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This busy bee, at the end of a life like clockwork,
a symphony of service to everything but herself—
wings snatched in a world blinded by the way it is—
slowly expiring in the sweet nectar of stillness,
Billie Holiday scholar and biographer Farah Griffin discusses one of the most gifted jazz artists of all time, and one of the most elusive…
...Old photos link the narrator to his mother’s love and strength, and thanks her while humming Billie Holiday’s “All the Way”
...In a brilliant August 20, 2019 essay posted on the NPR website titled “Billie Full of Grace,” Professor Fessenden, author of Religion Around Billie Holiday,writes about the effect the convent reformatory Billie Holiday attended as a young woman – Baltimore’s House of the Good Shepherd – had on her life, and on her singing.
.... . “Billie Holiday” by Steve Dalachinsky . . Billie Holiday someone’s special greatness hides inside us somewhere like a strange fruit……..unexplainable hard ripe rotten..fine..fractured but mellow filled with love…disappointment & solitude & heavy like…a rock in one’s heart you may make it or you may die in your room overlooking the park….or an … Continue reading ““Billie Holiday” — a poem (with collage) by Steve Dalachinsky”
.... . . …..While Langston Hughes, Billie Holiday and Ralph Ellison are not known as being “religious” figures, they have, in a way, become “sacred” figures. Revered, iconic and inspirational, their essential work contributed mightily to the creative climate of twentieth-century America, and did so in the midst of complex and evolving religious … Continue reading “A Roundtable conversation — “Religion ‘around’ Langston Hughes, Billie Holiday and Ralph Ellison””
...Excerpted from The Producer: John Hammond and the Soul of American Music, by Dunstan Prial
On a cold, clear night in February, 1933, Hammond went on the town alone in search of music. Heading up Broadway toward Harlem in a Hudson convertible (he kept the top up in the winter), he fought traffic, but as he passed Columbia University, he was flying. At 133rd Street, he took a right and headed east toward Lenox Avenue. He pulled over after a few blocks and parked in a space a few doors up from a new speakeasy run by Monette Moore, the singer who had appeared with Ellington and Carter at the fund-raiser for the Scottsboro boys he had helped organize the previous fall.
...More than four decades after her death, Billie Holiday remains one of the most gifted artists of our time, and also one of the most elusive. Because of who she was and how she chose to live her life, Holiday has been the subject of both intense adoration and wildly distorted legends.
...gee baby
hurt is just
…………………a thought away;
let the blue the color
of your true love’s eyes
…………….as you slow dance
with their departing memory.
This pianist was Billie Holiday’s regular accompanist during her last two years (1957 – 1959), and also played in the Eric Dolphy-Booker Little Quintet that recorded extensively at New York’s Five Spot in 1961. Who is he?
...In two complete essays from the collection “Victory is Assured,” Crouch takes up two topics he had considerable opinions about – Miles Davis and Billie Holiday.
...The poet writes of the blues of Billie Holiday…
...In this edition, producer Bob Thiele talks with Michael Jarrett, author of Pressed For All Time: Producing the Great Jazz Albums from Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday to Miles Davis and Diana Krall about working with John Coltrane on his classic 1964 recording A Love Supreme
...In this edition, producer Jean-Phillippe Allard talks with Michael Jarrett, author of Pressed For All Time: Producing the Great Jazz Albums from Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday to Miles Davis and Diana Krall about working with the singer Abbey Lincoln on her 1990 Verve album The World is Falling Down
...This pianist was Billie Holiday’s regular accompanist during her last two years (1957 – 1959), and also played in the Eric Dolphy-Booker Little Quintet that recorded extensively at New York’s Five Spot in 1961. Who is he?
Mal Waldron
Al Haig
Duke Jordan
Hampton Hawes
Joe Albany
George Wallington
...“Thinking about the Truesdells,” comes from a seven-work series entitled Pastoral Scenes from the Gallant South (from Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”).
...“Thinking about Charlie Parker,” comes from a series entitled Pastoral Scenes from the Gallant South (from Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”).
...“Thinking about Homer Plessy,” comes from a seven-work series entitled Pastoral Scenes from the Gallant South (from Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”).
...“Thinking About Ida B. Wells” is the second image published on Jerry Jazz Musician from Ingham’s seven work series “Scenes From the Gallant South” (from Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”)
...2017 is the 100th birthday year of several jazz immortals – among them Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Buddy Rich, and, today, Ella Fitzgerald.
As a young and naïve jazz fan in the 1960’s, like Louis Armstrong, Ella seemed “square” to me – her voice too sweet and happy for my ears, especially when compared to the singer who most moved my soul to discover more of the music, Billie Holiday. Plus, the Songbook series she became internationally famous for seemed too smartly packaged, slick in a Madison-Avenue-way that tore me away from the bins that stocked her record albums.
Over the years, however, I eventually came to appreciate and cherish her, especially as I learned the courageous and inspirational nature of her biography, and played her recordings with Chick Webb, and dug the collaborations with the Ink Spots, Louis Jordan, and eventually, of course,
...
Paula Hackett’s four newly published poems include pieces on Max Roach, Billie Holiday and Milt Jackson…
_______
Billie Holiday
(lullaby)
Sometimes when nature is quiet
and the moon shines just where you are
I can hear you singing the spirit world to rest
I remember as a child, your voice would
wrap me in cotton
as you felt the blows for all of us
Born into a country that tried to
make your voice illegal
poise and elegance was your response
And tonight like so many
This pianist was Billie Holiday’s regular accompanist during her last two years (1957 – 1959), and also played in the Eric Dolphy-Booker Little Quintet that recorded extensively at New York’s Five Spot in 1961. Who is he?
Mal Waldron
Al Haig
Duke Jordan
Hampton Hawes
Joe Albany
George Wallington
Go to the next page for the answer!
...Born Norma Egstrom in 1920, this singer was so scared during her first recording session that her boss, Benny Goodman, was encouraged to fire her. Goodman recognized her talent and kept her. Who is Norma Egstrom?
Anita O day
Billie Holiday
Doris Day
Lena Horne
Peggy Lee
June Christy
Jo Stafford
Mildred Bailey
...What jazz diva won an amateur contest at Harlem’s Apollo Theater at age 17 and had her composition “Dream Of Life” recorded by Billie Holiday at age 18?
...BLACK SONG FOR BILLIE HOLIDAY
The night the blue saxophones died
You still remain in the spotlight’s ivory heat
A riddle that puzzles the heart
Snatching from the soil of catastrophe
A nugget of perfect sound
Glowing like an iridescent candle
Billie Holiday singing at the New Orleans Swing Club. Dexter Gordon hanging out at Bop City. Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane all swinging through town for gigs. Sound like a nostalgic snapshot from the New York jazz scene, or perhaps New Orleans? Nope. This particular sentimental journey describes San Francisco’s Fillmore District in its heyday.
...Excerpted from Queen : The Life and Music of Dinah Washington by Nadine Cohodas
As Ruth was settling into the Garrick, Lionel Hampton and his sixteen-piece band were getting ready for a weeklong stay at the Regal that would include a gala Christmas and New Year’s performance with Billie Holiday. It was a heady time for a group that was barely two years old and was riding a wave of ecstatic reviews and sold-out houses. The band had recently made its first recording for Decca.
“Hamp,” as he was universally known, was a consummate showman, a fireplug of energy who inspired his bandmates and thrilled his audiences.
...How does the jazz of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, and Charlie Parker fit into the great tradition of the modern arts between 1920 and 1950? In his book Jazz Modernism, cultural historian Alfred Appel compares the layering of sex, vitality, and the vernacular in jazz with the paper collages of Picasso, and the vital mix of high and low culture found in Joyce.
