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May 21, 2021 · The album is a mix of jazz, funk, and soul music, with a focus on lush, orchestral arrangements and Evans' melodic bass playing. The group includes a number of talented musicians, including ...
- 36 min
- 4.6K
- Dad ́s a Soul Man
- The Soulful Strings
- Charles Stepney, The Dells, and Rotary Connection
- Richard Evans in The Late 60s
- Psychedelic Blues
- Charles Stepney and Terry Callier
- Richard Evans and Woody Herman
- Richard Evans and Charles Stepney Post-Chess
By now, Evans was also a Cadet employee, as the label’s executive producer. He was not only to manage other people’s projects, he could run his own, and at the prompting of Charles Stepney’s predecessor, Esmond Edwards, Evans launched a group called Soulful Strings, seeking to make orchestral music funky. Rather than churn out mushy orchestrated so...
Stepney, on the other hand, was busy working with The Dells, Cadet’s flagship soul act. The arrangements he delivered matched the big city soul template of 1967: “There Is,” a floor filler with skulking electric piano and thunderous drums, could have been a Four Tops’ record. But pop was changing and Stepney’s 1968 sessions with the group resulted ...
Charles Stepney wasn’t the only one messing with Indian instruments. Richard Evans had been working as the arranger on Ramsey Lewis’s studio albums, including 1966’s big hit Wade In The Water, and on Up Pops, he took the producer’s chair too. Its two best tracks were penned by Evans, “Party Time” and “Jade East,” the latter dripping with cod-Indian...
Charles Stepney spent some of 1968 participating in one of the most vilified experiments in 60s music: Psychedelic blues. The idea was simple: Get the blues artists languishing on Chess to meet the hippies halfway by getting ’em to make hard rock albums. So Rotary Connection gathered to back Muddy Waters on Electric Mud, an album the gruff blues le...
Charles Stepney was making vital connections, however. He took the production reins alongside arranging and conducting duties for The Dells’ Freedom Means. Among the songwriters was Terry Callier, a Chicago hopeful with an unusual line in folk-soul; think Bill Withers, perhaps, but more cerebral and whimsical. Callier soon signed to Cadet for a sec...
Richard Evans took on a curious challenge in 1969: making jazz clarinetist Woody Herman hip again. Though he had been a major innovator in the 40s, Herman hadn’t been seen as cutting edge for years. Through two albums, Light My Fireand Heavy Exposure, Herman and a huge band which included Chicago regulars such as Upchurch, Jennings, and even Donny ...
Richard Evans and Charles Stepney began to look elsewhere for their work. The former cut a solo album for Atlantic, Dealing With Hard Times, which barely hinted at the range of his abilities. A further solo album, Richard Evans, for A&M’s Horizon imprint, included a fine disco take of his Soulful Strings classic, “Burning Spear”; clearly, his flame...
- Ian Mccann
- 3 min
A year later, Evans moved to Los Angeles, California to work as a jazz pianist. In 1970 he accepted a professorship at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH). Here he founded and directed the Electronic Music & Recording Program (EM&R), an interdisciplinary degree program between the departments of music, physics, and media.
The Soulful Strings were an American soul-jazz instrumental group formed in Chicago in 1966. Predominantly a studio band, the project was created and led by Richard Evans, a staff producer and musical arranger with the Chess Records subsidiary Cadet Records.
Dec 28, 2022 · An NEA Jazz Master and Grammy winner, in 2007 he was designated a Kennedy Center honoree as a Living Jazz Legend. His first release was The Three Strings (Epic, 1951) and, throughout that decade, he recorded a dozen albums, all in a piano trio format.
Jan 31, 2018 · Richard Evans (Dec. 30, 1932 — Oct. 5, 2014) was an American jazz-funk bassist, composer, arranger, and producer from Birmingham, Ala. Discography: Dealing With Hard Times (1972)
Richard Evans discography and songs: Music profile for Richard Evans, born 30 December 1932.
