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Bennie Wallace: French Postcard
by Dan McClenaghan
In 2001, saxophonist Bennie Wallace released a breakout album, Moodsville (Groove Note). It was Wallace in the quartet setting, with Mulgrew Miller on piano, Peter Washington on bass, and Lewis Nash on drums--an all-star cast. What was striking about the sound was its immediacy, its authenticity. It was a bunch of time-tested Great American Songbook tunes and jazz standards laid down with an insouciant grace and relaxed confidence. No bells and whistles, but rather an unpretentious trip into the tradition ...
Continue ReadingBennie Wallace: Disorder at the Border, The Music of Coleman Hawkins
by Laurel Gross
Left New York's Jazz Standard last month barefoot because the band blew my socks (and even my boots) off. Baby it was cold outside, a December night threatening snow. But Bennie Wallace and the boys had played so hot I was warmed up inside and so immune to any chill. Wallace has been working on his tribute to Coleman Hawkins for some time and to celebrate the 2007 Justin Time CD release of Disorder at the Border: ...
Continue ReadingBennie Wallace: Disorder at the Border
by Donald Elfman
Saxophonist Bennie Wallace, also known for his clarinet work, moved to New York in 1971 after graduating from the University of Tennessee, playing with Monty Alexander, Sheila Jordan and others before debuting as a leader in 1978. He has released numerous records for Enja and also had a pair of highly-regarded discs for Blue Note in the late 1980s. In the fall of 2007, he brought an ambitious project to New York City, celebrating the work of the legendary Coleman ...
Continue ReadingBennie Wallace: Disorder at the Border: The Music of Coleman Hawkins
by J Hunter
Tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins' musical footprints stretch back to the 1920s, when he played with Louis Armstrong in Fletcher Henderson's orchestra. It's true that Hawkins was one of the forerunners of bebop, and went on to play and record with Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, and John Coltrane. But Hawk's signature recording of the standard “Body and Soul dates back to 1939, when he was playing in Europe with legends like Benny Carter and Django Reinhardt. Hawkins is a star Bennie ...
Continue ReadingBennie Wallace: Disorder at the Border: The Music of Coleman Hawkins
by Robert R. Calder
This is a stomping band, as Coleman Hawkins said of the Fletcher Henderson orchestra he -- and the hitherto mostly awkward tenor saxophone -- grew up together with. Louis Armstrong and his hero the great cellist Pablo Casals inspired Hawkins' phrasing and timing, Art Tatum and J.S. Bach his harmonic command. His nickname “Bean" referred to high intelligence, he was an instrumental virtuoso with immense stamina and invention qua improviser, a passionate complex man never to be underrated.
Continue ReadingBennie Wallace: The Nearness of You
by Rich Friedman
In their quest to beef up a CD’s exposure, good-intentioned industry insiders can sometimes unintentionally steer an album down a dead-end path. On the cover of Bennie Wallace’s The Nearness of You, a voluptuous woman clings to his shoulder looking seductively at his sax. The liner notes feature another babe in a low-cut evening dress resting on a piano with a sax. Viagra-infused lounge lizards trying to impress their first dates with their impeccable taste in mood music—and Park Avenue ...
Continue ReadingBennie Wallace: Bennie Wallace in Berlin
by C. Michael Bailey
Bennie Wallace, we are glad you are back from Hollywood...
I whole-heartedly agree with magazine-mate Glenn Astarita in his summation of Bennie Wallace’s new Enja recording Bennie Wallace in Berlin, when he states that “Bennie Wallace is irrefutably one of the finest tenor saxophonists alive." I am a relative late comer to Mr. Wallace’s music. I had known him by reputation and reading (two ways of “knowing" that are sorely lacking once compared to listening ), and Live in Berlin ...
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