...The author talks about his book, an intensely researched, spirited, and beautifully told story – and an important reminder that Armstrong, Ellington, and Basie all defied and overcame racial boundaries “by opening America’s eyes and souls to the magnificence of their music.”
...In this fourth edition featuring excerpts from his book, Rife writes about five novels/short fiction that include stories about the interconnected cultures of jazz, dancing and nightclubs.
...In this excerpt from Designed for Success, the authors write extensively about music instruction and appreciation records dealing with the subject of jazz.
...On the Cape in P-town
August ‘55
Billie, Eartha, Ella vocals
Filled shoreline evening skies
Entrancing soaring seagulls
With jazzy siren song
In this, the 17th major collection of jazz poetry published on Jerry Jazz Musician, 50 poets from all over the world again demonstrate the ongoing influence the music and its associated culture has on their creative lives.
.... . This space on Sunday is generally reserved for a single poet to read one of their works, but this week’s issue -Father’s Day – features 23 poets who weigh in on the complexity of their relationship with their father, revealing love, warmth, regret, sorrow – and in many cases a strong connection … Continue reading “The Sunday Poem(s): 23 Poets remember their father…”
...A short-listed entrant in the 65th Short Fiction Contest is a story about an accidental audition…
...Entertain us, entertain us all
Give, give, give with your sassy voice, your young body
Despite the migraines…
At 11, on a North Philly street, gang raped
By three creeps
It starts there, the cracks
The headache
A myriad of styles and experiences displayed in eight thoughtful and provocative poems about jazz music…
...Few music industry executives have had as meaningful an impact on jazz music as Michael Cuscuna, who passed away on April 20 at the age of 75. He dedicated his life to music – particularly to the concept of mining and marketing the music recorded a generation ago by essential and under-appreciated jazz musicians buried deep in record label catalogs.
.... . In this 2006 interview, John Hammond biographer Dunstan Prial talks about the life and career of one of the most charismatic and powerful figures in the history of American music. . . ___ . . photo by David Schull . Dunstan Prial, author of The Producer: John Hammond and the … Continue reading “From the Interview Archive: Dunstan Prial, author of The Producer: John Hammond and the Soul of American Music“
...At the bar of the
Towne Tavern, once
Toronto’s finest jazz club,
stage facing me,
sipping my one beer,
knowing even then
in my twenty-third year
I was witness to
a never forgotten gig.
The introduction is excerpted from Tad Richards’ terrific book that explores the small group swing artists who made music from bebop to rhythm and blues.
...Tad Richards is a prolific visual artist, poet, novelist, and nonfiction writer who has been active for over four decades. ..He frequently writes about poetry, and the following piece about the history of the connection of jazz and American poetry first appeared in the Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poetry (2005). It is published with the permission of the author.
...Beginning in 1990, the noted photographer Giovanni Piesco began taking backstage photographs of many of the great musicians who played in Amsterdam’s Bimhuis, that city’s main jazz venue which is considered one of the finest in the world. Jerry Jazz Musician will occasionally publish portraits of jazz musicians that Giovanni has taken over the years. This edition is of the pianist/composer Mal Waldron, taken on three separate appearances at Bimhuis (1996, 2000 and 2001).
...Her first note wails amber
smoke near overhead pipes above
the guitars. It wavers
and rolls r’s better than spring.
In Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song, the book’s author Judith Tick writes that Ella “fearlessly explored many different styles of American song through the lens of African American jazz, [and] treated jazz as a process, not confined to this idiom or that genre,” and who “changed the trajectory of American vocal jazz in this century.” Ms. Tick. who is professor emerita of music history at Northeastern University, talks with about Ella – and her book – in this wide-ranging October 23, 2023 interview.
...The former Village Voice writer Gary Giddins, who was prominently featured in Ken Burns’ documentary Jazz, and who is the country’s preeminent jazz critic, joins us in a December 23, 2002 conversation about jazz legend Thelonious Monk.
...Seven poets combine and art of jazz with an act of love…
...The journalist and poet Joel Lewis shares his immensely colorful story of falling in love with jazz, and living with it and reporting on it during his younger days in New Jersey and New York
...A collection of Connie Johnson’s poetry is woven among her audio readings, a personal narrative of her journey and music she considers significant to it, providing readers the chance to experience the full value of her gifts.
.... . “Tree”(1924) photo by Alfred Stieglitz/via Raw Pixel/CC0 1.0 Deed . . Song of the Poplar Tree The song playing always catches me off guard. My trembling fingers quicken to remove the old vinyl record. I must stop her voice from singing. Even the wispy quality carries the heavy weight. I weep. Not … Continue reading ““Song of the Poplar Tree” – a poem by Jerrice Baptiste”
...I’m whistling a tune about
a woman’s broken heart,
down a long and empty
hallway, just to hear it
move itself along,
This edition features poetry chosen from hundreds of recent submissions, and from a wide range of voices known – and unknown – to readers of these collections. The work is unified by the poets’ ability to capture the abundance of jazz music, and their experience with consuming it.
...The author talks about her book and Chick Webb, once at the center of America’s popular music, and among the most influential musicians in jazz history.
.... . My dad…Joseph Maita, Sr. 1917-2000 This photo would have likely been taken in the late 1950’s/early 1960’s . .. . ___ . . “Good fathers not only tell us how to live, they show us.” -Mark Twain . As we get older, memories become more precious, and we hold them closer to … Continue reading “Remembering and honoring my father”
...In this edition, producer Joel Dorn talks with Michael Jarrett about his relationship with the legendary multi-instrumentalist Rahsaan Roland Kirk, in the context of working with him on the 1967 Atlantic album, The Inflated Tear.
...That feeling when everything makes you sad/Nothing you can think of would make you glad/No matter how hard you try to remove yourself/From this blue funk
...The poets share their love of jazz through personal narratives, and memories of live performances
...This is the 14th extensive collection of jazz poetry published on Jerry Jazz Musician since the fall of 2019, when the concept was initiated. Like all previous volumes, the beauty of this edition is not solely evident in the general excellence of the published works; it also rests in the hearts of the individuals from diverse backgrounds who possess a mutual desire to reveal their life experiences and interactions with the music, its character, and its culture.
...Bessie Smith biographer Chris Albertson talks about the life of “The Empress of the Blues,” one of popular music’s most important figures during the 1920’s and 1930’s
...An hour-long playlist of recordings by legendary jazz musicians, inspired by the outset of spring
...Poetic narratives by six women experiencing the blues.
...Rosalinda Kolb’s art is filled with creative energy and spirit that uniquely connects viewers to the soul, inner beauty, and complexity of jazz musicians.
...In this edition, producers Teo Macero, Bob Belden and Michael Cuscuna, and musicians Dave Holland and Joe Zawinul talk with Jarrett about the way Miles Davis’s 1969 album In a Silent Way came together.
...A year-end compilation of jazz albums oft mentioned by a wide range of critics as being the best of 2022
...The author discusses the iconic tenor saxophonist who is one of the greatest jazz improvisers of all time, a lasting link to the golden age of jazz
...In this excerpt, Aidan Levy describes how a 16-year-old Sonny Rollins caught the ear of the 29-year-old Thelonious Monk, a man Rollins looked up to “as a father figure – a guru, really,” whose musical principles “deeply informed his artistic development.”
...Producers Joel Dorn and Hal Willner discuss the album Amarcord Nino Rota, a tribute to Federico Fellini’s musical director
...A discussion about the revolutionary, non-conformist poet Claude McKay’s complex early life that culminated in a pioneering role in American letters
...According to the All Music Guide to Jazz, this bassist “probably appeared on more records than any other musician in the world,” recording on “everything from Jackie Gleason mood music and polka bands to commercials and Buck Clayton jam sessions.” Who was he?
