“How dare you play it like that!” I look up from my sight-reading piece, certain I had correctly executed all of the rhythms and notes, all of the articulations and embellishments. My qu…
The carpenter (whose hands have grown too large for the twenty house town he was born in) sticks out his thumb and catches a jet to Los Angeles where he drowns off the Santa Monica beach trying…
Jazz photography has played an important role in the development of jazz, and, along with the art found on the record albums of the 1940’s – 60’s, is a visual window into the hist…
As his website reminds us, the late Yusef Lateef was “universally acknowledged as one of the greatest masters and innovators in the African American tradition of autophysiopsychic music –…
Here in this place forces are in motion. Truth is in the notation. Beauty in improvisation. Forward, forward, forward speak the drums to our spirituality. The ritual function of
Everyone is afraid to knock on the door when they hear the trumpet behind it. A closed door is like an On Air sign or a red light outside a dark room. Still, they have to talk to him. Sonny is nowh…
Before recording his most notable work (to that point) as a saxophonist in Miles Davis’ “Birth of the Cool” nonet, his initial reputation was as an arranger, including a stint in 1946 a…
I’m driving up Raymond Boulevard toward downtown Newark. In the darkness the huge lighted sign atop the Public Service Electric & Gas Company serves as a beacon for approaching the city. Yet to…
In his description of Welsh painter John Allinson’s work “House of Dreams” – a mural in progress “celebrating a viewpoint of entertainment as an art form” that will eventually be 1000 feet wide – t…
The “record” business continues to make an impressive comeback. Although actual record sales make up a small fraction of the $8.7 billion music industry, according to Nielsen, the 14.3…
An early interview I conducted as publisher of Jerry Jazz Musician was with Stephanie Stein Crease, whose 2002 biography of Gil Evans, Out of the Cool, was an illuminating history of a man the…
Heads up to all interested short fiction writers…The deadline for submitting your story for consideration in our 48th Short Fiction Contest is May 31. Click on the “Continue Reading” li…
In Arnold Shaw’s biography of New York’s 52nd Street, 52nd Street: The Street of Jazz, he devotes an entire chapter to the impact World War II had on “The Street,” its…
