Excerpts from David Rife’s Jazz Fiction: Take Two – Vol. 7: “Women, by Women”
In this edition, Rife writes about jazz novels and short stories that feature stories about women, written by women.
...November 12th, 2024
Features
Memorable Quote: H.L. Mencken…
. . Ben Pinchot, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons . “I believe it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.” . -H. L. Mencken . . Listen … Continue reading “Memorable Quote: H.L. Mencken…”
...November 6th, 2024
Memorable Quote:…Martin Luther King
. . photo via Pixabay . “Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.” . -Martin Luther King . . ___ . . Listen to the 1963 recording of Oscar Peterson performing “Hymn to Freedom,” with Ray Brown (bass) and Ed Thigpen (drums). [Universal … Continue reading “Memorable Quote:…Martin Luther King”
...November 4th, 2024
“‘Different’ Trios” – a playlist by Bob Hecht
In this 27-song playlist, Bob Hecht focuses on non-traditional trio recordings.
...October 28th, 2024
“Trios – Three’s Not a Crowd” – a playlist by Bob Hecht
In the history of jazz there have been many variations of instrumentation within the trio format (think of Benny Goodman’s trio or Jimmy Giuffre’s) but on this playlist, Bob Hecht concentrates on a handful of the classic trio configurations—either piano, bass and drums, or in a few instances, piano, guitar and bass……
...September 26th, 2024
In Memoriam: Jazz advocate Dan Morgenstern, 1929 – 2024
The influential jazz critic, author, scholar, and advocate for the music Dan Morgenstern died on September 7, at the age of 94.
...September 8th, 2024
Excerpts from David Rife’s Jazz Fiction: Take Two – Vol. 5: “Scott Joplin: King of Ragtime”
In this edition, Rife writes about three novels/short fiction that include stories about Scott Joplin, the primary forerunner and significant influencer of jazz.
...September 5th, 2024
Memorable Quote….Abraham Lincoln, on labor
“If any man tells you he loves America, yet hates labor…”
...September 2nd, 2024
“Duos – Two of a Mind” – a playlist by Bob Hecht
In this edition of extensive jazz playlists, the award-winning jazz producer and scholar Bob Hecht presents a 31-song playlist of historic and contemporary duo performances that exemplify the essence of jazz as a conversation between individuals, an open exchange between equal partners.
...August 28th, 2024
Excerpts from David Rife’s Jazz Fiction: Take Two – Vol. 4: “Jazz, Dancing, Nightclubs: A Bonded Culture”
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.
...August 6th, 2024
“Alone at the Piano” – a playlist by Bob Hecht
In this edition of extensive jazz playlists, the award-winning jazz producer and scholar Bob Hecht focuses his attention on solo piano performances, including those by artists such as Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Art Tatum, Tommy Flanagan, Cedar Walton, Bill Evans, Jaki Byard, Keith Jarrett.
...August 1st, 2024
A book excerpt from Designed for Success: Better Living and Self-Improvement with Midcentury Instructional Records, by Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder
In this excerpt from Designed for Success, the authors write extensively about music instruction and appreciation records dealing with the subject of jazz.
...July 30th, 2024
Excerpts from David Rife’s Jazz Fiction: Take Two – Vol. 3: “Louis Armstrong”
In this third edition featuring excerpts from his book, Rife writes about four novels/short fiction that include stories involving Louis Armstrong.
...July 9th, 2024
“The Naked Jazz Musician” – A playlist by Bob Hecht
As Sonny Rollins has said, “Jazz is about taking risks, pushing boundaries, and challenging the status quo.” Could there be anything riskier—or more boundary-pushing—than to stand naked and perform with nowhere to hide? Bob’s extensive playlist is comprised of such perilous undertakings by an array of notable woodwind and brass masters who have had the confidence and courage (some might say even the exhibitionism) to expose themselves so completely by playing….alone.
...July 8th, 2024
Memorable Quote – Abraham Lincoln
“America will never be destroyed from the outside…”
...July 3rd, 2024
In Memoriam: A few words about Willie Mays
Thoughts about the impact Willie Mays had on baseball, and on my life.
...June 19th, 2024
“Remembering Joe Pass: Versatile Jazz Guitar Virtuoso” – by Kenneth Parsons
On the 30th anniversary of the guitarist Joe Pass’ death, Kenneth Parsons reminds readers of his brilliant career…
...May 23rd, 2024
“The Pianoless Tradition in Modern Jazz” – a playlist by Bob Hecht
An extensive playlist built around examples of prominent pianoless modern jazz.
...May 3rd, 2024
Book excerpt from Jazz with a Beat: Small Group Swing 1940 – 1960, by Tad Richards
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.
...April 5th, 2024
“Latin Tinges in Modern Jazz” – a playlist by Bob Hecht
A nine-hour long Spotify playlist featuring songs by the likes of Horace Silver, Lee Morgan, Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Ahmad Jamal, and Dizzy Gillespie that demonstrates how the Latin music influence on jazz has been present since the music’s beginnings.
...February 13th, 2024
On the Turntable — The “Best Of the ‘Best Of’” in 2023 jazz recordings
A year-end compilation of jazz albums oft mentioned by a wide range of critics as being the best of 2023
...January 8th, 2024
Book Excerpt from Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song, by Judith Tick
In this excerpt from the Introduction to her book Becoming Ella: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song, Judith Tick writes about highlights of Ella’s career, and how the significance of her Song Book recordings is an example of her “becoming” Ella.
...December 5th, 2023
In Memoriam: Carla Bley, 1936 – 2023
An account that the photographer Veryl Oakland shared of his time spent with Carla Bley and her then-husband Michael Mantler during her visit to the San Francisco Bay area in 1979. This encounter is an example of how she’d find inspiration for her music; in this case within the “the marvelous inner workings of mechanical music boxes.”
...October 17th, 2023
“A Baker’s Dozen Playlist of Ella Fitzgerald Specialties from Five Decades,” as selected by Ella biographer Judith Tick
Chosen from Ella’s entire repertoire, Ms. Tick’s playlist (with brief commentary) is a mix of studio recordings, live dates, and video, all available for listening here.
...October 16th, 2023
Memorable Quote: George Gershwin on composing “Rhapsody in Blue”
“…The rhapsody, as you see, began as a purpose, not a plan.. I tried to conceive the composition as a whole…”
...October 4th, 2023
“Autumn Comes and Goes” – a playlist by Bob Hecht
A 28-song Spotify playlist devoted to Autumn, featuring great tunes performed by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Sarah Vaughan, Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, Lester Young, Stan Getz, and…well, you get the idea.
...September 21st, 2023
Memorable Quote: Franklin Roosevelt…on Labor Day
“Labor Day symbolizes our determination to achieve an…”
...September 4th, 2023
Podcast…BG Boogie’s musical tour of indictment season
The podcaster “BG Boogie” has weaponized the most recent dilemma of The Former Guy, creating a playlist “with all the latest up-to-date-est musical indictments of political ineptitude.”
...August 15th, 2023
Ella Fitzgerald…on being loved
“I guess what everyone wants more than anything else is to be loved. And to know that you loved me for my singing is…”
...August 12th, 2023
A thought or two about Tony Bennett
. . Fotograaf Onbekend / Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons Tony Bennett, 1966 . ___ . …..We’ve lost a ton of iconic celebrities lately – stars of all ages and from many creative worlds. Among them: Tina Turner, David Crosby, Cormac McCarthy, Alan Arkin, David Bowie, Ahmad Jamal, Wayne Shorter, Sidney Poitier, Gordon Lightfoot, … Continue reading “A thought or two about Tony Bennett”
...July 25th, 2023
“Tony Bennett, In Memoriam” – a poem by Erren Kelly
. . David Becker, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons “‘Benedetto’ means the ‘blessed one’ and I feel that I have truly been blessed.” -Tony Bennett . . ___ . . Tony Bennett, In Memoriam Lightning strikes as your voice makes magic on a summer night i think of a tall girl … Continue reading ““Tony Bennett, In Memoriam” – a poem by Erren Kelly”
...July 22nd, 2023
Duke Ellington on how jazz is a good “barometer of freedom”
“Put it this way: Jazz is a good barometer of freedom… In its beginnings, the United States of America spawned certain ideals of freedom and independence through which, eventually, jazz was evolved…”
...July 20th, 2023
Louis Armstrong on his vision for a wonderful world
Some of you young folks been saying to me, “Hey Pops, what you mean ‘What a wonderful world’? How about all them wars all over the place? You call them wonderful?
...July 4th, 2023
Book excerpt from Easily Slip Into Another World: A Life in Music, by Henry Threadgill and Brent Hayes Edwards
This excerpt from the highly regarded biography of Henry Threadgill – one of the most original and innovative voices in contemporary music – tells the story of Threadgill’s backstage encounter with Duke Ellington in July, 1971.
...June 29th, 2023
“Pressed For All Time,” Vol. 17 — producer Joel Dorn on Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s 1967 album, The Inflated Tear
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.
...May 23rd, 2023
Book excerpt from Rhythm Man: Chick Webb and the Beat that Changed America – by Stephanie Stein Crease
The introduction to the book on jazz legend Chick Webb is published in its entirety
...April 25th, 2023
“What Is This Thing Called Something Else?” – a playlist by Bob Hecht
Contrafacts, as such reworkings are called, are the product of writing a new melodic line over an existing set of chord changes, thereby disguising or sometimes completely obscuring the identity of the original piece.
...April 19th, 2023
News of an unreleased 1979 session by Chet Baker
News of a previously unreleased set of studio performances recorded in Holland in 1979 by legendary trumpeter Chet Baker
...March 31st, 2023
Playlist – “The Promise of Spring”
An hour-long playlist of recordings by legendary jazz musicians, inspired by the outset of spring
...March 20th, 2023
Book Excerpt from Victory is Assured: Uncollected Writings of Stanley Crouch
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.
...February 8th, 2023
Book Excerpt from Holy Ghost: The Life and Death of Free Jazz Pioneer Albert Ayler, by Richard Koloda
The preface introduces the reader to Ayler’s influence on jazz, and to the compelling and often misrepresented history of Ayler’s life story.
...January 31st, 2023
“Pressed For All Time,” Vol. 16 — producers and musicians recall Miles Davis’s 1969 album In a Silent Way
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.
...January 26th, 2023
Don Thompson – a playlist by Bob Hecht
An 18 song playlist to demonstrate some of the genius and versatility of the Canadian jazz musician Don Thompson
...January 16th, 2023
On the Turntable — The “Best Of the ‘Best Of’” in 2022 jazz recordings
A year-end compilation of jazz albums oft mentioned by a wide range of critics as being the best of 2022
...January 9th, 2023
Book Excerpt from Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins, by Aidan Levy
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.”
...December 1st, 2022
“Pressed For All Time,” Vol. 15 — producers Joel Dorn and Hal Willner on the 1981 tribute album Amarcord Nino Rota
Producers Joel Dorn and Hal Willner discuss the album Amarcord Nino Rota, a tribute to Federico Fellini’s musical director
...October 31st, 2022
In Memoriam…Pharoah Sanders
Brief personal memories about the experience of listening to the saxophonist Pharoah Sanders
...September 25th, 2022
“Wow, Space Is the Place After All” — a book review by John Kendall Hawkins
A review of Stephon Alexander’s book, “The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe”
...September 20th, 2022
Hard boppers dig the standards — a playlist by Bob Hecht
A Spotify playlist featuring standard tunes from the Great American Songbook as performed by hard bop musicians.
...September 8th, 2022
“Pressed For All Time,” Vol. 14 — producer Teo Macero on Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew
Producers Teo Macero and Bob Belden, and bassist Dave Holland talk about working with Miles Davis on his groundbreaking 1969 recording, Bitches Brew
...August 10th, 2022
In Memoriam: Bill Russell, 1934 – 2022
Honoring the passing of a great American athlete, and citizen.