...A broad collection of jazz poetry authored by an impressive assemblage of regular contributors and established poets new to this publication – all of whom open their imagination and hearts to the abundant creative experience they derive from this art.
...Producers Teo Macero and Bob Belden, and bassist Dave Holland talk about working with Miles Davis on his groundbreaking 1969 recording, Bitches Brew
...Through the art of meditation,
I become transfixed—transported
to the days of Baldwin & Joplin,
the Black Renaissance of Harlem— the resurrection
of a muse, Langston Hughes,
...Forty-two versions of George Gershwin’s “Summertime” in much of its glory for your listening pleasure, and in the heat of this moment.
...A neo-noir story of a young singer snuffed out by the music business early in her career, either by chance or malice…
...In this excerpt, the authors write about some influential midcentury Latin-themed dance albums.
...In this edition, producer Tommy LiPuma talks with Jarrett about working with guitarist George Benson on his 1976 Warner Brothers recording Breezin’
...Over 60 poets from all over the world celebrate their love of jazz…in poetry.
...From a dark corner, night crawls across a wood-board floor
warped from a life beneath boots and spilled beer.
Her music is a moan, a collection of sorrows,
lost love, broken hearts, and illegal dreams.
. . Richard Brent Turner is Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and the African American Studies Program at the University of Iowa, and the author of Soundtrack to a Movement: African American Islam, Jazz, and Black Internationalism [New York University Press] . . ___ . . …..In Richard Brent Turner’s … Continue reading “Interview with Richard Brent Turner, author of Soundtrack to a Movement: African American Islam, Jazz, and Black Internationalism“
...do you hear the wind?
see that scarlet leaf
dance on concrete?
I am that wind
I am that leaf
I am that dance
In a November 16, 2020 interview with Jerry Jazz Musician, Ricky Riccardi, author of Heart Full of Rhythm: The Big Band Years of Louis Armstrong, discusses his vital book and Armstrong’s enormous and underappreciated achievements during the era he led his big band.
...In an excerpt from his book Soundtrack to a Movement: African American Islam, Jazz, and Black Internationalism, Richard Brent Turner writes about Max Roach and his wife, the singer Abbey Lincoln, and the contributions they made to social justice, constructed in the intersecting worlds of African American Islam and jazz.
...In this edition, Gold writes about two Harlem jazz clubs – Connie’s Inn and Smalls’ Paradise – and shares photographs and memorabilia from his collection.
...Molly Larson Cook’s abstract-expressionist paintings accompany the 50 poets contributing to this collection. Her art has much in common with the poetry and music found within it; all three art forms can be described as “landscapes of the imagination,” created by artists from all over the world who are inspired in a meaningful way by jazz music, and whose work can be uniquely interpreted and appreciated (or not!) by those who consume it.
...Along with the satisfaction of publishing countless outstanding poems over the years comes my delight in getting to know many of the poets responsible for them. From this experience an active community of writers has taken shape, most of whom share a common vision of communicating their love and appreciation for jazz music and the historic artists they revere. One such poet is Ms. Aurora M. Lewis of Morena Valley, California, whose new book, Jazz Poems: Reflections on a Broken Heart has just been published.
...“It’s not exclusive, but inclusive, which is the whole spirit of jazz.”
-Herbie Hancock
.
And…this spirit is not limited to the musicians, because celebrating jazz is rich in creative opportunity for writers and visual artists as well. The 54 poets who contribute to this poetry collection are living proof of that.
As always, thanks to the poets, and I hope you enjoy…
Joe
...In this edition, producer Creed Taylor recalls working with the guitarist Wes Montgomery on his 1965 Verve album Goin’ Out of My Head
.... . Joseph Maita, Sr. c. 1935 . ___ . …..My father Joseph Maita (Sr.) was affable, charismatic, and loving – gifted as a musician and, ultimately, a successful business owner. He was also extraordinarily complex and challenged by having to make choices so many young parents find themselves confronting – following … Continue reading “True Jazz Stories: Musical Adventures of Joe Maita, Sr.”
...In this edition, Gold writes about New York’s Midtown Manhattan club Birdland, and shares photographs and memorabilia from his collection.
...Mike finished washing his face just as he knew Tomas, his son, would start the journey over to visit him. He wasn’t home yet, that place he called “home.” East to his son’s West.
...The author talks about his book and the rare collection of 200 full-color and black-and-white souvenir photos and memorabilia that bring life to the renowned jazz nightclubs of 1940’s and 1950’s.
...A 50 song jazz playlist featuring countless great performances, including by Shirley Horn, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, and many others
...An intimate portrait of Bill Charlap and mother Sandy Steward, who explore the art of musical collaboration and accompanying singers.
...Author Dave Chisholm talks about the experience creating his graphic novel about Charlie Parker in California, “Chasin’ the Bird”
...In a 2019 Jerry Jazz Musician interview, Jeffrey Stewart, author of The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke and winner of the 2018 National Book Award for Non-Fiction, talks about Locke, the man now known as the father of the Harlem Renaissance.
...In this edition, producer John Koenig, saxophonist Sonny Rollins and photographer William Claxton discuss their roles in Rollins’ 1957 Contemporary Records album Way Out West with Pressed For All Time author Michael Jarrett
...Kevin Whitehead, the longtime jazz critic for NPR’s Fresh Air, discusses jazz music and the movies – the “natural allies” that both grew out of existing creative traditions, and, since the mid-1920’s have told stories about “child prodigies, naturals who pick up the music the first time they hear it, hard workers with a painstaking practice regimen, talented players diverted into soul-killing commercial work, and even non-improvisers taught to fake it.”
...The community of poets, writers, artists and photographers who have recently contributed their work and time to Jerry Jazz Musician to answer this question, “What one song best represents your experience with 2020?”
...In a November 16, 2020 interview with Jerry Jazz Musician, Riccardi discusses his vital book and Armstrong’s enormous and underappreciated achievements during the era he led his big band.
...Halyards play jazz
snapping rhythm
against sailboat masts.
Floating docks moan.
The sloop rocks.
In the book’s prologue, “Bigger Than Jazz”– a portion of which is published here with the consent of the publisher, Oxford University Press – Riccardi writes about Armstrong’s Apollo Theater performances of 1935 (marking his comeback from an 18 month stay in Europe), his final big band performance of 1947, and subsequent appearances there with his integrated small group, the All Stars.
...On the cusp of an election of consequence the likes of which America hasn’t experienced for 150 years, and in the midst of continued Black Lives Matter protests and an indisputable surge of COVID, 29 poets sharing perspectives from all over the world contribute to this volume of poetry reflecting our tumultuous, unsettling era…
.... . Drawn from interviews with prominent producers, engineers, and record label executives, Michael Jarrett’s Pressed For All Time: Producing the Great Jazz Albums is filled with interesting stories behind some of jazz music’s most historic, influential, and popular recordings. In cooperation with Jarrett and University of North Carolina Press, Jerry Jazz Musician will occasionally … Continue reading ““Pressed for All Time,” Vol. 8 — producer Ed Michel on Art Pepper’s 1980 album Winter Moon“
...No Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, King Oliver, Satch Mo’ and his velvety horn, No royalty of Jazz! No A Train taking us uptown, no Langston Hughes, or Zora Neale Hurston. No Chuck Berry and rock and roll
...She started to scat, I started to cry.
My tears taste like salt baked on my lips.
I hear her soft voice
like the river I walk to each morning.
I carry a jar to give her the river.
