Biography
Although Olu Dara first issued recordings under his own name only in 1998, he had already established himself from the mid-1970s onward as one of the foremost trumpeters within the jazz avant-garde. His early-1980s appearances and recordings alongside the David Murray Octet and the Henry Threadgill Sextet showcased a bold soloist anchored in roots traditions yet possessed of a contemporary sensibility and a robust, warmly burnished tone reminiscent of Louis Armstrong and Roy Eldridge. Born Charles Jones, he relocated to New York in 1963 yet remained absent from public performance until the early 1970s, when he immersed himself in the city’s loft jazz milieu and adopted the Yoruba name Olu Dara. In addition to his associations with Murray and Threadgill, he performed with Hamiet Bluiett, James “Blood” Ulmer, Don Pullen, and numerous others. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s his visibility on the jazz circuit remained sporadic; he led the Okra Orchestra and the Natchezsippi Dance Band on occasion, recorded with Pullen in 1985 and with saxophonist Charles Brackeen in 1987, and contributed to vocalist Cassandra Wilson’s Blue Note album Blue Light ’Til Dawn during the 1990s. Little further activity surfaced from a jazz standpoint until Atlantic issued In the World: From Natchez to New York in 1998, marking Dara’s first release under his own name. Only peripherally connected to his earlier free-jazz explorations, the album drew instead on country-blues and African-American folk idioms; Dara played trumpet and cornet, wrote every composition, sang, and provided his own guitar accompaniment. Atlantic followed with the 2001 release Neighborhoods.
Albums