...August 1st, 2022
Playlist: George Gershwin’s “Summertime”
Forty-two versions of George Gershwin’s “Summertime” in much of its glory for your listening pleasure, and in the heat of this moment.
...July 31st, 2022
Book Excerpt from Designed for Dancing: How Midcentury Records Taught America to Dance, by Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder
In this excerpt, the authors write about some influential midcentury Latin-themed dance albums.
...June 22nd, 2022
Book excerpt from The Real Ambassadors: Dave and Iola Brubeck and Louis Armstrong Challenge Segregation, by Keith Hatschek
In the book’s prologue, published here in its entirety, the author writes about some of “The Real Ambassador’s” challenges getting to the stage.
...June 16th, 2022
“‘N’ — the Elephant That Won’t Leave the Room” – a book review by John Kendall Hawkins
John Kendall Hawkins reviews the book N: My Encounter with Racism and the Forbidden Word in an American Classic by James Henry Harris
...May 24th, 2022
Book Excerpt: In On the Joke: The Original Queens of Standup Comedy, by Shawn Levy
A book excerpt focusing on the life of pioneering comedienne Moms Mabley
...May 10th, 2022
“Pressed For All Time,” Vol. 13 — producer Tommy LiPuma on George Benson’s album Breezin’
In this edition, producer Tommy LiPuma talks with Jarrett about working with guitarist George Benson on his 1976 Warner Brothers recording Breezin’
...April 26th, 2022
“Pressed For All Time,” Vol. 12 — producer Bob Thiele on John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme
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
...February 19th, 2022
Book Excerpt: Soundtrack to a Movement: African American Islam, Jazz, and Black Internationalism, by Richard Brent Turner
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.
...January 28th, 2022
“The Compositional Genius of Bill Evans — A Brief Overview & Playlist,” by Bob Hecht
Contributing writer Bob Hecht discusses Bill Evans’ enduring compositional genius, and has assembled an extensive Spotify playlist that includes many of his tunes.
...January 13th, 2022
On the Turntable — The “Best Of the ‘Best Of’” in 2021 jazz recordings
December has once again produced a large number of year-end “Best Of” lists, and the goal of this post is to present those albums oft mentioned by the critics. While these 21 albums hardly constitute a comprehensive assessment of the “Best Of the ‘Best Of’” lists, it does provide some guidance about 2021 recordings critics seemed to agree about, and suggest we check out more thoroughly.
...January 5th, 2022
Playlist: “Jazz Tributes” — compositions and performances by jazz musicians, for jazz musicians
Bob Hecht has created an extensive Spotify playlist he calls “Jazz Tributes” that also serves as a kind of “Thanksgiving” greeting – compositions and performances by jazz musicians, for jazz musicians.
...November 25th, 2021
“Pressed For All Time,” Vol. 11 — producer Jean-Phillipe Allard talks about Abbey Lincoln’s The World is Falling Down
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
...November 19th, 2021
Playlist: “Miles Plays Wayne”
Bob Hecht, a frequent contributor to Jerry Jazz Musician, writes about a current fascination – the compositions of Wayne Shorter, and his contributions to the Miles Davis groups he played in during his time with the trumpeter, 1964 – 1970. Bob has assembled a 20 song Spotify playlist featuring many of the recordings…
...November 16th, 2021
On the Turntable: Keith Jarrett’s 1971 album Facing You
Fifty years ago today, November 10, 1971, the pianist Keith Jarrett recorded Facing You, his now historic debut album for the nascent ECM Records.
...November 10th, 2021
“The Gospel According to Nikki Giovanni” — the poet collaborates with saxophonist Javon Jackson
News concerning the renowned activist and poet Nikki Giovvani curating the tenor saxophonist Javon Jackson’s upcoming album of gospel hymns and spirituals.
...November 6th, 2021
Pat Martino — photographs by Veryl Oakland
A remembrance (and photographs) of Pat Martino is excerpted from the photographer Veryl Oakland’s book Jazz in Available Light, in which he writes about the 1976 photo session at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts.
...November 4th, 2021
Book Excerpt: The Lady Swings: Memoirs of a Jazz Drummer, by Dottie Dodgion & Wayne Enstice
In this chapter titled “Mingus,” Ms. Dodgion describes her experiences singing in late-1940s jam sessions and night club performances with the legendary bassist Charles Mingus.
...October 26th, 2021
Playlist: Compositions of Ornette Coleman
Contributing writer Bob Hecht’s 40-song playlist features 20 compositions by Ornette Coleman that alternates a cover version of an Ornette composition – often by a pianist or other harmonically-based instrument – followed by Ornette’s original version. It provides a nice perspective on the beauty of his music, even for those who may not particularly be fans.
...September 15th, 2021
“Pressed For All Time,” Vol. 10 — producer Creed Taylor talks about Wes Montgomery’s Goin’ Out of My Head
In this edition, producer Creed Taylor recalls working with the guitarist Wes Montgomery on his 1965 Verve album Goin’ Out of My Head
...June 27th, 2021
“Sittin’ In: Jazz Clubs of the 1940s and 1950s” Vol. 2 — Birdland
In this edition, Gold writes about New York’s Midtown Manhattan club Birdland, and shares photographs and memorabilia from his collection.
...June 1st, 2021
Playlist: A sampling of soprano saxophonists
. . photo by William Gottlieb/Library of Congress Sidney Bechet at Jimmy Ryan’s, New York, N.Y., ca. 1947 . …..I don’t know about you, but ever since Kenny G made himself known in the world of pop music, the soprano saxophone has been a challenge for me to enjoy. His “smooth” approach to the … Continue reading “Playlist: A sampling of soprano saxophonists”
...May 19th, 2021
“The Art of Accompanying” — a 50-song playlist
A 50 song jazz playlist featuring countless great performances, including by Shirley Horn, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, and many others
...March 28th, 2021
“Sittin’ In: Jazz Clubs of the 1940s and 1950s” Vol. 1 — The Savoy Ballroom
An excerpt from Jeff Gold’s “Sittin’ In: Jazz Clubs of the 1940s and 1950s” focuses on Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom
...March 26th, 2021
Book Excerpt: Riff: The Shake Keane Story, by Philip Nanton
In this excerpt from the books first chapter – published with the gracious consent of Papillote Press – Nanton writes about his initial meetings with the celebrated artist, and the 20th century currents that were important in shaping his individual talents and personality.
...March 3rd, 2021
“Pressed for All Time,” Vol. 9 — John Koenig, Sonny Rollins, and William Claxton talk about Rollins’ 1957 album Way Out West
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
...February 8th, 2021
Book Excerpt: Life In E Flat: The Autobiography of Phil Woods
This excerpt from the just released Life In E Flat: The Autobiography of Phil Woods(written with Ted Panken) covers Woods’ post-high school life as a budding musician from Springfield, Massachusetts. He recalls early memories of work in local jazz clubs, as well as trips to New York to take lessons with the pianist Lennie Tristano, who introduces him to none other than Charlie Parker.
...January 25th, 2021
“Warmin’ Up Coldbrook” — a short film by Steve Slagle and Youli Avramov
You just never know what you’ll run into in the midst of a crazed world – sometimes even a calm beauty has a way of unexpectedly showing up, and when it does, you want to share it.
...January 13th, 2021
Book Excerpt: Play the Way You Feel: The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film, by Kevin Whitehead
. . . . …..Sure, Queen’s Gambit, The Crown, and Fargo are pretty compelling programs to watch while under quarantine, but have you seen Young Man With a Horn? How about The Connection? Syncopation, maybe? …..No, these are not contemporary Netflix productions, they are examples of the more than 100 movies produced since … Continue reading “Book Excerpt: Play the Way You Feel: The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film, by Kevin Whitehead”
...January 7th, 2021
Listen — a documentary of Gerry Mulligan
I belong to a jazz listening group and this month’s topic has been the music of Gerry Mulligan and other baritone saxophone players. A rich, engrossing experience that has offered me the chance to wade deep into Mulligan’s career, and to rediscover great baritone players like Leo Parker, Pepper Adams, Hamiet Bluiett, Nick Brignola, Serge Chaloff, Ronnie Cuber and Scott Robinson.
Along the way I found a terrific 90 minute documentary of Mulligan’s life that I recommend as an antidote to cabin fever and as a temporary diversion from the many contemporary films/series found on Netflix, Hulu, et al.
...December 7th, 2020
Book Excerpt: Heart Full of Rhythm: The Big Band Years of Louis Armstrong, by Ricky Riccardi
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.
...November 18th, 2020
“Pressed for All Time,” Vol. 8 — producer Ed Michel on Art Pepper’s 1980 album Winter Moon
. . 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“
...October 27th, 2020
Great Encounters: When Lionel Hampton recorded with the King Cole Trio
. . “Great Encounters” are book excerpts that chronicle famous encounters among twentieth-century cultural icons. In this edition, Will Friedwald, author of Straighten Up and Fly Right: The Life and Music of Nat King Cole, writes about the 1940 Lionel Hampton/King Cole Trio RCA Victor recording sessions. . . Excerpted from STRAIGHTEN UP AND … Continue reading “Great Encounters: When Lionel Hampton recorded with the King Cole Trio”
...September 14th, 2020
On the Turntable — Wild is Love by Nat King Cole
One of the many rewards of reading Will Friedwald’s comprehensive and lively biography of Nat King Cole, Straighten Up and Fly Right, has been rediscovering gems within the great singer’s expansive catalog. Thanks to Friedwald, I am reminded of Cole’s 1960 album, Wild is Love, an ambitious, electrifying (and “hit”) recording that could best be described as a concept album about falling in love.
...August 11th, 2020
“Pressed for All Time,” Vol. 7 — producer John Snyder on Sun Ra’s 1990 album Purple Night
In this edition, producer John Snyder recalls Sun Ra, and his 1990 Purple Night recording session
...June 25th, 2020
“On the Turntable” — Christian McBride’s The Movement Revisited: A Musical Portrait of Four Icons
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.
...June 8th, 2020
Book Excerpt: Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time, by Philip Clark
The introduction to Philip Clark’s book “Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time” is excerpted here in its entirety.
...May 15th, 2020
“Life during the time of isolation and social distancing” Vol. 2 — music writers/critics Howard Mandel and Joel Selvin
Music writers/critics Howard Mandel and Joel Selvin respond 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?”
...April 26th, 2020
Book Excerpt — Ornette Coleman: Territory and Adventure, by Maria Golia
In the introduction to Maria Golia’s Ornette Coleman: The Territory and the Adventure – excerpted here in its entirety – the author takes the reader through the four phases of the brilliant musician’s career her book focuses on.
...April 9th, 2020
“Pressed for All Time,” Vol. 6 — producer Tom Dowd on Herbie Mann’s Memphis Underground
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.
...April 1st, 2020
Book Excerpt: The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century, by John Burnside
In the introduction to The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century, the T.S. Eliot prize-winning poet, novelist and memoirist John Burnside writes; “Can poetry save the world, as [poet Lawrence] Ferlinghetti suggests? This will sound quixotic, but I have to say, not only that it can, but that it does.” The introduction to the book – excerpted here in its entirety – is Burnside’s fascinating conversation concerning the idea of how poets respond to what the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam called “the noise of time,” weaving it into a kind of music.
...March 27th, 2020
Book Excerpt: The Letters of Cole Porter, by Cliff Eisen and Dominic McHugh
A ten page excerpt that features correspondence in the time frame of June to August, 1953, including those Porter had with George Byron (the man who married Jerome Kern’s widow), fellow writer Abe Burrows, Noel Coward, his secretary Madeline P. Smith, close friend Sam Stark, and his lawyer John Wharton.