I methodically walk along. Stepping in tune to the pulsing soundtrack spilling out of the passing nightclub, littering the sidewalk. The electric guitar wailing something menacingly slow and strong. Almost soulful but still all the while punk at its core and insisting itself to be anything but a love song. I wouldn’t be surprised to catch a glimpse of Lux dancing inside as I pass. Lux, used to be Grace, and I almost miss the days when she was.
...“Balboa,” a story by Matt Sweeney, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 54th Short Fiction Contest.
...In this edition, producer John Snyder recalls Sun Ra, and his 1990 Purple Night recording session
...Just as it did during the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War protests, music is playing an important political and inspirational role in the Black Lives Matter movement and the worldwide protests in support of it.
.... . . …..The poet Michael L. Newell, whose work has often appeared in the pages of Jerry Jazz Musician, has informed me that his new book, Wandering, is now available. Published by cyberwit.net, the book features selections of his poetry from the past fifty years. …..Michael draws readers into his lyrical, vast world with … Continue reading “News about the poet Michael L. Newell”
...Prominent artists and educators reflect on the pandemic and how they are spending their time during isolation and social distancing
...Charles Ingham’s “Jazz Narratives” connect time, place, and subject in a way that ultimately allows the viewer a unique way of experiencing jazz history. This edition’s narratives are “Torn from Its Moorings”, “Watching the Sea” and “Plantations”
...The introduction to Philip Clark’s book “Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time” is excerpted here in its entirety.
...Arizona State University historian and author Tracy Fessenden responds to the question; “During this time of social distancing and isolation at home, what are examples of the music you are listening to, the books you are reading, and/or the television or films you are viewing?”
...Ingham’s “Jazz Narratives” connect time, place, and subject in a way that ultimately allows the viewer a unique way of experiencing jazz history. This edition’s narratives are “The Annunciation of Chet Baker,” “Frank O’Hara Whispers to Scott LaFaro,” and “Blessing the Child.”
...In this edition, producer Tom Dowd talks with Michael Jarrett about the genesis of Herbie Mann’s 1969 recording, Memphis Underground, and the executives and musicians involved.
...Richard Crawford’s Summertime: George Gershwin’s Life in Music is a rich and detailed musical biography that describes Gershwin’s work throughout every stage of his career. In a Jerry Jazz Musician interview, Crawford discusses his book and the man he has described as a “fresh voice of the Jazz Age” who “challenged Americans to rethink their assumptions about composition and performance, nationalism, cultural hierarchy, and the racial divide.”
...Irving Berlin biographer James Kaplan talks about Berlin’s unparalleled musical career and business success, his intense sense of family and patriotism during a complex and evolving time, and the artist’s permanent cultural significance.
...In this edition, producer Helen Keane tells Jarrett about how the collaboration of Tony Bennett and Bill Evans began, culminating in the 1975 recording, The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album.
...In a Jerry Jazz Musician interview, Con Chapman, author of Rabbit’s Blues: The Life and Music of Johnny Hodges – the first-ever biography of the immortal musician – talks about the enigmatic man and his unforgettable sound.
...Jazz music — complex, ground breaking and brilliant from its early 20th century beginnings — would eventually become America’s popular music. That it did so in the face of the severe obstacles of blatant racism and sexism, organized crime and corrupt labor exploitation so prevalent in America at the time is at the heart of historian Gerald Horne’s new book, Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music.
...Twenty-eight poets contribute 37 poems to the Jerry Jazz Musician Fall Poetry Collection, living proof that the energy and spirit of jazz is alive — and quite well.
(Featuring the art of Russell Dupont)
.
...In this edition, Michael Jarrett interviews producer Nat Hentoff about his experience of producing recordings for Candid Records, and in particular the 1961 album, Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus
.... . Carol Friedman’s 1976 photograph of Chet Baker . _____ . …..For many of us who revere jazz music – especially those fortunate enough to have grown up during the era of the 12 x 12 record album jacket and coffee table photography books– the images of great musicians taken by photographers like William … Continue reading “The Jazz Photography Issue”
.... . Carol Friedman . ___ . …..During a career now spanning over three decades, the esteemed New York portrait photographer Carol Friedman’s iconic images have appeared on hundreds of album and CD covers. Her poignant, often spontaneous work – a generous sampling of which is on display within and following the interview – includes … Continue reading “Interview with renowned jazz photographer Carol Friedman”
.... . William Gottlieb, c. 1940 . . ___ . …..The first interview I ever hosted for .Jerry Jazz Musician was in 1997 with William Gottlieb, best known as a jazz photographer but who only came into that field when the Washington Post — for whom he wrote a jazz column — determined they could … Continue reading “Interview with jazz photographer William Gottlieb”
.... . Speak No Evil, a 1964 recording session by saxophonist Wayne Shorter (released in 1966), was among those listed by noted critics, authors and musicians as their all-time favorite Blue Note albums . __________ . “Reminiscing in Tempo” is part of a continuing effort to provide Jerry Jazz Musician readers with unique forms of … Continue reading “Reminiscing in Tempo: “What are 4 or 5 of your all-time favorite Blue Note albums?””
...Interview with jazz record producer, discographer, and entrepreneur Michael Cuscuna.
...Jeffrey Stewart, National Book Award-winning author of The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, discusses the life of the man known as the father of the Harlem Renaissance
...Gary Giddins, Jimmy Heath, Fred Hersch, Joe Hagan, Maxine Gordon, Tim Page, Veronica Swift and Marcus Strickland are among the 25 writers, musicians, poets, educators, and photographers who responded to our question, “What are some of your favorite record album covers of all time?”
...“Thinking about Robert Johnson,” comes from a seven-work series entitled Pastoral Scenes from the Gallant South (from Billie Holliday’s “Strange Fruit”).
.... . In this collection, nine poets contribute ten poems celebrating jazz in poems as unique as the music itself . . . . I Am Jazz . I Am Jazz. It is my nature to evolve, to change and adapt. I’m restless. I move towards a future I cannot see or predict. … Continue reading “A collection of poetry celebrating the culture of jazz — January, 2019”
.... . . The Graystone Ballroom 4237 Woodward Ave. Detroit, Michigan . _____ . On February 27, 1922, when dancing in giant ballrooms was wildly popular, Detroit’s Graystone Ballroom – a block long structure on Woodward Avenue — opened with the All-University Ball. According to Dan Austin of HistoricDetroit.org, the property’s original owners … Continue reading “Historic Venues: Detroit’s Graystone Ballroom”
.... . Photo William Gottlieb/Library of Congress Charlie Parker is frequently found on the lists of noted critics and musicians answering the question, “What are 3 or 4 of your favorite jazz record recordings of the 1940’s?” This photograph by William Gottlieb was taken at Carnegie Hall in New York, c. 1947 . __________ … Continue reading “Reminiscing in Tempo: “What are 3 or 4 of your favorite jazz recordings of the 1940’s?””
...In honor of Veterans Day
Eight poets — John Stupp, Aurora Lewis, Michael L. Newell, Robert Nisbet, Alan Yount, Roger Singer, dan smith and Joan Donovan — write about the era of World War II
...
Before recording with Benny Carter in 1956 and then recording three albums for Riverside between 1957 – 1959, Anna Maria Woolridge was a “lightweight” supper-club singer who went through several name changes, ultimately becoming “Mrs. Max Roach.” Who was Anna Maria Woolridge?
Mary Lou Williams
Dinah Washington
Abbey Lincoln
Melba Liston
Sheila Jordan
Lorez Alexandria
Irene Kral
Go to the next page for the answer!
...
While the civil rights movement may not have officially begun until the December, 1955 day that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus, the stage for it was set years before that. Religious leaders and institutions, jazz and athletics all famously played important roles in building a foundation for the movement,
...I am always happy to report when a writer published on Jerry Jazz Musician finds success with their work. Michael L. Newell informs me that a new book of his poetry, “Meditation of an Old Man Standing on a Bridge,” is now available from Seattle’s Bellowing Ark Press. This is particularly rewarding as I have proudly published many of the poems Michael has submitted to me since 2015 – two of which appear in this collection.
