Dizzy Reece – ovation overdue
Jamdown jazz alert—
Dizzy Reece is a trumpeter who was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1931. He attended the Alpha Boys School for a short period—-the same institution that trained many a Skatalite, as well as Joe Harriott and numerous other now-legendary Jamaican musicians. But Diz is strictly pre-ska, a pure jazzman: He left for England in 1948, when he was 16, and started making records there in 1955 with some of the leading lights of the British jazz scene. Reece moved to NYC in 1959 to be a Blue Note recording artist, cutting four LPs for the legendary label. While Dizzy continued to perform live from the 1960s to the early 1990s, he made only a handful of commercial/studio recordings during this period (though he has an extensive log of private/live tapes from that time).
Reece is one of the most distinctive and idiosyncratic trumpeters in the history of jazz—his tone is as fat as his melodies are rich, and his solos are wicked chromatic exercises. Plus, he’s a damn smart composer and arranger to boot. Diz still lives in NYC, but he hasn’t played there in more than a decade; a few of us are trying to correct that by getting the word out on this great artist.
The Suburbs Are Killing Us has 10 mp3 downloads limited time plus full story & radio broadcast available at dizzyreece.com
