Mel Brown

Mel Brown Quartet: Girl Talk

by Stephen Latessa
August 18, 2005

The notes on the back cover of Girl Talk, the new disc from the Mel Brown Quartet, proudly proclaim that the band has “over 100 years of collective experience. Indeed, an easy, lived-in approach defines the ten tracks on the album. It is the work of veterans whose professionalism yields consistently solid results. The musicians--Mel Brown (drums), Dan Balmer (guitar), Ed Bennett (bass), and Tony Pacini (piano)--are all bandleaders in their own right. Based in Portland, Oregon, the band came ...

Mel Brown: Chicken Fat

by David Rickert
April 15, 2004

When you get a couple of guitar players together you’re often going to get the kind of finger-busting interplay heard on Chicken Fat ; the question is whether it will be interesting enough to listen to or too self-indulgent. For the most part, Mel Brown succeeds in creating a pleasant piece of soul jazz that, on occasion, ventures into straightforward blues tunes.

There’s plenty of guitar solos on this 1967 record, and Brown takes an edgy, almost haphazard ...

Portland Jazz Saxophonist Michael York, Who Played with Mel Brown Sextet, Dies at 55

Source: Seattle Jazz Scene
October 23, 2010

from The Oregonian:

Michael York, one of the Portland jazz scene's most accomplished saxophonists who spent a decade as a featured member in the Mel Brown Sextet, died Monday morning, less than two weeks after being diagnosed with cancer.

Dusty York, the musician's son and a prominent Portland saxophonist himself, said that his father had been feeling ill and thought he might have a gallstone, but doctors instead found cancer that had originated in his lungs and spread to his ...
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Drummer Mel Brown Releases / Girl Talk

Source: All About Jazz
May 10, 2005

For Immediate Release Contact: Ed Bennett Saphu Records 503-788-0672 [email protected] Mel Brown Quartet “Girl Talk" If mainstream jazz is your bag, the Mel Brown Quartet brings you bop, ballads and scintillating originals making you gald you have ears. With over 100 years of collective experience, here's a group that knows the tradition and brings it boldly to the bandstand on every gig. The Mel Brown Quartet came together in the fall of 2002 at Jimmy Mak's, a popular jazz club ...
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New Don Lanphere Recording featuring Mimi Fox, Banrey MacClure & Mel Brown

Source: All About Jazz

Northwest saxophonist Don Lanphere has a new recording feature jazz guitar great Mimi Fox, Barney McClure on B3 and Mel Brown on drums. The recording is called Like A Bird and is on Origin Arts. Here is part of the liner notes.

I will admit that when Don initially called me and said “I just did something new for me, a Hammond B-3 organ date, and I really want you to write the liner notes," I kinda froze. When I ...
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