Michael’s poetry is a gift to those of us who love and appreciate the culture inspired by jazz music. His creative spirit is aligned with those musicians he writes about, maintaining a sensitivity critical to communicating the music’s cultural aesthetic.
Whenever I receive submissions from Michael, I know I will be reading the poetry of a well-traveled man whose work can lead me anywhere – a rainy window in Kigali, a snowy stroll in Tashkent, a Christmas spent alone in Jordan, a puzzling evening in
...In a wonderfully entertaining and informative 2004 New Yorker piece titled “Ralph Ellison’s Record Collection,” Richard Brody reminds us of the Invisible Man author’s passion for jazz music — what he referred to as “American music” — and of his somewhat controversial (for the time) opinion of the musicians coming up. While often revering the music of Armstrong, Ellington, and Lester Young (and who can blame him?), of Charlie Parker’s music, he wrote “there is in it a great deal of loneliness, self-deprecation and self-pity,” and, in a letter to friend Albert Murray following a 1958 Newport Jazz Festival performance, described Miles Davis as “poor, evil, lost little Miles Davis.” He famously characterized bebop as “a listener’s music” that “few people are capable of dancing to it” — although this critique was probably more of a lament of a lost culture.
But the crux of the story is not Ellison’s opinion about music, rather the recordings he collected, reported by Brody as
...The late, great trumpeter Clark Terry once offered one of the most pointed, and humorous, comments about the perennial controversies in jazz over race and the perceived abilities of white versus black musicians…
He said, “My theory is that a note doesn’t give a
...From a small balcony above the stage of the Maybeck Recital Hall in Berkeley, I’m looking down on the jazz duo of bassist Red Mitchell and pianist Roger Kellaway, while tapping my foot to the earthy, swinging beat they are laying down.
It’s a Sunday afternoon in 1992 at this unique venue. The recital hall is part of a house originally built by the famed architect Bernard Maybeck in the early twentieth century. (Maybeck designed the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, along with many other notable buildings in that city.) The hall accommodates only about 50 people, and it’s a warm, redwood-paneled room with beautiful leaded glass windows on three sides. It actually feels a lot like being in a little chapel—but the religion being worshipped here is that of acoustic jazz, primarily of the pianistic variety.
For several years now, ‘The Maybeck’ as it’s familiarly called, has hosted a who’s-who of
...You are amused
by my passion
for taxicabs.
Their drivers know
where we are
going.
We don’t need a
...While the romantic notion is to imagine that the music coming out of the clubs lining New York’s 52nd Street during the 1940’s was universally applauded, we of course know that is not the case. In an example of this dissent, consider the words of Los Angeleno Norman Granz, who told Downbeat this during his April, 1945 visit to New York:
“Jazz in New York stinks! Even the drummers on 52nd St. sound like Dizzy Gillespie!”
“I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in the quality of music here. We keep getting great reports out west about the renaissance of jazz along 52nd St. but I’d like to know where it is. Literally, there isn’t one trumpet player in any of the clubs with the exception of ‘Lips’ Page and he was blowing a mellophone the night I caught him. Maybe Gillespie was great but the ‘advanced’ group that Charlie Parker is fronting at the Three Deuces doesn’t
...The winter I ran away, I moved into a garret in Provincetown, where I wrote poetry under the light of a candle far into the wee hours. Out my window, two stories up, I could see snow glistening on slanted rooftops that led like an uneven staircase to the bay. Below me, a twisted narrow path led to Commercial Street, peaceful and stark as an unwritten page. It was 1973 and I had run to the end of the world as I knew it to find freedom.
I knew Provincetown from spending summers with my dad and Grandma Tess in her cottage in Truro. It seemed she’d lived most of her life since Grandpa’s passing as a beachcomber. I liked following behind her when we collected
...In the fall of 1944, shortly following his medical discharge from the Navy, Artie Shaw formed a 17 piece band (without strings) that featured Barney Kessel on guitar, Dodo Marmarosa on piano, Ray Coniff on trombone, and the brilliant trumpeter Roy Eldridge, famous for his work with Gene Krupa’s band in the early 1940’s. The band, according to noted critic Leonard Feather, was “quite impressive” and exhibited “a refreshing lack of bad taste and bombast.”
This era of Shaw’s band resulted in several excellent recordings, among them
...That winter we lived among mice in the Berkshires, in a little cabin set not far from a large white clapboard house that belonged to the owner Betty, who was a widow. Two steps up to the cabin did nothing to keep the mice away. Their constant tweaking and bustle made me feel I was living in an indoor forest. Betty, who was a nice old lady, warned us. “You’ll never be able to keep the mice out. If you can stand them, the place is yours.”
We had come up to the Berkshires figuring we might have to rough it, but had no idea. Van and I had been together about two years then. The summer before we had been married on a beach in
...Her voice shredded, turned to gravel
by cigarettes and whiskey, she navigates
grocery aisles and checkout lines
as sotto voce she sings old songs
both jazz and country. People stare
in amazement as her ruined voice
elicits tears from listening bystanders.
In her living room she croons with
Paul Morris is a graphic designer and writer who collects album art of the 1940’s and 1950’s. He finds his examples of influential mid-century design in the used record stores of Portland, Oregon.
In this edition, Paul features choice selections from Decca Records
...She stood in a room at The Met glancing at the painting on the wall, which was of two women kissing. From her vantage point, standing slightly away and to the side, the two women lying together interlocked in bed appeared cushioned awkwardly in space, free-floating yet connected.
The painting was by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, the alcoholic French dwarf artist, and she tried to imagine what it was like living when he did in Paris at the time of the painting, 1892, and what it might have been like for these two prostitutes and others like them who often turned to one another for relief from a world of men then.
Mireille, it was reported, was one of the girls in the brothel in the Rue d’Amboise, when Lautrec was commissioned to create a series of panels about the lives of the girls there, and she was one of his favorites. He visited the salons of the brothels in the Rue des Moulins and Rue d’Amboise many times to study and paint the women, who felt very free to be
...Throughout his career, this saxophonist was known as the “Vice Prez” because he sounded so similar to Lester Young. Who was he?
Earl Bostic
Paul Quinichette
Ben Webster
Coleman Hawkins
Johnny Hodges
Arnett Cobb
Herschel Evans
Go to the next page for the answer!
...Slow slow slooooooooooooooow; the river was practically dry, a river in name only, a few puddles on the mudflats where standing water reflected the cottony clouds that moved perpetually east, dropping nothing anymore but empty promises. Unsettling in the most literal sense. Many people sold their houses or just abandoned them, heading north, and those who stayed finally got serious about
...Chantal Doolittle wasn’t like anybody else she knew. Who else, for example, would stand transfixed before a record player or stereo, still as stone while listening to music — not merely attending to it — her very cells taking in the song, calculating and absorbing. “That girl is special,” Nana Esther always said.
When she was a kid and Motown was the thing, Chan would sing Marvin Gaye’s tunes to her grandmother in their high ceilinged apartment, where, more often than not it was soul music, the harmonizing voices of The Four Tops, The Temptations, The Supremes, drifting in from the surrounding windows and disappearing into the sky that was perennially a washed out gray, as if there was an invisible flag always at half mast, hanging outside heaven. From the time she was five or six, all Chan had to do was hear a song once and she would know it. She knew all the Motown tunes word for word, and sang them right on key, perfectly, which is why Nana Esther dubbed her, “my little songbird.”