...March 11th, 2020
Book Excerpt: Irving Berlin: New York Genius, by James Kaplan
This story, excerpted from Irving Berlin: New York Genius by James Kaplan, describes how Berlin came to write his first major hit song, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” and speaks to its historic musical and cultural significance.
...February 10th, 2020
“A Moment in Time” — January 12, 1975…The last Super Bowl halftime show featuring jazz music
I could make the argument that jazz being marketed as a “popular music” officially died on January 12, 1975. Why? Because that was the date of the last Super Bowl halftime show that featured jazz music, in this case a “Tribute to Duke Ellington” performed by the Grambling State University Marching Band and Mercer Ellington.
...February 1st, 2020
“Pressed for All Time,” Vol. 5 — producer Helen Keane on The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album
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.
...January 31st, 2020
Jackie McLean on Mars — a 1979 film by Ken Levis
Here is a recommendation “from the vaults”…
Jackie McLean on Mars is a 1979 film by Ken Levis that reveals the great alto saxophonist’s skills as an educator at the Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford.
The 32 minute black-and-white production includes a montage of classic photography and several instances of outstanding music…
...January 14th, 2020
On the Turntable: Buddy DeFranco and Oscar Peterson Play George Gershwin
. . The 1954 recording Buddy DeFranco and Oscar Peterson Play George Gershwin (Norgran) was produced by Norman Granz, and includes the guitarist Herb Ellis, the bassist Ray Brown, the drummer Bobby White, as well as Russ Garcia and His Orchestra . ___ . …..In his new book, Summertime: George Gershwin’s Life in Music, the … Continue reading “On the Turntable: Buddy DeFranco and Oscar Peterson Play George Gershwin“
...December 30th, 2019
Book Excerpt — Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music, by Gerald Horne
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.
...December 21st, 2019
On the Turntable: Diatom Ribbons, by Kris Davis
The New York Times’ top jazz album for 2019, as chosen by Giovanni Russonello, is one that I admit to having been smitten by for the past month – the New York pianist Kris Davis’ Diatom Ribbons.
...December 13th, 2019
Great Encounters: When Johnny Hodges met Sidney Bechet
“Great Encounters” are book excerpts that chronicle famous encounters among twentieth-century cultural icons. In this edition, Con Chapman, author of Rabbit’s Blues: The Life and Music of Johnny Hodges, writes about Hodges’ early musical training, and the first meeting he had with Sidney Bechet, the influential and legendary reed player who Hodges called “tops in my book.”
...December 3rd, 2019
“Pressed for All Time,” Vol. 4 — producer Creed Taylor on the 1962 album, Jazz Samba
In this edition, producer Creed Taylor tells Jarrett about the recording session and marketing strategy for the 1962 Verve album by Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd, Jazz Samba.
.
...November 16th, 2019
Book Excerpt — Art Rebels: Race, Class, and Gender in the Art of Miles Davis and Martin Scorsese, by Paul Lopes
In this excerpt, author Paul Lopes writes of how “two starkly different biographical legends (of Miles Davis and Martin Scorsese) emerged: one of an ‘unreconstructed’ black man who lambasted the relentless indestructible power of Jim Crow America, and another, of an ‘unmeltable’ Italian American who became, over time, a quintessential white ethnic American.”
...October 30th, 2019
“Birth of the Cool” — a video by Tony Adamo
“The Birth of the Cool” is a fun, personal, and infectious video by the performance poet Tony Adamo.
...October 18th, 2019
The passing of poet Steve Dalachinsky
Steve Dalachinsky, the brilliant New York-based avant-garde poet whose work often appeared in Jerry Jazz Musician, died on September 16.
...October 10th, 2019
“Pressed for All Time,” Vol. 3 — producer Nat Hentoff on Charles Mingus
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
...September 18th, 2019
Performance: Abdullah Ibrahim, 1968 — “Jabolani”
A recently released jazz album of significance is Abdullah Ibrahim’s The Balance (pictured), a distinctive and brilliant integration of contemporary exploration with the traditional nod to those who have influenced him over the years – in particular Ellington and Monk.
...August 30th, 2019
“On the Turntable” — Peter Furlan Project’s Between the Lines
In addition to being an accomplished saxophonist, composer, arranger, and leader of his own groups, New York-based Peter Furlan is an avid reader of contemporary literature.
...June 20th, 2019
Remembering my dad today
I am thinking of my dad today, and devote this space to honor him.
...June 16th, 2019
Reminiscing in Tempo: “What are 4 or 5 of your all-time favorite Blue Note albums?”
. . 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?””
...June 14th, 2019
“Pressed for All Time,” Vol. 1 — Creed Taylor on Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross’ Sing a Song of Basie
In this edition, Michael Jarrett interviews producer Creed Taylor about how he came to use tape overdubs during the 1957 Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross Sing a Song of Basie recording session
...June 8th, 2019
“On the Turntable” — June, 2019 edition
. . . _____ . . New Jazz Music Recommendations . . While much of the listening for this month’s edition of “On the Turntable” took place, as always, while walking the sidewalks and paths of Northeast Portland neighborhoods and parks, much of it also took place during … Continue reading ““On the Turntable” — June, 2019 edition”
...May 31st, 2019
“On the Turntable” — May, 2019 edition
This month, a playlist of 19 recently released jazz recordings, including those by Branford Marsalis, Joe Martin, Scott Robinson, Allison Au and Warren Vache
...May 4th, 2019
“On the Turntable” — April, 2019 edition
This month, 22 recently released jazz recordings are recommended, including those by Chris Potter, Sons of Kemet, Joey DeFrancesco, Stephan Crump, Julian Lage, Antonio Sanchez and Brittany Anjou
...April 4th, 2019
Great Encounters: When Dexter Gordon played in Louis Armstrong’s band
In this edition, Dexter Gordon tells the story of joining Louis Armstrong’s band in 1944, and how they enjoyed their intermission time.
...April 2nd, 2019
Reminiscing in Tempo: “What are some of your all-time favorite record album covers?”
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?”
...March 12th, 2019
On the Turntable — March, 2019 edition
A month of walking the dog around the (often frigid) park, ear buds in place, resulted in lots of interesting. discoveries from artists known and unknown (at least to me). This month, an eclectic blend of 18 recently released recordings from all over the globe.
...March 5th, 2019
The Civil Rights Movement – in a drum solo
Among the many important events of the civil rights movement were the demonstrations known as the “Freedom Rides, in which activists rode interstate buses in the south in 1961 and beyond in protest of local laws enforcing segregation in bus seating and in bus terminals in defiance of the United States Supreme Court decisions Morgan v. Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960) ruling segregation of buses unconstitutional.
...February 28th, 2019
On the Turntable, February, 2019
Recommended listening…20 recently released jazz tunes by, among others, Brad Mehldau, Matt Penman, Ethan Iverson/Mark Turner, Ben Wendel, Julian Lage, and Don Byron
...February 5th, 2019
Great Encounters: When Jann Wenner and Ralph J. Gleason named Rolling Stone magazine
“Great Encounters” are book excerpts that chronicle famous encounters among twentieth-century cultural icons. In this edition, Joe Hagan, author of .STICKY FINGERS: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine, writes about how co-founders Wenner and legendary San Francisco music critic Ralph Gleason came upon the name for their revolutionary publication, Rolling Stone
...January 30th, 2019
On the Turntable — “Sophisticated Giant,” by Dexter Gordon
I will soon be interviewing Ms. Maxine Gordon, author of Sophisticated Giant: The Life and Legacy of Dexter Gordon, whose biography of her late husband is a creatively and beautifully told account of the essential mid-20th century saxophonist.
...January 22nd, 2019
On the Turntable — January, 2019 edition
. . . . I am having time to listen to new music more regularly these days, and finding great pleasure in many of the “grooves.” (Full disclosure…investing $10 per month in a Spotify account — while not the sensual experience of laying the needle on the vinyl — effortlessly gets your ears to … Continue reading “On the Turntable — January, 2019 edition”
...January 7th, 2019
Historic Venues: Detroit’s Graystone Ballroom
. . . 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”
...December 7th, 2018
Reminiscing in Tempo: “What are 3 or 4 of your favorite jazz recordings of the 1940’s?”
. . 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?””
...December 4th, 2018
“Should I sacrifice my life to live half American?”
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,
...September 24th, 2018
Aretha and her father — the Reverend C.L. Franklin
The passing of Aretha Franklin yesterday hits hard on a variety of levels. I am sure we all have wonderful Aretha memories. For me, she will always be remembered as the singer who opened my world to the sounds of soul and gospel music, and doing so during the height of the civil rights movement, when so much important work was being achieved — and cutting edge art was being created in response to it — virtually every day.
Aretha learned to sing at the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, where her father, the Reverend C.L. Franklin, was minister — “the most famous African American preacher in America,” according to his biographer Nick Salvatore. Franklin’s style of “booming, soaring, flashy and intense” preaching “revolutionized the art, and his call for his fellow African Americans to proclaim both their faith and their rights helped usher in the civil rights movement.”
Rev. Franklin had an intense influence on daughter Aretha, “…[Aretha] always sang from her inners,” Ray Charles once said. “In many ways she’s got her father’s feeling and passion,’ [for when C.L.] — one of the last great preachers — delivers a sermon, he builds his case so beautifully you can’t help but see the light. Same when Aretha sings.”
...August 17th, 2018
“It’s Too Darn Hot”
In June of 2017, the American president chose to leave the Paris climate agreement because, he said at the time, it is an agreement that “disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries.” It seems that climate change knows no borders, and nobody benefits from our dear leader’s willful ignorance — witness the record heat and fires across the U.S., and indeed now all over the globe.
Oh well, we too can willfully ignore climate change today by finding a cool corner of our world and cranking up Cole Porter’s “It’s Too Darn Hot,” a song written for the Broadway musical “Kiss Me Kate” in 1948, and made famous by
...August 9th, 2018
On the Turntable — Miles Ahead
I have been fortunate – thus far – to have avoided the many summer colds going around this season, but I have been afflicted, once again, by “Miles Fever.” Every so often, I am struck by an irresistible urge to dig into the catalog of this artist so present during virtually every season of my life, and rediscover the thrill of his sound, and of his cultural significance.
I contracted the virus this morning, and spent the morning (in bed, of course) listening to Miles Ahead, the 1957 recording featuring Miles Davis and 19 musicians under the direction of Gil Evans – his first collaboration with Miles since the Birth of the Cool sessions of 1950, and one of his earliest recordings for Columbia Records. An early example of
...July 23rd, 2018
“One for (my) Daddy-O”
Besides doing his best to help raise three kids, during my 1960’s childhood my father worked his heart out at two jobs — one of which was as owner of a restaurant on Oakland’s Telegraph Avenue, and the other as a musician, playing trumpet and viola throughout the San Francisco Bay area, mostly on evenings and weekends in “casual” jobs. For years he was part of a strolling quartet that entertained San Francisco’s elite at the World Trade Club — an ensemble that at its peak toured the Philippines, playing to an audience that included
...June 17th, 2018
Gary Giddins…on Cecil Taylor
In 2003, as part of the Jerry Jazz Musician “Conversations with Gary Giddins” series, I was fortunate to interview Giddins — his generation’s most esteemed jazz writer — about Cecil Taylor, who died earlier today at age 89. It is an excellent read for anyone with an interest in Cecil (or Gary). You can access it by
...April 6th, 2018
Jack Kerouac and the “Beatnik crap” that cheapened the memories of jazz icons
In this short excerpt from David Amram’s 2002 biography Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac, Kerouac talks with Amram about how the “Beatnik crap” that Kerouac and his friends reluctantly represented was “distorting everything,” and “cheapening the memories of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk.” It is an interesting and entertaining view of that era, filled with the vigor, passion, wit and wisdom Kerouac is remembered for.
