Skip to main content

The Altons - Summertime

Before the widespread use of magnetic tape in the late 1940s, sound engineers recorded audio tracks directly onto discs. In order to identify specific performances, they assigned to each recording a unique matrix number, sometimes also with the number of the take. These numbers were inscribed on the non grooved area of the disc, close to the label affixed to the center. Because each side of a 78 RPM disc typically contained different recordings, the matrix numbers varied accordingly. With the advent of magnetic tape, sound engineers no longer assigned matrix numbers, but simply wrote identifying information on the tape box.

Over the past century, jazz has charted a fascinating and unpredictable course full of diversions and deviations, from the infectious syncopations of ragtime to the exhilaration of big band swing, through the awesome flights of bebop, the boundless explorations of free jazz, the electrifying power of fusion, and the more recent examples of international modernism, and the story is nowhere near complete. This vibrant music, led by unique, brilliant individualists, recreates itself unceasingly. Countless developments and contributors from across the globe have built an indelible body of recorded work that has woven itself into the history of the past century and will enrich centuries to come.
Sources: Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings


The Altons - Summertime
  • Released on: The Altons EP
  • Released: May 13, 2016
  • Genre: Indie, Soul

"Based in Los Angeles, members Gabriel Maldonado, Carlos Canovas, Bryan Ponce, Joseph Quinones, and Adriana Flores came together from disparate musical backgrounds to bring The Altons unified energetic sound to audiences everywhere."

See previous Song of the Day


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Psychotic Reactions - Skip To My Lou

It expresses the emotions of angst, anger, and lust in some of the only ways that are accepted by society. The history of this edgy music genre dates back to the 1950s. It was formed by a combination of the blues, gospel music, and country. Throughout the decades, rock ‘n roll has evolved and become famous for being the genre that’s continued to push the boundaries of music, and, sometimes, the cultural boundaries of society itself. In the 1950s rock ‘n roll could be defined as rhythm and blues. In the 1960s it was partial to new musical styles such as folk rock and soul. And in the 1970s hard rock was born. From the 1980s to the present, technology has had an enormous impact on the music industry. Good taste is the enemy of the revolution. This remark epitomizes the spirit of rock ‘n roll. You’re not expected to conform, you’re expected to be yourself… no matter what anyone thinks. You are admired deeply for expressing emotions such as anger, heartbreak, and sadness through music in a...

The Pat Moran Quartet - Come Rain Or Come Shine

The very institutional acceptance that many musicians sought in the mid to late 20th century has hitched jazz to a broken and still segregated education system. Partly as a result, the music has become inaccessible to, and disconnected from, many of the very people who created it, young Black Americans, poorer people and others at the societal margins. Of the more than 500 students who graduate from American universities with jazz degrees each year, less than 10 percent are Black, according to Department of Education statistics compiled by DataUSA. In 2017, the last year with data available, precisely 1 percent of jazz degree grads were Black women. The education is the anchor... We should be questioning our education system. Is it working? Is there a pipeline into the university for indigenous Black Americans to play their music, and learn their music? I don’t think that exists. Source: Jazz Has Always Been Protest Music. Can It Meet This Moment? by Giovanni Russonello The Pat Moran Q...

Kenny Dorham - Like Someone In Love Take 2

In the early 20th century, the blues was considered disreputable as white audiences began listening to blues. Blues came into its own as an important part of the country’s relatively new popular culture in the 1920s with the recording, first, of great female classic blues singers and, then, of the country folk blues singers of the Mississippi Delta, the Piedmont of the Carolinas, and Texas. The first copyrighted song was in 1912, the Dallas Blues. As huge numbers of African Americans left the South at this time due to failed Reconstruction, dismal economic conditions, oppression in the South and the hope of better treatment in the North between 1915 and 1940s, the blues went with them, and settled in the urban centers of the North, especially Chicago. A more urban, electric blues developed as a result, which eclipsed the rural blues of the South and eventually became both rock and roll and what would become known as rhythm and blues. Blues fell somewhat out of popular favor until the l...