Of course, there was nothing little about Chantal, but, being her grandmother’s one and only, she was “a little one” to her. Chantal was tall, big for her age, and when she developed as a young woman, busty too. She stood out even before she opened her mouth, due to her attitude. Her nana had taught her to be “confident as a man,” and she had seemingly
...Paul Morris is a graphic designer and writer who collects album art of the 1940’s and 1950’s. He finds his examples of influential mid-century design in the used record stores of Portland, Oregon.
Happy Birthday #104 to Roy Eldridge, who in addition to being one of the great trumpet players of his time, is known as the “bridge” between Armstrong and Dizzy. I loved the brightness of his playing, and for contributing to one of the great moments in jazz — his vocal duet with Anita O’Day, leading into a seldom-in-a-generation trumpet solo on “Let Me Off Uptown.”
When I was a kid, my dad used to tell me stories about his friendship with “Eldridge,” and in particular one eventful experience he had while he was traveling with his band in Pennsylvania. In 1998, two years before his passing, my father wrote this piece for Jerry Jazz Musician about this very special experience in his life. I hope you enjoy his telling of it…
...In 1956, this singer appeared in the film The Girl Can’t Help It, in which she wore a dress that had been worn by Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She also appeared in several other films (including Spike Lee’s 1990 movie Mo’ Better Blues), and received a Golden Globe nomination for her role in the film For Love of Ivy. Who is she?
Helen Humes
Betty Carter
Abbey Lincoln
Sarah Vaughan
Shirley Horn
Ivie Anderson
Ethel Waters
...This pianist worked with (among others) the bands of Bunny Berigan, Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman, and was Bing Crosby’s musical director at the time of Crosby’s death in 1977. Who is he?
...This trumpeter was the spark plug in Gene Krupa’s band, and was known as “Little Jazz”. Who is he?
Dizzy Gillespie
Roy Eldridge
Fats Navarro
Chet Baker
Shorty Rogers
Conte Condoli
Bunny Berigan
Jonah Jones
...As a jazz musician for seven decades, and as a chronicler of its intellectual and spiritual development through his fascinating, award-winning photography, Milt Hinton acts as an essential connecting point for the music and its associated culture. Hinton played bass alongside iconic figures like Cab Calloway, Dizzy Gillespie, and Louis Armstrong, and, as a photographer, brought these men and a host of others into focus as musicians, artists, and vital contributors to twentieth-century American life.
With the generous consent of David G. Berger and Holly Maxson, who along with Milt Hinton co-authored Playing the Changes: Milt Hinton’s Life in Stories and Photographs, Jerry Jazz Musician presents a photo exhibit, “Jazz: Through the Life and Lens of Milt Hinton.”
...In “Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism, author Thomas Brothers writes about Armstrong’s early fascination with marijuana — an interest that began in Chicago, 1928, while playing the Savoy Ballroom. This interest led to a marijuana possession arrest on November 13, 1930 in the parking lot of Los Angeles’ Cotton Club. “Armstrong was allowed to finish out his night work before they hauled him off to jail around 3:00 A.M.,” Brothers writes.
The following book excerpt begins with a rather humorous transcript from his trial, and then
...In 1929, this trumpeter replaced Bubber Miley in Duke Ellington’s band. Who was he?
Red Allen
Rex Stewart
Ziggy Elman
...Lester Young was the “Pres.” Who became known as the “Vice Pres?”
Paul Quinichette
Dexter Gordon
Hank Crawford
Paul Gonsalves
Don Byas
Johnny Griffin
Arnett Cobb
Lou Donaldson
...Earl “Fatha” Hines was born on this day in 1901. As one of jazz music’s most influential pianists, his work has touched the creative heart of American culture since 1925, when he first met Louis Armstrong at a Musicians’ Union poolroom in Chicago.
Hines is one of those figures who contributed to the development of jazz on a variety of levels. In The Chronicle of Jazz, Mervyn Cooke credits Hines’ “trumpet style playing” for being the “first tangible departure from the post-ragtime stride idiom, cultivating a right-hand melodic technique more directly comparable to that of front-line melody instruments.”
...“Adolphus” had one of the longest careers in the history of jazz, having played with, among others, Bessie Smith, McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, Cab Calloway, Teddy Wilson and Benny Goodman.
Who was “Adolphus”?
...Childhood Heroes — We all had them
Excerpted from exclusive Jerry Jazz Musician interviews, our guests talk of theirs.
Sonny Rollins was a hero of saxophonist Joshua Redman
JJM Who was your hero, Joshua?
JR My musical hero?
JJM Well, that or your boyhood hero…
JR I think my mom was my hero. My mom took great care of me and she was a person I looked up to. I didn’t really have heroes like clear role models, like people or figures that I idolized…I think the first record I ever bought was a Sonny Rollins record, Saxophone Colossus, and from that point on Sonny Rollins became a hero of mine. I was nine or ten or so at the time, and my mom paid for the record…
...THE SAINTS LIVE
Live from Lincoln Center New Orleans jazz
reaches for higher ground.
Musical dynasty family Marsalis
Show the world that Dixie still lives.
Although it only encompasses about six square miles, the New York City neighborhood of Harlem has played a central role in the development of American culture. Originally rural farmland, then an affluent suburb, since 1911 Harlemhas been predominantly an African American community. Its residents havehad a disproportionately large impact on all aspects of American culture,leaving their mark on literature, art, comedy, dance, theater, music, sports, religion and politics.
...Footprints ( for Wayne Shorter )
you speak no evil
when you talk about the miles
you traveled, the
way your sax sounded
like a thunderstorm
or spoke like a child
Before there was Elvis, there was W.C. Handy, the man who made the blues. Here is the first major biography in decades of the man who gave us such iconic songs as St. Louis Blues, The Memphis Blues, and Beale Street Blues, and who was responsible, more than any other musician, for bringing the blues into the American mainstream.
David Robertson charts W.C. Handys rise from a rural Alabama childhood in the last decades of the nineteenth century to become one of the most celebrated songwriters of the twentieth century. The child of former slaves, Handy was first inspired by spirituals and folk songs, and his passion for music pushed him to leave home as a teenager, despite opposition from his preacher father.
...McCoy Tyner: When I was growing up, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk were basically the people who inspired me on the piano. Later on, I found out about Art Tatum and others. Bud and Thelonious were the main people who inspired me.
...Ishmael Reed: I admired boxers and cowboys when I was young, so I would say my heroes at the time were Roy Rogers and Sugar Ray Robinson.
...Albert Murray: There was a piano player, a guitar player who seemed like a legend to me, and there was the great Satchel Paige, who lived on the outskirts of Mobile. Baseball was a big thing there, and he was the greatest baseball player in the world.
...Zach Ferguson, a junior at Battleground High School in Battleground, WA, was the winner of the 2007 Accent on Youth Essay Contest. His passion for jazz and the challenges he faces as a youthful fan of it is the focus of the column.
...“Reminiscing in Tempo” is part of a continuing effort to provide Jerry Jazz Musician readers with unique forms of “edu-tainment.” As often as possible, we pose one question via e mail to a small number of prominent and diverse people. The question is designed to provoke a lively response that will potentially include the memories and/or opinion of those solicited.
What three or four songs best epitomize the era of the Civil Rights Movement?
Featuring Bruce Lundvall, Chico Hamilton, Gerald Early, Juan Williams, Arthur Kempton and others…
...Featuring the complete text of chapter 4 rom “Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told By the Men Who Made It”, a 1955 book by Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff
...FOR COUNT BASIE
On this day, your birthday, I want
to celebrate, although you passed last
century. I crave some birthday cake,
so I put on “One O’clock Jump”
one more time to soothe my soul, allow
your fingers to loosen my tight, sore
muscles that have taken hold, the ones
“Reminiscing in Tempo” is part of a continuing effort to provide Jerry Jazz Musician readers with unique forms of “edu-tainment.” As often as possible, we pose one question via e mail to a small number of prominent and diverse people. The question is designed to provoke a lively response that will potentially include the memories and/or opinion of those solicited.