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In January of 1959, we collaborated with a once-in-a-lifetime group of artists on the film Pull My Daisy. In addition to appearing in the film as Mezz McGillicudy, the deranged French horn player in the moth-eaten sweater, I composed the entire score for the film and wrote the music for the title song, “Pull My Daisy,” with lyrics by Jack [Kerouac], Neal Cassady, and Allen Ginsberg.
The idea of making a film based on Jack’s work was easier to
...January 22nd, 2018
Dylan, The Byrds, and John Coltrane
In Robbie Robertson’s entertaining biography Testimony, the rock guitarist tells a short story about a conversation he overheard Bob Dylan having with The Byrd’s Jim (a.k.a. “Roger”) McGuinn concerning John Coltrane’s influence on McGuinn when he wrote “Eight Miles High.”
The setting was Los Angeles, 1966, during a Dylan tour that employed Robertson and, among others, bandmates Rick Danko and Richard Manuel, who are referred to in the excerpt. The “Levon” in the story was the drummer Levon Helm, who left the tour after a month out of frustration of playing with Dylan during his initial “electric” period, when folk music purists routinely
...January 7th, 2018
“Bird Lives” — a memory of Charlie Parker’s Kansas City, by Robert Hecht
The night I truly ‘got’ the shining genius of Charlie Parker I was in my girlfriend’s apartment on the Lower East Side. The year was 1961. I was nineteen, she was much older and hipper, and had turned me on not only to some great music but to getting high as well. She had all the essential jazz records, including the one on the turntable that night. It was The Fabulous Bird, on the old Jazztone label, consisting of reissues of some of Bird’s phenomenal 1947 Dial sessions. She had a very low-fi stereo—I can still see the nickel she had scotch-taped to the tone arm to keep it in the grooves. But the fidelity didn’t matter, in part at least because this evening I had just smoked a
...January 3rd, 2018
Remembering Jon Hendricks, 1921 – 2017
The great jazz singer Jon Hendricks died in New York earlier today at the age of 96. In his New York Times obituary, Peter Keepnews writes that “Mr. Hendricks did not invent this practice, known as vocalese — most jazz historians credit the singer Eddie Jefferson with that achievement — but he became its best-known and most prolific exponent, and he turned it into a group art.”
His work with Lambert, Hendricks and Ross was one of my gateways into jazz music. My childhood home had only a few mostly dreadful record albums (and my beloved mother’s favorite radio station was KABL/San Francisco, with Mantovani and 101 Strings in heavy rotation on the Philco clock radio on the kitchen counter), but somewhere in the bowels of the house was Sing a Song of Basie LP that would somehow occasionally make its way on to our Hoffman stereo system’ turntable — in competition for time with Creedence and the Doors and Beatles 45’s. Even as a little kid I could tell this was “hip” music, and it ultimately led me to an unforgettable experience.
When I was living in Berkeley in the late seventies I went to see him on stage in a small North Beach
...November 22nd, 2017
Where Erroll Garner wrote “Misty”
The legendary pianist Erroll Garner’s most famous composition, “Misty,” was written as an instrumental in 1954 for his 1955 album Contrasts. Lyrics were added in 1959 by Johnny Burke and it became the signature song of Johnny Mathis, and was subsequently recorded by Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Etta James, and countless others. Garner’s version was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1991.
In this excerpt from an interview with the drummer Art Taylor, Garner describes how he wrote “Misty:”
...November 16th, 2017
Art Tatum on 52nd Street
In this entertaining short excerpt from Arnold Shaw’s 1971 homage to the jazz clubs of New York, 52nd Street: The Street that Never Slept, Ralph Watkins, owner of legendary New York City clubs like Kelly’s Stable, the Royal Roost (the famed chicken restaurant nicknamed the “Metropolitan Bopera House” due to it being near the Metropolitan Opera House) and Bop City, remembers the blind pianist Art Tatum:
“The 52nd St. performer that stands out in my mind is Art Tatum, above everyone else. Not only his musicianship but the fire in him. He had a way when he was annoyed. When people were talking during his playing, he’d stand up, bang the piano shut, stare in their direction, and tell them off: ‘Quiet, you
...November 9th, 2017
Remembering Fats Domino
Fats Domino is remembered as a rock and roll legend, and idolized by many musicians of his era, including Elvis Presley, who, according Peter Guaralnick, author of Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, referred to Fats as “The King of Rock and Roll.”
In 2006, Jerry Jazz Musician contributor Adrienne Wartts interviewed Domino’s biographer Rick Coleman…You can read it by
...October 30th, 2017
Dizzy is 100 today
Dizzy Gillespie — born 100 years ago today — recalls his childhood in this excerpt from his 1979 autobiography, To BE, or not…to BOP
*
The pictures show me as a very beautiful boy, but I was the last of nine children and my arrival probably didn’t excite anybody. So many people had been born at our house before. I don’t think Mama felt too blessed about having nine children, unless “blessed” means “wounded” like it does in French. She probably figured someone had put the bad mouth on us.
Every Sunday morning, Papa would whip us. That’s mainly how I remember him. He was unusually mean; and hated to see or hear about his
...October 21st, 2017
A Moment in Time: Artie Shaw and Roy Eldridge, 1944
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
...October 21st, 2017
Monk is 100 today
We have stood over record bins, thumbing through his records, moved by his breathtaking originality and creativity.
We have made friends over his music, made love to it, cruised in the car to it, introduced our children to it, and defended it against those who don’t quite comprehend his genius.
We love the emotions his music brings out in us – joy, tears, humor, inspiration.
We continue to sit up when we hear “Straight, No Chaser,” marvel at the brilliance of
...October 10th, 2017
“Kenny Dorham: Be-Bop royalty from East Austin”
Being retired allows the occasional opportunity to lay around and revisit favorite music. Today was such a day…
My key takeaway from today is a reminder that the late trumpeter Kenny Dorham’s music absolutely smokes! For evidence of this, revisit his 1961 album Whistle Stop (including Hank Mobley on tenor) which jazz critic Gary Giddins calls “one of the great jazz albums,” and Una Mas from 1963, featuring the recording debut of tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson.
In the midst of all this listening, I ran across a colorful and short web biography of Dorham, a native of Austin, Texas. Written in the late-2000’s by
...August 15th, 2017
“Peace Piece” — for musical escape
To understate the obvious, our world has not been the same since January 20. Science has become fiction, democratic institutions are being threatened, global relationships that have been nurtured for generations are devalued and misunderstood, and our world is in complete turmoil. Like Hillary or not (and God, how I liked her – her grace, intelligence, experience, resilience, strength, and compassion – all qualities we are starved for today), it is tough to argue with what is now clearly the most honest assessment of Donald Trump during the campaign, when she said, “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.” Alas, this most basic and obvious warning — which should have elicited a major national conversation before the election — got lost in the noise of campaign coverage more concerned with her oh-so-scandalous emails!
So this is where we are, living on the brink of catastrophic war due to our man-child president’s narcissism, his endless lies, and his addiction to
...August 10th, 2017
Ella is 100
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,
...April 25th, 2017
“To Russia, Without Love”
You may have noticed that Russia is in the news a bit these days. (It is tough to avoid). So, while revisiting James Lincoln Collier’s 1989 biography Benny Goodman and the Swing Era, the story of Goodman’s 1962 U.S. State Department sponsored tour of the Soviet Union caught my eye.
Collier reminds us that Goodman and his group – the first American band to tour the Soviet Union since the 1920’s – was considered by many to be too “old fashioned” for the times and that “many critics felt that the Ellington band, playing a more complicated and perhaps more worthy kind of music” should have been chosen for the tour instead. Nonetheless, given Goodman’s popularity around the world, he was considered a
...March 21st, 2017
A memory of Nat Hentoff
Paul Morris is a longtime friend and contributing writer of Jerry Jazz Musician. He currently writes “Cover Stories with Paul Morris,” a frequent column about classic record album art and design.
Paul shares a memory of the legendary jazz writer and journalist Nat Hentoff, who died on January 7 at the age of 91.
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In the late 1970’s I was a jazz fan who liked reading about the music as much as listening to it. My next music choice often came from a recommendation from a jazz critic’s liner notes or articles. Nat Hentoff proved to be a reliable guide in his early jazz books and the occasional article.
These years were the heyday of the Village Voice, where Hentoff was a regular. He concentrated on First Amendment issues in his Voice column, but from time to time he would mention
...January 30th, 2017
A writer’s appreciation of Nat Hentoff — by Scott Shachter
I was eighteen when I read Nat Hentoff’s Jazz Is, and it changed my life. I’d always thought good jazz was just the crafting of pretty notes with a smooth feel. I’d never imagined it could be a “cry for justice.” Or a captivating tour through a heart lay bare. The greatest jazz goes even beyond that: the symphony of a soul freshly released and taking flight, nothing less than what Nat calls “spirit-music.”
As readers know, Nat Hentoff was far more than a jazz authority. He was a spectacular writer and a freedom-of-speech icon with no tolerance for hypocrisy. He was a great hero of
...January 11th, 2017
On Nat Hentoff
I am saddened to read of the passing of journalist Nat Hentoff, who died yesterday at the age of 91. Hentoff’s work was published by the Village Voice for 50 years, and was also frequently found in the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, the Wall Street Journal, and Jazz Times. He was also editor of Downbeat during the mid-1950’s. There are many obituaries available to read about Nat and his career – including Robert McFaddin’s in today’s New York Times.
As I began publishing original content on Jerry Jazz Musician in 1999, I had the privilege of having my site embraced by the three most prominent jazz writers of the time, Gary Giddins, Stanley Crouch, and Nat Hentoff. All three of them got involved in Jerry Jazz Musician in their own way.
Giddins — who I was able to catch up with during a recent trip I took to New York — and I developed an interview series called
...January 8th, 2017
Milt Hinton’s recipe for “Millionaire Meatloaf”
This holiday season, you may want to consider making “Millionaire Meatloaf,” a dish the late, great bass player Milt Hinton and trombonist Tyree Glenn conjured up while touring with Cab Calloway. This story is not only one of food, but also of the culinary creativity required of jazz musicians during a time of segregation, when even getting a meal was a tremendous challenge.
...December 13th, 2016
Bobby Hutcherson, 1941 – 2016
Bobby Hutcherson, the most eminent postbop jazz vibraphonist who helped define the sound of Blue Note Records during the 1960’s and 70’s, has died. Described by contemporary vibes player Stefon Harris as “by far the most harmonically advanced person to ever play the vibraphone,” his career included the release of more than 40 albums as leader, and as a prominent sideman on many great records, including Eric Dolphy’s classic Out to Lunch and Jackie McLean’s One Step Beyond. I saw him many years ago at Kimball’s in Oakland (long since shuttered), an exciting set that, if memory serves, included
...August 16th, 2016
A brief tribute to Maurice White
On the heels of the deaths of iconic rock musicians David Bowie and Glenn Frey comes the very sad news that Maurice White, the founder of the Earth, Wind and Fire, has died today at age 74. White’s music came to prominence in the thick of soul’s musical ascent, and E W & F embodied the sound of urban America at the time, their message communicated optimistically and on a large scale. White’s band possessed an unusual crossover appeal — the fact that his death has invited praise from
...February 5th, 2016
Meadowlark Lemon and the complexity of being a Globetrotter (and Globetrotter fan)
This morning came news of the passing of Meadowlark Lemon, the face of the Harlem Globetrotters for more than 20 years, his peak coming during the height of the civil rights movement. It was a complex time to be a Globetrotter, who at one time (prior to Lemon’s tenure with the team) was a legitimate and powerful basketball entity that was so good in 1948 it beat George Mikan’s Minneapolis Lakers, to that of a team so focused on clowning that, in the words of Bruce Weber in today’s New York Times obituary, “some thought to be a discomforting resurrection of the minstrel show.”
