{"title":"Lew Tabackin","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eLew Tabackin grew up in South Philadelphia at a time when, as he's put it, nobody played the flute, but he stuck with it through high school and a flute performance degree at the Philadelphia Conservatory before picking up tenor saxophone at 15 because Frankie Avalon needed a horn player for his band. The two instruments never merged into one voice. His tenor playing, shaped by Coleman Hawkins and Al Cohn, is forceful and hard-driving; his flute playing, built on a classical foundation from players like Jean-Pierre Rampal, is delicate and almost otherworldly. He spent the 1960s working through the heart of the New York big band scene, Cab Calloway, Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, Clark Terry, Doc Severinsen's Tonight Show band, before meeting pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi in 1967. They married in 1969, moved to Los Angeles in 1972, and in 1973 formed what became the Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin Big Band, with Tabackin as principal soloist for the next thirty years. He also built a solo catalogue alongside the big band work, starting with his self-titled RCA debut in 1974 and continuing through \"Dual Nature\" (Inner City, 1976), an album that splits the difference between his two instruments by giving one side entirely to flute and the other to tenor. What's stocked here moves between the Akiyoshi big band records and his own RCA and Inner City solo sessions.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"toshiko-akiyoshi-lew-tabackin-big-band-kogun-1974-japanese-rca-rca-6246-vinyl-lp","title":"Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin Big Band - Kogun (1974 Japanese RCA RCA-6246 Vinyl LP)","description":"\u003cp data-end=\"1214\" data-start=\"1061\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eVinyl\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cspan\u003e: EX\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSleeve\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cspan\u003e: VG+\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eObi:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eVG+\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eOur grading system explained \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/dpbg4u-d1.myshopify.com\/pages\/secondhand-grading-guide\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"s1\"\u003e\u003cb\u003ehere\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cspan\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePhoto is of the actual item.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eToshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin Big Band - \u003cem\u003eKogun\u003c\/em\u003e | Vinyl LP - 1974 Japanese RCA Original (RCA-6246, Victor Musical Industries)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAkiyoshi had been waiting 20 years for a big band. She was discovered by Oscar Peterson in 1952, playing a club on the Ginza. Peterson convinced Norman Granz to record her, and by 1956 she was the first Japanese student at Berklee. She played small groups in New York through the 1960s, but what she wanted was an orchestra. In 1972, she and her husband Lew Tabackin moved to Los Angeles, and in March 1973 they formed a big band from the city's deep pool of studio musicians. The personnel reads like a West Coast all-star session: Bobby Shew, Don Rader and Mike Price on trumpets, Britt Woodman (who had spent a decade in Duke Ellington's orchestra) on trombone, Gary Foster and Dick Spencer on altos, Bill Perkins on baritone, Gene Cherico on bass, Peter Donald on drums. Tabackin plays tenor and flute as the band's primary soloist. Akiyoshi composed and arranged everything. \"Elegy\" opens the album with a 9-minute piece that lets Tabackin's tenor unspool over the ensemble in long, lyrical passages. \"Memory\" stretches past 10 minutes with the horns building in layers.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe title track takes the album to different territory. Akiyoshi draws on Noh theatre, with Scott Elsworth's voice carrying a chant-like melody against the horns, while the rhythm section plays with a weight and deliberateness that sounds nothing like conventional big band swing. The piece is her response to the story of Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who spent 29 years in the Philippine jungle after the war ended, loyal to orders he believed were still in force. Akiyoshi described him not as a fanatic but as a draftee caught in a situation he never chose. \"American Ballad\" brings the album back to a more conventional setting, and \"Henpecked Old Man\" closes with over nine minutes of the band at its most driving. When Ellington died later that year, Nat Hentoff wrote in the \u003cem\u003eVillage Voice\u003c\/em\u003e about how Ellington's music reflected his African heritage. Akiyoshi read the piece and was inspired to push deeper into her own Japanese musical identity, a direction that defined everything she wrote from this point forward. This is the original 1974 Japanese pressing on RCA RCA-6246, manufactured by Victor Musical Industries.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"RCA","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43727801614395,"sku":null,"price":35.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0630\/3203\/3339\/files\/IMG_7573.jpg?v=1782817368"}],"url":"https:\/\/lushliferecords.com.au\/collections\/lew-tabackin.oembed","provider":"Lush Life Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}