What are four or five of the the most romantic tunes ever recorded?
Featuring, Famoudou Don Moye, Geri Allen, Delfeayo Marsalis, Bennie Maupin and others…
...John Hammond is one of the most charismatic figures in American music, a man who put on record much of the music we cherish today. A pioneering producer and talent spotter, Hammond discovered and championed some of the most gifted musicians of early jazz — Billie Holliday, Count Basie, Charlie Christian, Benny Goodman — and staged the legendary “From Spirituals to Swing” concert at Carnegie Hall in 1939, which established jazz as America’s indigenous music. Then as jazz gave way to pop and rock Hammond repeated the trick, discovering Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, and Stevie Ray Vaughan in his life’s extraordinary second act.
...“Reminiscing in Tempo” is part of a continuing effort to provide Jerry Jazz Musician readers with unique forms of “edu-tainment.” As often as possible, we pose one question via e mail to a small number of prominent and diverse people. The question is designed to provoke a lively response that will potentially include the memories and/or opinion of those solicited.
When you were growing up, what were three or four of your parents’ favorite recordings?
Featuring Dee Dee Bridgewater, Hubert Laws, Jacky Terrasson, Jimmy Owens, Kurt Elling and others…
...“Reminiscing in Tempo” is part of a continuing effort to provide Jerry Jazz Musician readers with unique forms of “edu-tainment.” As often as possible, we pose one question via e mail to a small number of prominent and diverse people. The question is designed to provoke a lively response that will potentially include the memories and/or opinion of those solicited.
What are the five greatest albums (LP or CD) of all time?
Featuring Ahmad Jamal, Ashley Kahn, John Pizzarelli, John Szwed, Nancy Wilson and others…
...“Reminiscing in Tempo” is part of a continuing effort to provide Jerry Jazz Musician readers with unique forms of “edu-tainment.” As often as possible, we pose one question via e mail to a small number of prominent and diverse people. The question is designed to provoke a lively response that will potentially include the memories and/or opinion of those solicited.
What are five books that mean a lot to you?
Featuring Ben Ratliff, David Maraniss, Diane McWhorter, Don Byron, Gary Giddins, James Gavin, Kevin Boyle and others…
...“Reminiscing in Tempo” is part of a continuing effort to provide Jerry Jazz Musician readers with unique forms of “edu-tainment.” As often as possible, we pose one question via e mail to a small number of prominent and diverse people. The question is designed to provoke a lively response that will potentially include the memories and/or opinion of those solicited.
What musical recording(s) changed your life?
Featuring Dianne Reeves, Francis Davis, Fred Hersch, Jim Hall, Joshua Redman, Nat Hentoff and others…
...“Reminiscing in Tempo” is part of a continuing effort to provide Jerry Jazz Musician readers with unique forms of “edu-tainment.” As often as possible, we pose one question via e mail to a small number of prominent and diverse people. The question is designed to provoke a lively response that will potentially include the memories and/or opinion of those solicited.
What is the greatest saxophone solo in the history of jazz?
Featuring Dan Morgenstern, Ishmael Reed, James Carter, Jason Moran, Martha Bayles, Terry Teachout, Kitty Margolis and others…
...This edition of “Conversation with Gary Giddins” is the first of three Jerry Jazz Musician features devoted to the importance of New Orleans culture. In an enlightening, passionate conversation, Giddins — for many years the country’s most eminent jazz critic — discusses the beginnings of jazz in the city of New Orleans, its prominent figures, and what needs to be done to properly market jazz in a city that has contributed so much toward shaping the soul of America.
...The world of jazz criticism is enriched every time Gary Giddins brings out a new book, and Weather Bird: Jazz at the Dawn of its Second Century, bulges with riches. The collection is mostly drawn from his recently-ended Village Voice column (also called “Weather Bird”), with the addition of significant essays published elsewhere. Even faithful readers of the Voice will find ample new Giddins material here.
...at Hentoff, a prolific author and journalist whose work has been published for many years in, among other publications, the Village Voice, the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, the Wall Street Journal, and Jazz Times, has been described by one of his publishers, DaCapo Press, as “a man of passion and insight, of streetwise wit and polished eloquence — a true American original.” This “passion of insight” is particularly apparent in his lifelong devotion to the chronicling of jazz music — a pursuit that began even before he became editor of Downbeat in 1953 — and in his steadfast defense of the Constitution.
...“I suppose you could say that the seeds of my next book, a full-length biography of Louis Armstrong, were planted three years ago, when I was writing an essay for the New York Times about Armstrongs centenary in which I called him “jazz’s most eminent Victorian,” Terry Teachout wrote in his August 17, 2004 Arts Journal blog.
Three years after the Times piece was published, he took a tour of the Louis Armstrong House in Queens and came away with the enthusiasm required of such an endeavor.
...In the final column of his thirty year career as jazz critic of the Village Voice, Gary Giddins wrote, “I’m as besotted with jazz as ever, and expect to write about it till last call, albeit in other formats. Indeed, much in the way being hanged is said to focus the mind, this finale has made me conscious of the columns I never wrote.”
...Buying a vinyl long playing jazz album in the format’s heyday — from the 1950s through the 1980s — was a three-step sensual process that stirred an almost irrational enthusiasm for the entire culture the music ignited. The record industry’s flair for creating passionate cover art seduced the imagination, the sounds etched into the grooves promised diversion and surprise, and the densely-typed liner notes on the back cover fired up an eagerness for enlightenment. The process continued at the turntable, where the cut of a stylus transformed the listener into an aural witness to the performer’s character and improvisational skills. It was, quite simply, a bonding experience.
...In the final column of his thirty year career as jazz critic of the Village Voice, Gary Giddins wrote, “I’m as besotted with jazz as ever, and expect to write about it till last call, albeit in other formats. Indeed, much in the way being hanged is said to focus the mind, this finale has made me conscious of the columns I never wrote.”
...Joshua Berrett’s Louis Armstrong and Paul Whiteman: Two Kings of Jazz is a dual biography of two great innovators in the history of jazz. One was black, one was white — one is now legendary, the other nearly forgotten. Berrett offers a provocative revision of the history of early jazz by focusing on two of its most notable practioners — Whiteman, legendary in his day, and Armstrong, a legend ever since.
...Nadine Cohodas’s Queen: The Life and Music of Dinah Washington, is the landmark biography of the brief, intensely lived life and soulful music of the great Dinah Washington. A gospel star at fifteen, she was discovered by jazz great Lionel Hampton at eighteen, and for the rest of her life was on the road, playing clubs, or singing in the studio — making music one way or another. Dinah’s tart and heartfelt voice quickly became her trademark; she was a distinctive stylist, crossing over from the “race” music category to the pop and jazz charts.
...Roy Eldridge’s style is universally recognized as the all-important link between the playing of Louis Armstrong and the achievements of modernist Dizzy Gillespie. Roy’s daring harmonic approach and his technically awesome improvisations provided guidance and inspiration for countless jazz musicians, but he was also a star performer in his own right, whose recordings as a bandleader, and with Gene Krupa and Artie Shaw, gained him a durable international reputation. The indignities he experienced and overcame during the 1940’s while working in otherwise all-white ensembles proved he was as bold a social pioneer as he was a performer.
...What are the boundaries of the jazz idiom? What is the role of jazz in today’s world? To download or not to download? What is the future of retailing and how does that affect the art of making music? What is the value of recorded music?
