps best known for his writing and playing with a variety of modern jazz and Latin big bands. O.T.B. is his first recorded song, from an album by the Blue Note all-star sextet Out Of The Blue. It's a hard-swinging shuffle in an Art Blakey vein; condensed score and parts are available. The other newly added trumpeter/composer is Randy Sandke, an utterly unique musician whose work often connects the farthest reaches of both early jazz and the avant-garde. From his debut album "New York Stories", we have the impressionistic Bix's Place and the stately ballad Elegy For Albert. The former has a condensed score and second parts for the recorded quintet arrangement.

Our last new composer is Lewis Nash, one of modern jazz's most in-demand drummers. We have three of his compositions. 106 Nix is a charming stop-time blues head with a piano harmony line shown in our piano part. Sabaku, a bossa, also begins with stop-time but with an irregular form. Finally we have Skeeter Blues, a bebop-style blues head which was recorded both by Nash and by violinist Regina Carter. We have lead sheets that reflect both versions, as well as a video in which Nash details how he would play the melody on the drums.

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