Harmonica player Mark Bell is an aging baby-boomer who picked up his first harp in 1973, when he was seventeen. For Bell, it was an epiphany. “I played John Mayall’s `Room to Move’ by ear,” he says, “and I’ve been cursed with it ever since.” Bell’s way with a harmonica…

Steve Turre, Wednesday, September 13, at the Mount Vernon Country Club, is best known to television audiences for his stint as a trombonist in the Saturday Night Live band. But in jazz circles, he’s revered for his collaborations with Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Dizzy Gillespie, Ralph Moore and Woody Shaw, and…

He may be only 22, but Denver-based techno/trance artist Jesse Allen (aka Kid Sonic) is already more business-savvy than a lot of musicians many years his senior. He owns a studio, dubbed Savage Land. He oversees his own publishing company, Alchemy Trance International. And he actually understands the kind of…

For three decades, two words have described saxophone playing at its funkiest: Maceo Parker. Parker joined James Brown’s back-up band in 1965, and before long he’d created the immortal, punchy riffs that dominate Brown classics such as “Poppa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” “Popcorn,” “Lickin’ Stick” and “Cold Sweat.” Along…

Singer Clarence Fountain was already a member of the Five Blind Boys of Alabama when the group–perhaps the greatest gospel ensemble to emerge this century–turned professional in 1944. Within three years he would become the pilot of the crew. Nearly fifty years later, Fountain, 66, says the act has survived…

Wallace Roney, Saturday, August 12, at the Bluebird Theater, came to the public’s attention in 1981. Then a 21-year-old Berklee student with no trumpet of his own, he auditioned for Wynton Marsalis’s old seat in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, armed with little more than ambition and talent. But that was…

Saxophonist Roy Nathanson, co-founder of the Jazz Passengers, is frequently described as quirky–and he’s earned the term the old-fashioned way. According to Nathanson’s partner, trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, “You look up `quirky’ in the dictionary, and Roy’s picture is next to it.” As judged by the music they make together, Fowlkes…

The songs played by Kandombe, a Boulder-based percussion ensemble, represent musical freedom in its truest sense. The performers believe their music cannot be contained or categorized, because the sounds they make are not modeled after various styles or genres. Rather, they derive from the basic rhythms of life. “We put…

Denver-based guitarist Janet Feder didn’t expect to be featured in the July issue of Guitar Player. After all, the publication is devoted to electrified music–and Feder performs her classically based material on an acoustic instrument. “I couldn’t believe it,” Feder says about the item. “I was stunned, truly stunned, because…

Even if multi-instrumentalist John Hartford found a cure for cancer, the discovery would probably be overshadowed by what the public sees as an even greater achievement–his writing of “Gentle on My Mind,” a hit for Glen Campbell in 1968. But it’s been almost thirty years since Hartford, looking soulful and…

Truman’s Water Milktrain to Paydirt (Homestead) You can’t describe Truman’s Water as just another punk band–not when the closest thing to an influence you can scratch out of cuts like “Unitraction Bath” is Captain Beefheart. Most of these songs include a modicum of structure (even the ones that dissolve into…

A generation of English blues rockers, including Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, John Mayall, Mick Jagger and Jimmy Page, have acknowledged that guitarist/vocalist Otis Rush has provided them with divine musical inspiration. But Rush, who’s 61, is not the type to crow about the influence he’s had on so many stars…

A local high school boy who’s seen “…kiss,” a video that’s been popping up late at night on MTV, has kind words for its singer, Pussy Tourette. She’s pretty cool, he says, and not bad-looking. And, he adds, she “has a nice bod. Real muscular for a chick, ya know?”…

Deborah Henson-Conant, Friday, June 23, at Swallow Hill Music Hall, is a jazz virtuoso and superior improviser with an unlikely specialty–the 47-string grand concert harp. A native Californian now based in New England, she first learned about the harp’s limitless possibilities when she was hired to play a three-hour restaurant…

Perez Prado Mondo Mambo! The Best of Perez Prado and His Orchestra (RCA/Rhino) Various Artists Mambo Mania! The Kings & Queens of Mambo (Rhino) At its best, the mambo, a boisterous style of Latin dance music, is absolutely hysterical. Trumpets don’t just sound: They blare in unison–and instead of trailing…

To simplify labeling, the members of the Denver-based septet known as Groove Kitchen refer to their music as acid jazz–and they definitely don’t believe the term should be interpreted pejoratively. Dogmatists may regard acid jazz as the redheaded stepchild of “real” jazz, but Kitchen guitarist Tom Burke sees it as…

The Apples Fun Trick Noisemaker (spinART) Last year, Apples frontman Robert Schneider told Westword he wanted to write “uplifting” songs that had a “transcendent quality” about them. Judging from Fun Trick Noisemaker, the act’s spinART debut, Schneider and the rest of the Apples (drummer Hilarie Sidney, guitarist John Hill and…

The music of New York-based guitarist Donald Miller and saxophonists Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich, collectively known as Borbetomagus, has been slapped with some pretty dandy labels. Industrial Strength. Punk Jazz. Trash Jazz. Thrash Jazz. Sauter acknowledges that the trio’s sound has “inspired writers to be very creative. I’ve found…

During the mid-Seventies, a handful of New Orleans natives armed with kazoos and a small drum earned a reputation, and a few cheap thrills, by tagging along at the end of parades. Initially, this routine was considered a good-timey joke, but over the course of several years, the punchline gave…

Elastica Elastica (DGC) All right, I give up. Rather than whining about the fact that half the allegedly new music being released right now sounds like it was recorded in 1982, I guess I’ll just have to get used to it. Hell, I liked a lot of the music from…

“I’m generally a pretty optimistic person,” understates jazz and classical pianist Darrell Grant. “I expected good things from life and have, for the most part, gotten them.” The reasons behind Grant’s progress thus far have everything to do with his work ethic and personality: In many ways, he’s a jazzy…

Lou Rawls, Friday, April 21, at the Odgen Theater, has been singing for over thirty years, and during that time he’s mastered an impressive variety of styles: gospel, R&B, Philly soul, smooth-talking pre-rap, blues, jazz and crossover pop. He got his start at Chicago’s Dunbar High School, where he polished…