It was also a complex time to be a fan of the Globetrotters, whose occasional appearance on national television always elicited
...December 28th, 2015
Revisiting “One For Daddy-O”
I’ve been revisiting some favorite recordings this week, among them the classic 1958 Cannonball Adderley-led session Somethin’ Else, with Hank Jones, Art Blakey, Sam Jones, and, in a rare appearance as sideman, Miles Davis. The tune I have been stuck on is “One For Daddy-O,” a blues written by Cannonball’s brother Nat that features a flawless blues solo by Miles.
I dug into the liner notes and was reminded of how the critic Leonard Feather used this particular solo as a platform on which to describe the essence of the “deeper and broader blues of today,” refuting a “misinformed” Ebony piece of the era that suggested that
...November 5th, 2015
A Moment in Time — Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie, 1947
In November, 1946, at the height of his popularity, Dizzy Gillespie took his big band out on the road, and in 1947 hired Ella Fitzgerald to tour the South. According to Ella’s biographer Stuart Nicholson, she had been added to this tour in response to Gillespie’s Hepsations tour in 1945, whose groundbreaking sound “had confused and confounded the southerners,” and because Ella could “create balance after the unrelieved diet of bop…The Gillespie band saw Ella as a former swing era star, light-years removed from what they were doing, a palliative to help their music go down with the public.”
Even with Ella, however, things could be challenging. The audience would “listen, stand around and applaud,” band member Howard Johnson said,” and try and pretend they dug it. I think they appreciated the artistry of Dizzy because
...August 17th, 2015
“One For Daddy-O” — in memory of my dad on Father’s Day
Besides doing his best to help raise three kids, during my 1960’s childhood my father worked his heart out at two jobs — one of which was as owner of a restaurant on Oakland’s Telegraph Avenue, and the other as a musician, playing trumpet and viola throughout the San Francisco Bay area, mostly on evenings and weekends in “casual” jobs. For years he was part of a strolling quartet that entertained San Francisco’s elite at the World Trade Club — an ensemble that at its peak toured the Philippines, playing to an audience that included
...June 21st, 2015
“Ornette’s Permanent Revolution” — a 1985 essay by Francis Davis
While hunting around the Internet for tributes of Ornette Coleman (a collection of which I will attempt to point readers toward tomorrow), I was reminded of the critic Francis Davis’s essay titled “Ornette’s Permanent Revolution.” Originally published in the September, 1985 edition of The Atlantic, Davis, now the jazz critic for the Village Voice, writes eloquently about the complexities of the great saxophonist’s “clean break from convention.” It is a worthy and timely read…
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All hell broke loose when the alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman made his East Coast nightclub debut, at the Five Spot Cafe, in Greenwich Village on November 17, 1959—twenty-five years ago last fall.
The twenty-nine-year-old Coleman arrived in New York having already won the approval of some of the most influential jazz opinion makers of the period. “Ornette Coleman is doing the only really new thing in jazz since the innovations in the mid-forties of
...June 17th, 2015
Memorable Quotes — Ornette Coleman
“Making music is like a form of religion for me, because it soothes your heart and increases the pleasure of your brain. Most of all, it’s very enjoyable to express something that you can only hear and not see, which is not bad.”
– Ornette Coleman
1930 – 2015
...June 11th, 2015
Bruce Lundvall, 1935 – 2015
Bruce Lundvall, a record executive best known among fans of jazz music as Blue Note Records president for 25 years, died yesterday at the age of 79. In addition to his work at Blue Note, Lundvall was president of CBS Records during the heyday of the LP business, and was responsible for signing many of that label’s major artists, and for expanding the jazz division of Columbia Records.
My own experience with him was always very favorable. Although I hadn’t spoken to him for several years, whenever I did reach out to him, either as a record executive myself or as publisher of Jerry Jazz Musician, he always made himself available and was supportive of my work.
In 2003, I hosted a conversation on the state of the business of jazz with Lundvall, New York Times columnist Ben Ratliff, and saxophonist Joshua Redman. Part of the discussion dealt with
...May 20th, 2015
“It Only Hurts When I Laugh”
Sad news this morning…The great comedian and satirist Stan Freberg, who was also successful as an actor (and voice over actor), recording artist, puppeteer, advertising creative director and radio personality, died yesterday at the age of 88. His career was filled with artistry and courage. His comic recordings were always hilarious and often biting – his mocking of Senator Joseph
...April 8th, 2015
Orrin Keepnews, 1923 – 2015
I awoke to the very sad news that a prominent figure in the history of jazz music has died. Orrin Keepnews, whose work as co-founder of Riverside Records forever connected him to the lives and spirits of Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, Cannonball Adderley, and so many other great jazz musicians of mid-century America, died in California at the age of 91 (a day shy of his 92nd birthday).
Keepnews was a transcendent figure in jazz music, excelling as a journalist, entrepreneur, and producer. The recordings he produced were among the very first to
...March 2nd, 2015
Live From New York, it’s Saturday Night Live, featuring musical guest…Gil Scott-Heron
Tonight, NBC presents a 40-year anniversary show on Saturday Night Live, which, during that time has presented many cutting-edge (and let’s face it, at times very drab) comedic moments and personalities. While the show is known for its comedy, musical performances have at times made the show staying up past normal bedtime hours a worthwhile option. One of those moments was a December, 1976 SNL hosted by Richard Pryor, who hand-picked his musical guest, the soul/jazz poet Gil Scott-Heron. That memorable appearance is reported on by Marcus Baram in this excerpt from his biography Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man:
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In the fall of 1975, Gil got a call from Richard Pryor, who invited him to be a musical guest on an upcoming episode of Saturday Night Live, which Pryor was going to host in a few weeks. Pryor invited him after hearing a story about Gil that impressed the comic: A few months earlier, Gil had been invited by singer Roberta Flack to perform on
...February 15th, 2015
A Roy Eldridge story
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…
...January 30th, 2015
Vince Guaraldi — a career beyond “A Charlie Brown Christmas”
Arguments abound about what is hip and what isn’t when it comes to Christmas music, but few can argue that Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas remains a breath of fresh air in a world otherwise dominated by recordings by Kenny G, Mannheim Steamroller, and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Certified “triple platinum” by the Recording Industry Association of America, and ranked by Sound Scan as the #10 best selling Christmas album since 1991, A Charlie Brown Christmas — and his association with Peanuts creator Charles Schulz — is what Guaraldi is best remembered for.
What few of us probably know about Guaraldi, however, is that he was actually a self-proclaimed “reformed boogie-woogie player” who got his start filling in for
...December 25th, 2014
“Cry Me a River” — Joe Cocker’s remake of a 1950’s torch song
Joe Cocker, the flamboyant British rocker who died yesterday at the age of 70, was best known for his gravelly voice and charismatic onstage personality, but his career was especially noteworthy due to his successful model of interpreting popular songs of the day. The most obvious example -– the Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends” performed before hundreds of thousands at Woodstock in 1969 -– was his signature career achievement, a performance Paul McCartney yesterday called “mind-blowing,” one that he was “forever grateful for him for having done that.” One could make the case that Cocker’s appearance at Woodstock and his filmed performance of that tune was indeed a defining moment of the rock era.
Cocker also successfully remade Arthur Hamilton’s “Cry Me a River,” a 1953 torch song originally composed for Ella Fitzgerald to sing in Pete Kelly’s Blues, the Jack Webb film in which Peggy Lee portrayed an
...December 23rd, 2014
A Moment in Time — John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy, 1961
In 1960, Eric Dolphy told Down Beat magazine, “At home I used to play, and the birds always used to whistle with me. I would stop what I was working on and play with the birds.” This imitation of birds (who, according to Dolphy, sing in “quarter tones”) was embraced by none other than John Coltrane, who said that the addition of Dolphy — and his philosophy — to his quartet “turned [the quartet] all around.” Dolphy’s playing helped set the stage for the music Coltrane would create later.
Also critical was their friendship, which was especially important to Coltrane since he was so consumed at the time by his alcohol and heroin abuse. Quoting a Coltrane friend, John Fraim writes in his 1996 biography Spirit Catcher: The Life and Art of John Coltrane that “outside of Sonny Rollins, Eric Dolphy was his [Coltrane’s] only true
...December 12th, 2014
A Moment in Time — Monk and Coltrane at the Five Spot, 1957
The Five Spot Café, a club located in New York City’s Bowery neighborhood, was the site of a six month gig for the quartet of Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, drummer Shadow Wilson, and bassist Wilbur Ware. This engagement — coming on the heels of Monk’s cabaret card reinstatement — marked the merging of two of the most original voices in American music, Monk and Coltrane, in a space where cheap beer and good music attracted some of the city’s most influential artists and writers. Regulars included Larry Rivers, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Jack Kerouac, Frank O’Hara and Allen Ginsberg.
In Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, author Robin D.G. Kelley quotes Five Spot co-owner Joe Termini remembering the impact Monk’s quartet had on his club: “Once we hired Monk, all of a sudden the place was crowded every night. And frankly, in the beginning, I just didn’t understand any of it.”
...October 30th, 2014
Hampton Hawes writes about the “dependability” of the piano
I am in the early stages of reading pianist Hampton Hawes’ 1972 autobiography (written with Don Asher) Raise Up Off Me, which Gary Giddins called, in his introduction, “the first book to give an insider’s view of the most provocative and misunderstood movement in jazz — the modernism of the ’40s, bebop.” It is incredibly entertaining and a witty, lucid, and smart read.
In a paragraph representative of the book’s quality, Hawes writes about his respect for and appreciation of his instrument’s dependability:
The piano was the only sure friend I had because it was the only thing that was consistent, always made sense and responded directly to what I did. Pianos don’t ever change. Sittin’ there every day. You wanna play me, here I am. The D is still here, the A flats still here, they’re always going to be there and it don’t matter whether it’s Sunday, Ash Wednesday or the Fourth of July. Play it right and it comes
...October 4th, 2014
“What are 3 or 4 of your favorite jazz record albums of the 1970’s?”
In this edition of “Reminiscing in Tempo: Memories and Opinion,” noted critics and musicians list their favorite jazz record albums of the 1970’s.
...September 24th, 2014
Lose weight with the Duke Ellington “simply steak” diet!
In his 1973 autobiography Music is My Mistress, from a chapter titled “The Taste Buds,” Duke Ellington writes about his special diet, losing thirty pounds while on it, and the resulting onstage antics.
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In 1955 my doctor, Arthur Logan, told me I would have to take off twenty-two pounds. I tore up his suggested menu and made one of my own. Mine was simply steak (any amount), grapefruit, and black coffee with a slice of lemon first squeezed and then dropped into it. With the exception of a binge one day a week, I ate as much of this and as often as I please for three months.
When we returned to the New York area, my first date was
...September 20th, 2014
Joe Sample, the S.L.A., and a budding writer’s altered career path
Pianist Joe Sample — who died on September 12 at the age of 75 — was a critical link to both the glories of hard bop and the perils of smooth jazz. His career will principally be remembered as a founding member of the Jazz Crusaders (ultimately just “The Crusaders”), a band he described as being “fathers of jazz-funk-fusion.” While his musical contributions are noteworthy, I also remember him for an altogether different reason.
In 1974, The Crusaders were all over the radio. In the San Francisco Bay area (where I lived at the time), their music — particularly their arrangement of Carole King’s “So Far Away” and a sweet ballad called “Way Back Home” — was in heavy rotation on the adult contemporary formatted KSFO-AM as well as on the era’s alternative rock giant KSAN-FM. In record industry parlance, they had “crossed over” into multiple formats. The Crusaders were “huge.”
