To celebrate Martin Luther King day we are reposting article first published in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of MLK on the 4th of April 1968. The article re-publishes Dr King’s speech at the Berlin Jazz Festival in 1964
It’s one of the most romantic stories in music: the jazz star rejecting fame to practise on a New York bridge for two years. Now 91, Rollins recalls those long cold days – and how he has coped after losing the power to play.
The latest in our series of writers unearthing forgotten movies highlights a moving documentary about a jazz musician killed in his prime.
The intensity of the jazz legend’s music has always inspired passion, but in the 1960s, one group of devotees was so stirred they founded a church in his name.
He played gigs to a young Elvis, got high with the Grateful Dead and made an enemy in Miles Davis. And, at 83, the saxophonist who collided jazz and rock still has his spirit of adventure.
A previously unknown recording from a small Seattle club in 1965 documents one of the saxophonist’s signature works—spiritual, searching, unstoppable—as never heard before.
Book reveals how the jazz musician unwittingly became party to secret cold war manoeuvres by the US in Africa.
In documentary Fire Music, the hostile reaction that met the unusual genre soon turns into deep appreciation and a lasting influence
John Coltrane learned his trade with Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk - and eventually outshone them all. John Fordham celebrates the great saxophonist.
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