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Jazz Families: Blood Relatives-Part 1

Jazz Unlimited for February 7 will be the first of a five-part series on “Jazz Families: Blood Relatives.”  There are an amazing number of jazz musicians who have blood relatives (mothers, fathers, siblings) who are also jazz musicians.  This show will feature music by the Dodds brothers, the Buckner brothers, the DeParis brothers, the Goodman brothers, Albert Ammons and his son Gene, Cannonball and Nat Adderley and Nat’s son Nat Adderley, Jr., the Clayton family, the Candoli brothers, the Brecker brothers, the Cole brothers, the Barron brothers, the Bryant brothers, Kenny Drew and his son Kenny Drew, Jr., the Coltrane family, the Eubanks brothers, the Bowie brothers and the Ayler brothers.

The Slide Show contains my photographs of some of the musicians heard on this show.

The Archive for this show will be available until the morning of February 15, 2016.

This video is of the Lester Bowie Brass Fantasy playing "Siesta for the Fiesta" ad another tune from the Northsea Jazz Festival in 1991.  Soloists that I can identify are Lester Bowie (t, flhrn) Steve Turre, Vincent Chancey (frhrn) Vinnie Johnson (d) Bob Stewart (d).  The percussionist is Famoudou Don Moye.

Dennis Owsley has broadcast a weekly jazz show for St. Louis Public Radio since April 1983. He holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and is a retired Monsanto Senior Science Fellow and college teacher. His show, Jazz Unlimited, airs every Sunday from 9:00 p.m. to midnight. The show has the largest jazz audience in St. Louis and was named Best Jazz Radio Show in St. Louis for the years 2005-2007 and 2009 by the Riverfront Times. In celebration of his 25 years on the air, January 24, 2008 was proclaimed Dennis Owsley Day" in the City of St. Louis. He is the 2010 winner of the St. Louis Public Radio Millard S. Cohen Lifetime Achievement Award. Dennis is also a noted photographer, and his exhibit, In the Moment: Photographs of Jazz Musicians, ran from September 23, 2005 to January 21, 2006 at the Sheldon Art Gallery. He is a lifetime student of jazz history and teaches short courses on the subject. Dennis is the author of the award-winning book City of Gabriels: The History of Jazz in St. Louis 1985-1973, published in 2006.