In addition to being an important musical influence during
...September 18th, 2014
Remembering Cannonball Adderley — an appreciation by Quincy Jones
Cannonball Adderley was an endearing, charismatic and cutting-edge musician who, as Adderley biographer Cary Ginell writes in the introduction of Walk Tall: The Music and Life of Julian “Cannonball” Adderley “brought an enthusiasm for his music to nightclubs around the world, expanding jazz’s boundaries with a fresh exuberance as the music progressed from the bebop of the 1940s and ’50s to combine with gospel and soul to help pioneer the subgenres of hard bop and soul jazz in the ’60’s.” His signature sound — though cut short at the age of 46 in 1975 — remains an essential ingredient of the music’s past, present and future.
I am in the process of working on an interview with Ginell, which I expect will be published sometime in August. Meanwhile, the book’s Foreward — a fond remembrance of Adderley by his friend Quincy Jones — is published here in its entirety,
...August 1st, 2014
On the passing of Horace Silver
Concerning yesterday’s passing of the great pianist Horace Silver, others much more qualified than I will write of his musical brilliance, and communicate his importance to the music’s growth. (To that end, there is an excellent life remembrance of Silver by Peter Keepnews in today’s New York Times that you can read by going here). I would just like to devote a couple paragraphs to my own introduction to his music, and what it meant to me at the time.
When I moved from Berkeley to Portland in the summer of 1978, I was already a pretty passionate listener of jazz, but I was still in the “101” phase. I knew and loved the “A Team” — Basie, Ellington, some early Armstrong, Monk, Bird and Miles. Coltrane’s ballads were gorgeous, and I loved his playing on
...June 19th, 2014
“One For Daddy-O” — in honor of my dad on Father’s Day
Besides doing his best to help raise three kids, during my 1960’s childhood my father worked his heart out at two jobs — one of which was as owner of a restaurant on Oakland’s Telegraph Avenue, and the other as a musician, playing trumpet and viola throughout the San Francisco Bay area, mostly on evenings and weekends in “casual” jobs. For years he was part of a strolling quartet that entertained San Francisco’s elite at the World Trade Club — an ensemble that at its peak toured the Philippines, playing to an audience that included “strongman” Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda.
Prior to that, in the 30’s he traveled the country and led his own band in Sacramento. In the 40’s, he spent the war years as a member of the Winged Victory Orchestra. And, in the late 40’s and 50’s, among many musical pursuits (although toned down once he married my mom in 1947), he played in the Jack Fina Orchestra, as well as in Ernie Heckscher’s orchestra, which famously played at the Fairmont Hotel atop Nob Hill.
He loved his music, and part of my own early appreciation for music came as a result of hearing his practice sessions. To this day I can still very clearly hear the sound of his viola
...June 15th, 2014
Reminiscing in Tempo: Memories and Opinion, Volume 15: What are 3 or 4 of your favorite jazz record albums of the 1960’s?
“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, Jerry Jazz Musician poses 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.
This edition asks the question “What are 3 or 4 of your favorite jazz record albums of the 1960’s?” Respondents include the musicians John McLaughlin, Vijay Iyer, Warren Wolf, Jane Ira Bloom, Don Byron, Robin Eubanks, and journalists Gary Giddins, Dan Morgenstern, Terry Teachout, Neil Tesser, John Goodman and lots more…
...April 10th, 2014
Jazz and Baseball: The Desegregation Connection
“I think there are only three things that America will be known for 2,000 years from now when they study this civilization: the Constitution, jazz music and baseball. They’re the three most beautifully designed things this culture has ever produced.”
—Gerald Early, cultural critic
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Spring is upon us, and so is the start of the baseball season. As Gerald Early points out, there are great connections between jazz and baseball, prominent of which is the role that desegregation of each institution played in creating the political climate essential to the civil rights movement.
There are interesting similarities among two of the leading African American figures of the era who helped integrate their professions, not the least of which was the quality of their character. To Branch Rickey, after thoroughly investigating the college-educated Jackie Robinson, he felt
...March 28th, 2014
Louis Armstrong and “Gage”
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
...March 25th, 2014
Book excerpt from Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism, by Thomas Brothers
On the heels of terrific books on Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington comes Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism, author and Duke University Music Professor Thomas Brothers’ follow-up to his revered Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans.
In the book’s introduction, Brothers reports that his book picks up where Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans left off, with Armstrong’s 1922 Chicago arrival, and ends ten years later. He writes, “My main thesis is that the success of this nimble-minded musician depended on his ability to skillfully negotiate the musical and social legacies of slavery. Indeed, his career can be understood as a response to these interlocking trajectories.” I have just begun reading it and have been taken in by “Welcome to Chicago,” the book’s first chapter that tells the story of what Armstrong would have seen as he entered Lincoln Gardens for the first time in August, 1922; for example, the racially inflected floor show whose “centerpiece of the presentation is a row of light-skinned dancing girls;” dancing couples in an environment where “correct dancing is insisted upon” (to keep immorality charges at bay); and the local white musicians — “alligators” — described as “the little white boys…motivated to learn the music and cash in.”
I had the privilege of interviewing Thomas Brothers following the publication of Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans, and he has accepted my invitation for an interview about his new book. It is
...March 7th, 2014
A Moment in Time — Dizzy Gillespie, 1956
Dizzy Gillespie, with Yugoslav composer Nikica Kaogjera in tow, cycle the streets of Zagreb during a State Department tour designed to counter Soviet propaganda.
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During the peak of the Cold War, propaganda was king, and was especially played out in the non-aligned, emerging nation regions of the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Responding to what was termed by the U.S. State Department as the Soviet Union’s “gigantic propaganda offensive,” in 1954 President Eisenhower created the Emergency Fund for International Affairs, whose role would be to present American culture abroad for the purpose of demonstrating the benefits of freedom (and capitalism) on artistic expression. According to Penny Von Eschen, author of Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War, “Eisenhower resented Europeans’ depiction of the country as a ‘race of materialists’ and was distressed that ‘our successes are described in terms of automobiles and not in terms of worthwhile culture of any kind.'”
...February 19th, 2014
The Beatles — post Ed Sullivan appearance critical reviews, a Charles Mingus rant, and perspective
With the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ appearance on Ed Sullivan prominently in the news this past week, it is interesting (and entertaining) to revisit some of the critical perspectives of their music following the performance.
On February 10, 1964, Theodore Strongin, music critic for the New York Times (who Wikipedia describes as a “champion of new music”) wrote that “The Beatles’ vocal quality can be described as hoarsely incoherent, with the minimal enunciation necessary to communicate the schematic texts.” Three days later, acknowledging the phenomenon that hit our shores, George Dixon of the Washington Post wrote, “Just thinking about the Beatles seems to induce mental disturbance. They have a commonplace, rather dull act that hardly seems to merit mentioning, yet people hereabouts have mentioned scarcely anything else for a couple of days.”
Months later, William F. Buckley, the era’s chief conservative voice and founder of the National Review got into the act, writing
...February 11th, 2014
Journey to Jazzland
On occasion I have taught a very basic 45 minute “History of Jazz” class to first and second graders. I play music and show video, hold up classic record album covers, and read a quotation or two. Without fail, the 6 – 8 year olds are excited by the music and images, and it is exhilarating to see them get to their feet and unabashedly dance, inspired by the music of Armstrong, Goodman, Ellington, Basie, Billie, and Monk. Their energy is unbounded, and is a reminder of what lives inside children before many unlearn their “hip” roots.
Whenever a new book geared toward teaching children about jazz music is released, I am moved to share the news…Check out Journey to Jazzland, a picture book to inspire kids to learn about jazz. Conceptualized by Gia Volterra de Saulnier, she writes that she hopes to “get more kids inspired to learn at least a little bit more about jazz,” and to get them to know about “this important music history that really should be kept alive.”
...February 5th, 2014
Reminiscing in Tempo: Memories and Opinion, Volume Fourteen — Who was your childhood hero?
“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, Jerry Jazz Musician poses 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.
This edition’s question is “Who was your childhood hero?” Participants include Gary Burton, Pat Martino, Gary Giddins, Nat Hentoff, and others.
...January 16th, 2014
Amiri Baraka — “Beatnik, Black Nationalist, Marxist”
Amiri Baraka, the poet, author, playwright and activist who, as described by the New York Times, “spent his early career as a beatnik, his middle years as a black nationalist and his later ones as a Marxist,” died on January 9 at the age of 79. In Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and its Critics, John Gennari called him “the pioneer and preeminent symbol of the 1960’s black cultural revolution” who, along with Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver, Stokely Carmichael, and Huey Newton gave “black power a distinctive masculinist intonation.”
As a jazz and blues writer, he was brilliant, essential, astute and polarizing. Of Baraka’s writing in the 1960’s (while LeRoi Jones), Stanley Crouch — himself a brilliant and polarizing jazz writer — said that he was “the first
January 14th, 2014
Earl “Fatha” Hines Lives On
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.”
...December 28th, 2013
Remembering music critic Ralph J. Gleason
Few music writers had the resume of San Francisco’s Ralph J. Gleason: Columbia University School of Journalism; critic at the San Francisco Chronicle, where, in 1950, his criticism of popular music was the first such column in an American daily newspaper (before Gleason, newspapers regularly reviewed classical music only); produced the Jazz Casual television show for public television; witnessed and reported on all of the happenings of San Francisco during a time now known as the “San Francisco Renaissance,” when Gleason effectively connected the diverse endeavors of the era’s progressive musicians, literary figures, and comedians into an artistic aesthetic; co-founder of the Monterey Jazz Festival; writer on many a jazz record liner note (the next time you pull out Miles’ Bitches Brew, check out Gleason’s poetic description); contributing writer to Ramparts; co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine.
John Gennari, author of Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and its Critics – itself an important history of jazz journalism – described Gleason as “the jazz critic who
...December 14th, 2013
Duke Ellington, 1944 — “The Hot Bach – I”
Richard Boyer’s entertaining and candid New Yorker profile of Duke Ellington first appeared in the June 24, 1944 edition under the title “The Hot Bach I.” (Parts “II” and “III” were published in subsequent weeks). Described by Ellington biographer Terry Teachout as “the most comprehensive journalistic account of Ellington’s life and work to appear in his lifetime,” the feature is filled with now well-known Ellington history (for example, his approach to composition and his appetite for food, women and the Bible), social history (Boyer’s casual description of the racial discrimination the band encounters on the road is notable), and some humorous interplay between Ellington and writing partner Billy Strayhorn, described at the time by Boyer as a “staff arranger.” The piece is a terrific companion to Teachout’s book, and another reminder of how important The New Yorker has been to the arts over the years.
...December 10th, 2013
The “Underrated” Kenny Dorham
December 5th marks the 41st anniversary of the bebop trumpeter Kenny Dorham’s death. Only 48 years old at the time of his passing from kidney disease, Dorham’s professional life enjoyed a great measure of respect from his fellow musicians, but, as Nat Hentoff pointed out in the liner notes to Dorham’s 1963 Blue Note recording Una Mas, “he has yet to break through to the kind of wide public acceptance which has occasionally seemed imminent.” His recordings are timeless – each and every one packed with delicious passion and brilliant playing that still sounds fresh — but Dorham never did “break through” in his lifetime, and continues to be classified by important jazz historians as “underrated.” In a Jerry Jazz Musician-hosted conversation on underrated jazz musicians, the most eminent jazz writer Gary Giddins said “when anybody wrote about [Dorham]
...December 5th, 2013
McCoy Tyner’s Childhood Hero
We all had Childhood Heroes…Excerpted from exclusive Jerry Jazz Musician interviews, our guests talk of theirs.
