Directly below are parts one and two of The Daily Music Break’s interview with Philip Clark about Dave Brubeck. In the post is an audio-only version of...
Category - Jazz
Below is Art Blakey’s Jazz Messenger’s live performance of Dizzy Gillespie’s “A Night in Tunisia,” as posted on YouTube by Art Jazz1. The video (without...
Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silver, one of the most important jazz musicians of the twentieth century, was born on September 2, 1928 and died on June 18, 2014...
Among John Calu's memories are bringing flowers to Sarah Vaughan after a Monterey Jazz Festival performance, listening to Miles Davis backstage, chauffeuring...
Above is a great video of Duke Ellington performing one of the most important jazz pieces ever, the beautiful “Mood Indigo.” John Lamb is the...
Eugene Earl Bostic – who dropped the first name as a performer – was an alto saxophone player who lived from 1913 to 1965. He does not have a very high profile...
The sense from “Feel Good Blues” is that this was the Count Basie Band just having a whole of fun. There are smiles all around and Basie talks over...
The last three paragraphs of this post were published a few years ago, though I changed them to not look odd after Dr. John’s death. With some...
Stephon Alexander thinks that two of his favorite things — improvisational jazz and quantum physics — are deeply linked. Saying quantum science is...
On April 22, two jazz greats — both bass players — celebrated birthdays. The day marked the ninety-seventh and eighty-fourth anniversaries of the...
Reading Music
The stories of the great bands and musicians are fascinating. Musicians as a group are brilliant, but often troubled. The combination of creativity and drama makes for great reading.
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Here are some books to check out.
Duke Ellington brought class, sophistication and style to jazz which, until that point, was proudly unpolished and raucous. His story is profound. The author, Terry Teachout, also wrote "Pops," the acclaimed bio of Louis Armstrong. Click here or on the image.
What else is there to say? Here is the story behind every song written by The Beatles. Click here or on the image.
The Grateful Dead don't get enough credit for the profound nature of its lyrics. Many of the band's songs are driven by a deep and literate Americana ("I'm Uncle Sam/That's who I am/Been hidin' out/In a rock and roll band" and "Majordomo Billy Bojangles/Sit down and have a drink with me/What's this about Alabama/Keeps comin' back to me?").
David Dodd's exhaustive study tells the story, song by song. Click here or on the image.