Thomas Wright “Fats” Waller was a riot, a great musician, the prototype of the vested fat stride piano player and an important figure in the...
Category - Jazz
This is a fascinating clip — and not just because it features Louis Jordan, which usually would be enough. The Steve Allen Show pulls off a live remote...
Billie Holiday would have been 97 on Saturday. Wikipedia has a particularly good bio of her sad life and its even sadder ending–broke, broken, addicted...
The Daily Music Break periodically re-post artists and posts from earlier in the site’s run. Here is the great Thelonious Monk’s “Blue Monk...
Editor’s Note: From time to time, The Daily Music Break re-posts older content. Alex Welsh and Fred Hunt’s version of Davenport Blues is haunting...
(Editor’s Note: Happy New Year. I’ve given up on finding good music for the holiday. There isn’t too much. Check out yesterday’s post...
Mack the Knife is a beloved jazz standard. Besides Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra and Bobby Darin are heavyweights who recorded it. Here is a...
Hello, thanks for stopping by. There is no better place to start anything than with Louis Armstrong. Here he is supporting Dizzy Gillespie. Armstrong was the...
Perhaps nothing is as soothing and peaceful as cool saxophone music, and Gene Ammons was a master. Ammons, known as “The Boss” decades before...
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.