This edition…McCoy Tyner
JJM Who were your heroes?
MT 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. Bud Powell, fortunately, moved around the corner from me when I was about 15.
...November 26th, 2013
Remembering Clifford Brown
October 30 is Clifford Brown’s 83rd birthday. Long since deceased (he died in a car crash in 1956 at age 25), his birthday is a reminder of the musical joy he shared with his listeners, and of his classic sound. For me, it is a time of remembrance and appreciation for the contribution he made to intensifying my interest in jazz. To this day, my memory is thick with the sound of “Joy Spring” filling my Berkeley apartment in the mid-1970’s, when I was falling in love with the music.
Check out what bandmate Harold Land said about Brown, and then treat yourself to a listen to “Joy Spring.”
...October 30th, 2013
When Charlie Parker Played for Igor Stravinsky
Ever since Patrick Jarenwattananon of the NPR Classical Music blog Deceptive Cadence published a story called “Why Jazz Musicians Love ‘The Rite of Spring'” in May, there has been a lot of traffic on the Jerry Jazz Musician page devoted to the meeting of Charlie Parker and Igor Stravinsky. NPR linked their readers to our “Great Encounters” page called “When Charlie Parker played for Igor Stravinsky,” where Jazz Modernism author, the late jazz scholar Alfred Appel, tells the story of how “Stravinsky roared with delight
...September 27th, 2013
Fats Navarro’s 90th Birthday
“As an influence, Navarro was important almost immediately after he first made his presence felt in the mid-1940s Billy Eckstine band. Kenny Dorham was affected early in his career and you could hear Fats in Red Rodney too. Then, of course, came Clifford Brown and through him Navarro has indirectly influenced so many of the young trumpeters playing today.”
...September 24th, 2013
On the Passing of Jazz Photographer Lee Tanner
There is no disputing the fact that the power of jazz lies within the music itself. Giants of the art like Armstrong, Duke, Basie, Dizzy, Bird, Monk, Miles and Coltrane ushered us into this music with a display of genius so great that an entire lifetime isn’t ample space to fully absorb all their passion.
...September 16th, 2013
Reminiscing in Tempo: Memories and Opinion/Volume Thirteen: What was the first motion picture you saw (in a theater) without your parents, and what do you recall about the experience?
“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, Jerry Jazz Musician poses 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 was the first motion picture you saw (in a theater) without your parents, and what do you recall about the experience? Jeff “Tain” Watts, Matthew Shipp and Pete Escovedo are among the contributors…
...September 9th, 2013
Book Excerpt from “Mingus Speaks,” by John Goodman
Charles Mingus is among jazz’s greatest composers and perhaps its most talented bass player. He was blunt and outspoken about the place of jazz in music history and American culture, about which performers were the real thing (or not), and much more. These in-depth interviews, conducted several years before Mingus died, capture the composer’s spirit and voice, revealing how he saw himself as composer and performer, how he viewed his peers and predecessors, how he created his extraordinary music, and how he looked at race.
...July 3rd, 2013
Who was your childhood hero?
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…
...April 14th, 2013
An Online Story of Jazz in New Orleans – Introduction
Featuring the complete text of chapters 1 – 5 from ‘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
...March 26th, 2013
“Accent on Youth,” by Sam Bishoff
Sam Bishoff, a high school student from Bainbridge Island, Washington, is the 2012 Jerry Jazz Musician “Accent on Youth” writer. His passion for jazz and the challenges he faces as a youthful fan of it is the focus of the column.
...February 26th, 2013
Accent on Youth, with Bunny M.
Bunny M’s columns appeared on Jerry Jazz Musician from 2004 – 2006 “Bunny M.” is an eighteen-year-old Dallas resident who plays drums, piano and clarinet. Her passion for jazz and the challenges she faces as a youthful fan of it is the focus of her Jerry Jazz Musician column, “Accent on Youth.” Listen to Dinah … Continue reading “Accent on Youth, with Bunny M.”
...August 22nd, 2012
Reminiscing in Tempo: Memories and Opinion/Volume Twelve: If you could have dinner with three people, who would they be?
“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, Jerry Jazz Musician poses 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.
If you could have dinner with three people, who would they be?
Featuring Gary Bartz, Esperanza Spalding, Billy Cobham, John Scofield and others…
...August 26th, 2009
Great Encounters #27: When W.C. Handy traveled to New York for his first phonographic recording session and meeting with James Reese Europe
Excerpted from W.C. Handy: The Life and Times of the Man Who Made the Blues, by David Robertson
Harry Pace, even at his distance at Atlanta, always had been more innovative in marketing their firm’s songs in newer ways than Handy, and, as his career later reveals, he was interested in the possibilities of owning his own phonographic business. While on a trip for his insurance company to New York City
...August 12th, 2009
Who was your childhood hero? Page 3
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.
...April 5th, 2009
Who was your childhood hero? Page 2
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.
...April 5th, 2009
Who was your childhood hero? Page 1
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.
...April 5th, 2009
Reminiscing in Tempo: Memories and Opinion/Volume Eleven: What were five of your favorite record albums (or CDs) when you were twenty years old, and what are five of your favorite CDs today?
“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 were five of your favorite record albums (or CDs) when you were twenty years old, and what are five of your favorite CDs today?
Featuring Peter Erskine, Rufus Reid, Terri Lynne Carrington, Ben Ratliff, Steve Khan and others…
...March 5th, 2008
“Accent on Youth,” by Zach Ferguson
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.
...January 1st, 2008
Reminiscing in Tempo: Memories and Opinion/Volume Ten: What three or four songs best epitomize the era of the Civil Rights Movement?
“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…
...December 29th, 2007
“Accent on Youth,” by Ted Bryan
Ted Bryan is an eighteen-year-old Portland, Oregon resident who was co-winner of the 2006 Accent on Youth Essay Contest, as judged by jazz critic Gary Giddins, vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater, and the publisher of Jerry Jazz Musician. His passion for and perspectives on jazz is the focus of the column.
...July 26th, 2007
Great Encounters #26: When Cab Calloway and Dizzy Gillespie fought over a thrown spitball
Excerpted from Playing the Changes: Milt Hinton’s Life in Stories and Photographs, by Milt Hinton, David G. Berger, and Holly Maxson
In 1939, Doc Cheatham, who’d been with Cab for years, was feeling ill and decided to give notice. By this time, when it came to finding replacements, Cab would go to Chu [Berry] first. He knew everybody and was really on top of the music scene. Chu spent about a week looking around and then recommended a young kid named John Birks Gillespie, who everyone called Dizzy. Cab hired him.
We were at the Cotton Club when Diz joined us. He’d been playing with Teddy Hill’s band and really had no reputation to speak of. Even back in those days, he was hanging out with Lorraine, who was in the chorus at the Apollo and later became his wife.
...March 29th, 2007
An Online Story of Jazz in New Orleans – Chapter 5
An Online Story of Jazz in New Orleans With an introduction by Nat Hentoff __________ Featuring the complete text of chapters 1 – 5 from 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 (Published with the consent … Continue reading “An Online Story of Jazz in New Orleans – Chapter 5”
...March 26th, 2007
An Online Story of Jazz in New Orleans – Chapter 4
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
...March 26th, 2007
An Online Story of Jazz in New Orleans – Chapter 3
An Online Story of Jazz in New Orleans With an introduction by Nat Hentoff __________ Featuring the complete text of chapters 1 – 5 from 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 (Published with the consent … Continue reading “An Online Story of Jazz in New Orleans – Chapter 3”
...March 26th, 2007
An Online Story of Jazz in New Orleans – Chapter 2
Featuring the complete text of chapters 2 from “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
...March 26th, 2007
An Online Story of Jazz in New Orleans – Chapter 1
Featuring the complete text of chapter 1 from “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
...March 26th, 2007
Reminiscing in Tempo: Memories and Opinion/Volume Nine: What are four or five of the the most romantic tunes ever recorded?
“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…
...February 4th, 2007
Great Encounters #25: When John Hammond “discovered” Billie Holiday
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.
...December 29th, 2006
Great Encounters #24: When Peggy Lee joined Benny Goodman’s band
Excerpted from FEVER: The Life and Music of Miss Peggy Lee, by Peter Richmond
In CHICAGO in August 1941, preparing for an engagement at the College Inn, Benny Goodman was staying at Frank Bering’s Ambassador East. One night, Benny’s fiancee, Lady Alice Duckworth, suggested that he come next door to the Buttery and catch the new girl singer. The imperious, handsome granddaughter of Commodore Vanderbilt – founder of the New York Central Railroad – Lady Duckworth was also John Hammond’s sister.
...November 29th, 2006
Reminiscing in Tempo: Memories and Opinion/Volume Eight: When you were growing up, what were three or four of your parents’ favorite recordings?
“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…
...November 14th, 2006
Reminiscing in Tempo: Memories and Opinion/Volume Seven: What do you recall about the first live music performance you ever attended?
“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…
...September 12th, 2006
Reminiscing in Tempo: Memories and Opinion/Volume Six: What are the five greatest albums (LP or CD) of all time?
“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…
...August 9th, 2006
Reminiscing in Tempo: Memories and Opinion/Volume Five: What are five books that mean a lot to you?
“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…
...June 29th, 2006
Reminiscing in Tempo: Memories and Opinion/Volume Four: What do you remember about your first experience buying a record album or CD?
“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 remember about your first experience buying a record album or CD?
Featuring David “Fathead” Newman, Eddie Daniels, Phil Woods, Sheila Jordan and others…
...April 21st, 2006
Great Encounters #23: When Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker Played 52nd Street
Excerpted from Chasin’ The Bird : The Life and Legacy of Charlie Parker, by by Brian Priestley.
Early in 1945, Parker had begun his first live small-band gigs with Gillespie, after he too left Eckstine the previous December, working briefly with Boyd Radburn and then being booked on the Street. In the meantime, Charlie himself had played some Monday nights at the Spotlite (run by Clark Monroe of the Uptown House) and deputised in the Cootie Williams band, narrowly missing the young pianist Bud Powell, who had been invalided out of the band by a vicious beating from the police in Philadelphia. But, when Dizzy hired Charlie to complete the frontline of his new quintet at the Three Deuces in March,
...February 9th, 2006
Reminiscing in Tempo: Memories and Opinion/Volume Three: What recording session do you wish you could have witnessed?
“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 recording session do you wish you could have witnessed?
Featuring Herman Leonard, Jane Ira Bloom, Lalo Schifrin, Buddy Bregman, Ingrid Jensen, Dave Liebman and others…
...February 4th, 2006
Reminiscing in Tempo: Memories and Opinion/Volume Two: What musical recording(s) changed your life?
“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…
...December 3rd, 2005
Reminiscing in Tempo: Memories and Opinion/Volume One: What is the greatest saxophone solo in the history of jazz?
“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…
...November 11th, 2005
Book Review/”Weatherbird,” by Gary Giddins
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.
...October 29th, 2005
Great Encounters #22: Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, and Sam Cooke — the Clay/Sonny Liston fight, Miami, 1964
Excerpted from Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke, by Peter Guralnick
Jerry Brandt got them all tickets for the Clay-Liston fight in Miami on February 25. Allen brought his wife, Betty, Sam took Barbara, and J.W. came by himself, with Allen arranging for accommodations at Miami’s resplendent Fountainebleau Hotel. Allen had already registered and was in his room when Sam arrived, only to be told that there had been a mix-up about the reservations. It was not as blatant as Shreveport,
...October 29th, 2005
Great Encounters #21: The influence of Tommy Dorsey on Frank Sinatra
Excerpted from Tommy Dorsey: Livin’ in a Great Big Way, by Peter Levinson.
