Kenny Drew

Kenneth Sidney "Kenny" Drew (August 28, 1928 – August 4, 1993) was an American jazz pianist.

Biography

Drew was born in New York City in 1928 and received piano lessons from the age of five. He attended The High School of Music & Art in Manhattan. Drew's first recording, in 1950, was with Howard McGhee, and over the next two years he worked in bands led by Buddy DeFranco, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Charlie Parker, among others. After a brief period with his own trio in California, Drew returned to New York, playing with Dinah Washington, Johnny Griffin, Buddy Rich, and several others over the following few years. He led many recording sessions throughout the '50s, and in 1957 appeared on John Coltrane's album Blue Train.

Drew was one of several American jazz musicians who settled in Europe around this period: he moved to Paris in 1961 and to Copenhagen three years later. While he sacrificed much of the interest of the American jazz audience, he gained a wide following across Europe. Kenny Drew was a well-known figure on the Copenhagen jazz scene, recording many sessions with the Danish bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen. "Living in Copenhagen, and travelling out from there," Drew remarked, "I have probably worked in more different contexts than if I had stayed in New York where I might have got musically locked in with a set-group of musicians. This way, I have been able to keep my musical antennas in shape, while at the same time I have had more time to study and also get deeper into my own endeavors."

Pal Joey

Pal Joey may refer to:

Pal Joey (Kenny Drew album)

Pal Joey is an album by American pianist Kenny Drew recorded in 1957 and released on Riverside Records in 1958. The trio plays here pieces from the musical of the same name and other works composed by Rodgers and Hart. The album was first reissued on CD only in 1996 in the US, and in 2006 in Japan. Both editions are currently out of print.

Track listing

All pieces by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.

Personnel

References

Pal Joey (André Previn album)

Pal Joey (full title Modern Jazz Performances of Songs from Pal Joey) is a jazz album by pianist André Previn & His Pals, bassist Leroy Vinnegar and drummer Shelly Manne, recorded in 1957 and released on the Contemporary label. The album features Previn's jazz interpretations of songs from Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's broadway musical, Pal Joey and followed the success of Manne's 1956 album, My Fair Lady. The album was recorded roughly at the same time as the release of the motion picture.

Reception

The Allmusic review by Scott Yanow states "Best known is "I Could Write a Book," which quickly became a standard, but the other, more obscure songs such as "Take Him," "Zip" and "Do It the Hard Way" are also generally good devices for jazz improvising. An enjoyable set of straight-ahead trio music". On All About Jazz Dave Rickerts states "Surprisingly Pal Joey seems like it would come later on in Previn's career when he might be scraping the bottom of the barrel for musicals to swing... It's clearly not a top shelf musical; only two songs from it became standards and it's rarely revived today. Still, there must have been something to grab Previn over other more worthy material, and the trio make a silk purse out a sow's ear by taking the mediocre and producing some wonderful improvisations".