As ever, jazz faces an array of questions, certainly more than three people can address in an hour. The hour spent in this particular discussion among men at the top of their respective fields focuses on confronting the challenge of marketing a music filled with nuance and passion to a modern audience conditioned by technology for instant gratification, and the issue of competing with its own historic past.
In a Roundtable hosted by Jerry Jazz Musician publisher Joe Maita, Blue Note Records president Bruce Lundvall, saxophonist Joshua Redman, and New York Times critic Ben Ratliff lend their perspectives.
...Considered by many to be the greatest blues singer of all time, Bessie Smith was also a successful vaudeville entertainer who became the highest paid African-American performer of the roaring twenties.
First published in 1971, author Chris Albertson ‘s Bessie was described at the time by critic Leonard Feather as the most devastating, provocative, and enlightening work of its kind ever contributed to the annals of jazz literature. New Yorker critic Whitney Balliett called it the first estimable full-length biography not only of Bessie Smith, but of any black musician.
...From the Jim Crow world of 1920s Greenville, South Carolina, to Greenwich Village’s Café Society in the ’40s, to their 1974 Grammy-winning collaboration on “Loves Me Like a Rock,” the Dixie Hummingbirds have been one of gospel’s most durable and inspiring groups.
...Village Voice writer Gary Giddins, who was prominently featured in Ken Burns’ documentary Jazz, and who is the country’s preeminent jazz critic, joins us in a December 23, 2002 conversation about jazz legend Thelonious Monk.
...In Stardust Melodies: A Biography of Twelve of America’s Most Popular Songs, author Will Friedwald takes these legendary songs apart and puts them together again, with unprecedented detail and understanding. Each song’s history is explored — the circumstances under which it was written and first performed — and then its musical and lyric content.
...Lee Tanner began using a camera as a teenager in New York City. An avid jazz fan from the age of eight and inspired by the jazz photography of Gjon Mili, Bill Claxton, Herb Snitzer, and Herman Leonard, he turned to documenting the jazz scene with a love for the music comparable only to his creative drive for visual expression. Photography, however, was only an avocation.
...In Tonight at Noon, Sue Graham Mingus gives us an elegant and unsparingly honest memoir of a romance between American opposites: she, a product of privilege, a former midwestern WASP debutante and Smith College graduate who worked as a journalist in Europe and in New York; he (Charles Mingus), an authentic jazz titan, a brilliant, eccentric, difficult artist, a scion of Watts, Los Angeles, who would become one of America’s foremost composers.*
...ester Young was jazz music’s first hipster. He performed onstage in sunglasses and coined and popularized the enigmatic slang “that’s cool” and “you dig?” He was a snazzy dresser who always wore a suit and his trademark porkpie hat. He influenced everyone from B. B. King to Stan Getz to Allen Ginsberg. When he died, he was the subject of musical tributes by Charles Mingus (“Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”) and Wayne Shorter (“Lester Left Town”), and incidents from his life were featured in the movie ‘Round Midnight.
...Gene Lees is a well-known jazz chronicler. He is also a song lyricist, composer, singer, and author of more than a dozen volumes of jazz history and criticism, including the highly acclaimed Cats of Any Color: Jazz Black and White.
In You Can’t Steal a Gift, Lees writes of his encounters with four great black musicians: Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Milt Hinton, and Nat King Cole. Equal parts memoir, oral history, and commentary, each of the main chapters is a minibiography weaving together conversations Lees had with the musicians and their families, friends and associates over several decades.
...For an entire generation, when Cafe Society was at its pinnacle, New York’s Stork Club was the world’s most storied night spot. It’s walls housed glamour and celebrities waited in line for the chance to be seen. Americans from all over the country, and soldiers fighting overseas, dreamed of visiting New York and being among the witnesses to the Stork Club’s elegant culture.
From its inception in the Roaring Twenties as a speakeasy for Jazz Age gangsters to its heyday in the 50’s when Jack wooed Jackie there, and headwaiters reaped $20,000 tips, everyone from Marilyn Monroe to J. Edgar Hoover gathered at the Stork Club.
...Philadelphian Francis Davis is the author of several books, including The History of the Blues, Bebop and Nothingness and a forthcoming biography of John Coltrane. A contributing editor of The Atlantic Monthly, he also writes regularly about music for the New York Times, among others.
...Author Eric Nisenson has devoted much of his adult life to reporting jazz. The genesis of his passion for jazz was his introduction to Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue at an early age – a passion so strong it eventually led to a friendship with Miles. The subjects for his three biographies are no less than Miles, John Coltrane, and now, Sonny Rollins, all key musicians and all strong, unique personalities worthy of icon status in the world of music. Nisenson discusses his friendship with Miles and his new book, Open Sky : Sonny Rollins and His World of Improvisation
...Nat Hentoff was born in Boston in 1925 and lived there until he moved to New York City at the age of twenty-eight. For many years he has written a weekly column for the Village Voice. His column for the Washington Times is syndicated nationally, and he writes regularly about music for the Wall Street Journal. His numerous books cover subjects ranging from jazz to civil rights and civil liberties to First Amendment issues.
...Gerald Early is Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters at Washington University in St. Louis, and is one of Americas most respected essayists. His work on American and African American culture is collected in Tuxedo Junction, The Culture of Bruising (National Book Award), and One Nation Under a Groove, a book on Motown.
He has edited collections on African American rhetoric, black consciousness, sports, Muhammad Ali, and African American writing about St. Louis.
...As jazz critic for the New Yorker magazine since 1957, and author of fifteen books, Whitney Balliett has spent a lifetime listening to and writing about jazz. Generations of readers have learned to listen to the music with his graceful guidance.
In our interview with Balliett, he discusses his latest book, Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz, 1954-2000 (St. Martin’s Press), which collects a bounty of his reviews, reporting and portraits.
...Jazz and poetry seem intertwined somehow, not just because of its historical union, but because of their immense opportunity for self-expression. Sascha Feinstein has written extensively about jazz poetry, and most recently he has published Misterioso , a collection of his own work which won the Hayden Carruth Award. Sascha was kind enough to share his thoughts with Jerry Jazz Musician during a July, 2000 interview.
...For many of us, the photography of Herman Leonard is our first link to jazz culture. Ellington in Paris, Dexter with a Chesterfield, a youthful Miles, Satchmo in Birdland…These images, in some cases more so than the music, are responsible for our devotion to preserving and protecting the art the musicians of mid 20th Century America created, and Herman Leonard reported on.
...My name is Joe Maita, Sr. I am 81 years old and was a musician formany years. This is about my experience meeting and knowing the greattrumpet player Roy Eldridge.
...A collection in which over 30 poets communicate their appreciation for jazz music in poems no longer than seven lines.
...wind whispers song of grief
its version of
Ben Webster’s sorrowful solos
“Reminiscing in Tempo” is part of a continuing effort to provide Jerry Jazz Musician readers with unique forms of “edu-tainment.” As often as possible, we pose one question via e mail to a small number of prominent and diverse people. The question is designed to provoke a lively response that will potentially include the memories and/or opinion of those solicited.
What do you recall about the first live music performance you ever attended?
Featuring Alan Broadbent, Cyrus Chestnut, Dave Frishberg, David Evanier, and others…
...Rhythms Of Life
The ferment of storm to seas
The seas’ mad tides
Our savage hearts to spawn
In the wild shoals of swollen rivers
Druid fires – spiraling discs
Raspy winds and blind/blue passions
Click here to read previous editions of The Sunday Poem
Click here to read more short fiction published on Jerry Jazz Musician
Click here to read more book excerpts published on Jerry Jazz Musician
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Joe Maita
Editor/Publisher
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