With young men being drafted in profusion and some even volunteering for military service, big bands found new venues to work: Army and Air Force bases and Naval stations. With the pre-war and war period having nothing but a favorable effect on the band business, by 1940, dance bands were still big business. Altogether, big bands of every stripe earned one hundred ten million dollars that year.
...September 29th, 2005
Great Encounters #20: When the Minneapolis Lakers played the Harlem Globetrotters; Chicago, 1948
Excerpted from Spinning the Globe: The Rise, Fall, and Return to Greatness of the Harlem Globetrotters, by Ben Green
In 1948, George Mikan, the six-foot-ten center of the Minneapolis Lakers, was dominating the sport like no other big man ever had. When Mikan had first arrived at DePaul University in 1942, he was a clumsy, slow-footed freshman who was so blind (with 20/300 vision) that, even wearing Mr. Magoo glasses, he had to ask teammates to read the game clock. But first-year DePaul coach Ray Meyer recognized the youngster’s fierce competitiveness, and put him through a rigorous, unorthodox, training program: he made him shoot thousands of hook shots with either hand, hired a female dance instructor to improve his footwork,
...August 30th, 2005
Great Encounters #17: The romance of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee
Excerpted from Roman Candle: The Life of Bobby Darin, by David Evanier.
AFTER CONCLUDING HIS TRIUMPHANT DEBUT at the Copa, Bobby was cast in his first major movie role in the summer of 1960. He was signed to appear with Rock Hudson, Gina Lollobrigida, and Sandra Dee in Come September. He would be playing the role of an American student vacationing in Rome who falls in love with another tourist, Sandra Dee.
When he arrived in Portofino, Bobby first became involved with an older woman: Sandra’s mother, Mary
...May 29th, 2005
Great Encounters #16: When drummer Joe Morello joined the Dave Brubeck Quartet
Excerpted from Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond by Doug Ramsey
By the fall of 1956, Joe Dodge was worn down by the travel and the intense schedule and wanted to be with his family. He told Brubeck it was time to look for another drummer. In the Quartet’s New York stays, Desmond had heard Marian McPartland’s trio and was impressed with Joe Morello, the drummer who had been working with her since 1953. Morello, born in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1928, played there with alto saxophonist Phil Woods and guitarist Sal Salvador before he moved to New York
...April 29th, 2005
Great Encounters #14: The story of the first commercial recording session of the Quintette du Hot Club de France
Excerpted from Django: The Life and Music of a Gypsy Legend, by Michael Dregni.
Early on the foggy morning of December 27, 1934, Stephane, Chaput, and Vola climbed into Volas small car along with their violin, guitar, and string bass and made their way to the ensembles first commercial recording session. For the group to have gasoline for the journey, Delaunay had to lend Vola one hundred sous.
Ultraphone had scheduled the recording session for nine, running until midday; the studio was reserved for the labels stars in the afternoon.
...February 1st, 2005
Great Encounters #13: Why did Louis Armstrong leave Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra in 1925 and return to Chicago?
Excerpted from The Uncrowned King of Swing: Fletcher Henderson and Big Band Jazz by Jeffrey Magee.
By the fall of 1925, then, the musical synergy in Henderson’s band had reached unprecedented intensity. Henderson continued to hold court for dancers at the Roseland, reaching thousands of other listeners through its radio wire, and recording for a variety of record labels both with his full orchestra and with selected members of the band as accompanists for blues singers. And there were also continuous bookings in the summer between seasons at the Roseland, large crowds in venues up and down the East Coast, and consistently hyperbolic press coverage.
...January 29th, 2005
Great Encounters #12: The interconnecting paths of heavyweight champions Jack Johnson and Joe Louis
Excerpted from Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson by Geoffrey Ward
Johnson was back in Chicago in the summer of 1934, appearing in Dave Barry’s Garden of Champions, a sort of sideshow at the Century of Progress International Exposition organized by a veteran referee to compete with such attractions as the Midget Village, Sally Rand’s Balloon Dance, and the Aunt Jemima Cabin. For a dollar, children could throw punches at Jack Johnson while he ducked and laughed and popped his eyes. One evening, he fought an exhibition there against Tom Sharkey, whose sparring partner he had briefly been back in 1901. It was supposed to be a nonviolent sparring session,
...December 29th, 2004
Great Encounters #11: Duke Ellington and George Wein at Newport, 1956
Excerpted from Myself Among Others: A Life in Music by George Wein
Nineteen fifty-six was the Newport debut of the Duke Ellington Orchestra. I had struck an agreement with Irving Townsend, Columbia Records’s A&R man, earlier in the year. It would be good publicity to have some recordings from Newport. Our arrangement seemed like a good deal: for each artist recorded, the record company was to pay us an amount equal to that artist’s performance fee. As it turned out, it was a terrible deal, because the record company got exclusive rights and all of the royalties.
Columbia recorded the equivalent of four LPs during the 1956 festival:
...November 29th, 2004
Great Encounters #10: When Lionel Hampton Hired Dinah Washington
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.
...October 29th, 2004
Great Encounters #9: The first meeting of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn
Excerpted from Lush Life : A Biography of Billy Strayhorn by David Hajdu
Shortly after midnight on December 1, 1938, George Greenlee nodded and back-patted his way through the ground-floor Rumpus Room of Crawford Grill One (running from Townsend Street to Fullerton Avenue on Wylie Avenue, the place was nearly a block long) and headed up the stairs at the center of the club. He passed the second floor, which was the main floor, where bands played on a revolving stage facing an elongated glass-topped bar and Ray Wood, now a hustling photographer, offered to take pictures of the patrons for fifty cents. Greenlee hit the third floor, the Club Crawford (insiders only), and spotted his uncle with Duke Ellington, who was engaged to begin a week-long run at the Stanley Theatre the following day.
...September 29th, 2004
Great Encounters #8: When Chet Baker played with Stan Getz, 1953
Excerpted from Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker by James Gavin
On August 12, the (Baker) quartet made its earliest known live appearance in a concert at LA’s Carlton Theater. But not everybody trusted Baker to stand on his own. With (Gerry) Mulligan in jail, John Bennett had paired Baker with Stan Getz, another baby-faced wunderkind whose feathery, cascading solos, even more detached than Baker’s, had made him a fellow prince of West Coast cool. Getz had won the 1952 tenor polls in Down Beat and Metronome by a landslide, while Baker still ranked low in the trumpet categories. The two addressed each other politely enough, but they loathed each other almost on sight, as their live duo recordings suggest:
...August 31st, 2004
Great Encounters #7: When Gene Krupa hired Roy Eldridge
Excerpted from Roy Eldridge: Little Jazz Giant by John Chilton
The booking at the Capitol was extended into 1941, but Roy’s long term prospects looked no better than they had a year earlier. However, Roy’s old friend drummer Gene Krupa was about to offer him a life-changing opportunity. Krupa had finished his stint with Benny Godman almost three years earlier and was now one of the foremost bandleaders of the era. Krupa’s Band played at the Hotel Sherman in Chicago during late 1940 and Gene often visited the Capitol (with his wife Ethel and manager Frank Verniere) after he’d finished his sets. Sometimes Roy went off with Gene to find a nightspot on the South Side where they could jam and eat ribs. During this Chicago stay Roy, as ever, was always game for an “after-work” blow,
...July 29th, 2004
Great Encounters #6: When Bing Crosby met Louis Armstrong
Excerpted from Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams by Gary Giddins
To hip musicians in Chicago, scat had been the rage for months. Bing and some of the other adventurous musicians in Whiteman’s band heard it that very week from the master himself, Louis Armstrong. If mobster Al Capone ruled the city, Armstrong ruled its music. Whatever he played was instantly picked up by other musicians. The previous spring Okeh issued his Hot Five recording of “Heebie Jeebies,” and it caused a sensation, selling some 40,000 copies thanks to his inspired vocal chorus – a torrent of bristling grunts and groans in no known language.
...June 22nd, 2004
Great Encounters #5: When Richard Rodgers met Lorenz Hart
Excerpted from Lorenz Hart: A Poet on Broadway, by Frederick Nolan
A few days later, (Philip) Leavitt took young Richard Rodgers around to the Hart house. Larry Hart met them at the door. They were a study in opposites. Dick was fresh, tanned, athletic, handsome, a high school champion swimmer and tennis player. Larry was unshaven — according to Rodgers, Hart invariably looked like he needed a shave every five minutes after he’d had one — and wearing a bathrobe over an evening shirt and trousers, with carpet slippers on his feet. He was already talking — and doubtless puffing a cigar and rubbing his hands together as he invariably did — as his visitors climbed the steps,
...May 21st, 2004
Great Encounters #4: When Rahsaan Roland Kirk appeared on Ed Sullivan’s last show in 1971
Excerpted from Bright Moments: The Life and Legacy of Rahsaan Roland Kirk, by John Kruth
(Mark) Davis then sent the Ed Sullivan show a letter warning them that they were next. With its live audience and numerous commercials, the Jazz & People’s Movement would surely throw the show off its tight schedule. Sullivan’s people thought it over and decided it was best to make peace with the J&PM rather than risk a disruption of their show. “I brought the talent coordinator of The Ed Sullivan Show to see Rahsaan and he really dug his version of “My Cherie Amour,'” Mark continued.
...April 20th, 2004
Great Encounters #3: The Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins Kansas City battle
Excerpted from Lester Leaps In: The Life and Times of Lester “Pres” Young, by Douglas Henry Daniels
(Lester) Young earned recognition for being not only a stylist but a saxophone “freak” – not a pejorative term at all but rather a comment on his unparalleled virtuosity. He “could make a note anywhere” on his instrument. Certain notes were usually produced by depressing specific keys or combinations of keys on the saxophone (or valves on the trumpet and cornet), but “freaks” found ways to defy convention and orthodoxy by means of “false fingerings” and adjustments of the mouth and lips, or embouchure. The trombonist-guitarist Eddie Durham explained that “Coleman Hawkins and Chu Berry and those guys, they fingered it correctly with what they were doing.
...March 29th, 2004
Great Encounters #2: When Miles Davis hired John Coltrane
Excerpted from A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature Album, by Ashley Kahn
Miles Davis was desperate. He was in the midst of preparing for his first national tour arranged by a high-powered booking agent, and Columbia Records — the most prestigious and financially generous record company around — was looking over his shoulder, checking on him. “If you can get and keep a group together, I will record that group,” George Avakian, Columbia’s top jazz man, had promised. To Miles, an alumnus of Charlie Parker’s groundbreaking bebop quintet, “group” still meant a rhythm trio plus two horn players, but he still had only one: himself.
...February 22nd, 2004
Great Encounters #1: When Charlie Parker played for Igor Stravinsky
Excerpted from Jazz Modernism, by Alfred Appel
Charlie Parker enthusiasts circa 1950 often declared him the jazz equivalent of Stravinsky and Bartok, and asserted that he’d absorbed their music, though skeptics countered that there was no evidence he was even familiar with it. Parker himself clarified the issue for me one night in the winter of 1951, at New York’s premier modern jazz club, Birdland, at Broadway and Fifty-second Street. It was Saturday night, Parker’s quintet was the featured attraction, and he was in his prime, it seemed. I had a good table near the front, on the left side of the bandstand, below the piano. The house was almost full, even before the opening set
...January 29th, 2004
In This Issue
(featuring the art of Paul Lovering)
Feature
The Sunday Poem
”Every Time” by Michel Krug
The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work.... Michel Krug reads his poem at its conclusion
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Interview
Publisher’s Notes
Essay
Short Fiction
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Playlist
Feature
Interview
Poetry
Feature
Short Fiction
Poetry
Book Excerpt
Interview
Short Fiction
Art
Short Fiction
Essay
Trading Fours with Douglas Cole
In Memoriam
Book Excerpt
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Jazz History Quiz #176
Community
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