Happy 80th Birthday!
Today is Roswell Rudd’s 80th birthday. From Hotchkiss to Yale, Eli’s Chosen Six to the New York Art Quartet, Herbie Nichols to Archie Shepp, Steve Lacy to Cecil Taylor, Alan Lomax to the Borscht Belt, Mali to Mongolia, Roswell has touched an amazing variety of musical bases, all the while keeping it real, down home, and wonderfully expressive. I had the pleasure of introducing the trombonist at his Newport Jazz Festival appearance in 2007, where he played “Keep Your Heart Right.” The song was introduced on Archie Shepp’s Live in San Francisco in 1966. Here it’s sung by Sunny Kim, with Brad Jones on bass, and Lafayette Harris at the piano.
Roswell recorded “Joe Hill,” the eponymous song named for labor organizer Joe Hill, on Trombone for Lovers in 2013. Here it’s performed at Le Poussin Rouge with organist John Medeski, the New York City Labor Chorus, rapper Reggie Bennett, and pianist Dennis Nelson.