5 posts tagged “music”

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Peak Archie Peak

Jul 20, 2008
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yen for lyrical Africa’s grand recordings of fresher fascinating first-thought choices, tremendous tone-poems n’ that new trombone jazz imposing slang’s liberation of everything ever unnoticed…

Jazz music has more than its fair share of overshadowed figures that whilst contributing much to the music have little presence in its collective conscious. One such musician is the talented multi-reedist, Sahib Shihab, who despite emigrating from the United States in the early 1960’s managed to have a significant impact on the scene. Recording with some of the legends of bop, before embarking on a European career in jazz as a soloist and member of the successful Clarke Boland Big Band. He was born Edmond Gregory in Savannah, Georgia in 1925, his earliest professional experience playing alto with Luther Henderson’s band, at the tender age of thirteen. After a period of study at the Boston Conservatory he went on to play with trumpet great Roy Eldridge and lead alto with Fletcher Henderson in the mid forties. Here he was still billed as Eddie Gregory but in 1947 he became an early jazz convert to Islam, rather quaintly referred to as Mohammedanism in the vernacular of the day.

The Bop explosion of the late 1940’s that swept through jazz gripped Sahib Shihab, as many others and he quickly became one of the leading Parker influenced altoists of the day. Proving himself well equipped to deal with the complexities of the new music, he contributed to a series of classic sides with Theolonius Monk, between 1947-51 laying down some of the cornerstones of Bop’s recorded history, including the original version of “Round About Midnight.” The self styled eccentric genius was an influential figure both on and off the bandstand and Shihab’s later work on Baritone owes a debt to Monk’s quirky and individual approach to the music.

During this period he also found time to appear on many recordings by popular jazz artists including Art Blakey, Miles Davis, Kenny Dorham, Benny Golson, Tadd Dameron and on John Coltrane’s first full session as leader for Prestige, First Trane. The invitation to play with Dizzy Gillespie’s big band in the early fifties was of particular significance as it marked Sahib’s switch to Baritone, the instrument he became most readily associated with.

Biography continues here

via All About Jazz | by Bobby Hancock

Sahib Shihab

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Originally posted on reckon.vox.com