Bobby Jaspar

• Get low with these bass features

  The bass player is very important in all these new compositions, so they also add to our growing Bass Corner repertoire.

  Both Bass-ment by Kenny Drew and The Fuzz by Bobby Jaspar feature the bass playing the melody. Important bass lines that hold the whole arrangement together are found in Bill Hardman’s Jazz Messengers classic Politely and Bobby Watson’s Lemoncello.

  Bertha Hope’s Book’s Bok starts with the bass doubling the melody with the piano, and then moves into an important rhythmic accompaniment line. Bertha’s solo piano arrangement is available, as is a recording of it by pianist Glenn Zaleski.

  Drummer Billy Drummond’s opening 7/4 bass line had been going over in his head for quite some time before the rest of his composition Dubai came to him. As Billy is one of the gifted drummers who is included in our Drum Corner, we explore both a transcription of his playing behind the melody sections and his soloing over the ending bass line vamp. We also have some 7/4 exercises and groove patterns available.

  Check out this video of Billy talking about and playing Dubai! Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more exclusive interviews of composers sharing their perspectives as well as tutorials and performances.
  

• New June 17, 2011

  NEWS from jazzleadsheets.com June 17, 2011

  We get quite a few orders from European musicians. European artists have certainly contributed greatly to the jazz world over the years, so I decided it would be fun to bring you two Belgian artists/composers from different generations, Bobby Jaspar and Jeanfrançois Prins.

  Flute Bob by Belgian-born flutist Bobby Jaspar, who was active in the 1950s and who recorded with American jazz legends JJ Johnson, Kenny Burrell, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Chet Baker, etc.

  My Main Man by Jeanfrançois Prins, Belgian-born guitarist, composer, producer, educator, active today in Europe and in the US.

  Two compositions by well-known artists, established composers at jazzleadsheets.com: Benji’s Bounce by Dexter Gordon and Afrodisia by Kenny Dorham.

  And a new composer and brilliant artist who played for a quarter of a century with the Duke Ellington Orchestra: Salute To Charlie Parker by Ellington clarinetist Jimmy Hamilton. In researching the biography of Jimmy Hamilton, I found some fascinating information in the Feather/Gitler Encyclopedia. I had remembered the name Frank Fairfax from reading about Dizzy Gillespie’s start in the jazz world, but I had no idea until I read Feather/Gitler that there were three young trumpet players in the Fairfax band. Dizzy, Charlie Shavers and Jimmy Hamilton, before he started his illustrious career on clarinet and tenor sax. Wow, what a trumpet section! That really perked my interest about the Frank Fairfax band, so in today’s world I thought all I’d have to do is Google Frank Fairfax and I’d find lots of info. Well, all I basically found was that reference to the three young trumpeters. Can anybody help me with more information about Frank Fairfax and his group?

  --Don Sickler

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