Jazz and the Net

I remember, quite well, the first time I met Sonny Rollins. It was in the fall of 1978, when I was writing for Down Beat. For a cover story, I traveled to his upstate New York home for an interview with the Saxophone Colossus. Over the years, I'd heard his music, both on recordings, and some ...

A newly discovered live performance with fine acoustics, Dizzy Gillespie/Charlie Parker at Town Hall in 1945, and, Sonny Rollins' great new CD, recorded live at Berklee on September 15, 2001, have been instrumental in my survival this summer. Since I returned from a three week New York excursion in June (video to follow), it's been at ...

That pretty sounds cool, right? It certainly has to be better than regular television. During the fifth season of the Sopranos, I had digital cable, access to hundreds of channels, and most of time, nothing of interest. I don't like sports or shopping so that immediately cuts out a lot of channels. And in Arizona, where ...

I once wrote a play set in the near future, when a one world government decrees that musicians must play “the song." No other music is allowed. Everything else has been destroyed, except for the memories of certain musicians. In this petrified, angst ridden nether land, improvisation is banned and bebop is forbidden--any musician who disobeys ...

Dr. Billy Taylor: An American Classic

As a teenager, forty years ago, living in a New York suburb, I first heard Billy Taylor on WNEW-AM. He played great music, and was so cool and informative that he proved to be the catalyst for even greater exploration in my increasing fascination with Jazz. When I finally moved ...

During a recent trip to the Bay area, at the invitation of publicist extraordinaire Terri Hinte, I made my first visit to Fantasy Records, in Berkeley. For the last quarter century, I have been listening, intently, to Fantasy releases. As their website explains, the Fantasy story is “actually the story of a number of outstanding record ...

"Those who cannot learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them." ~George Santayana These kids, here, they are the future of Jazz. Students at Leal Middle School, San Antonio, Texas, listening to the Jim Cullum Jazz Band . Mr. Cullum, an NPR staple with his long running, Riverwalk Jazz , is creating a ...

I write now of heroes, a species that in our time, has become as rare as an oasis in the desert. My heroes aren't Greek gods, they are merely mortal, yet like their divine counterparts, they also possess something eternal - their music.

Whatever the joy and pain of their earthbound tenure, the creations of these ...

A couple of weeks ago Concord bought Fantasy for a small fortune, over $80 million, to be exact. Who says there's no money in Jazz? A bunch of hard working, dedicated people at Fantasy just picked up the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and that's always nice. Over the last thirty or ...

This year, listeners will spend $256 million dollars on legitimate sites selling downloads, like I-Tunes. In 2005, $541 million. By 2007, $2.1 billion. That's the new music business. Goodbye CDs, hello digital media. If people are downloading files and getting tracks, is this the modern equivalent of the 45? Not quite, but we may be witnessing ...

Is it possible for a musician, virtually unknown, to gain recognition via the web? Yes. Three years ago, I met a New York guitarist named Dom Minasi who needed a website. I really didn't know the fellow, or his music, but I knew the name from a couple of Blue Note recordings he did decades ago. ...

For a lifelong Jazz aficionado, one of the coolest things about the Net is that it offers unique ways to discover new music. Lately, I've been listening to soundclips, online radio and legal downloading services. And thanks to my broadband connection, friends email me MP3 files, so there's no shortage of new music coming out of ...

December 26, 1994 - the first time I got on the web. The Internet has changed my life dramatically, so it's no surprise I recall my maiden voyage. The early websites were primitive. No streaming media or MP3 files. No broadband, unless you worked for someone with T-1 line. For most people, it was the world ...

Are you ready for a new medium that offers listeners an uncensored experience? It's called satellite radio and thankfully, at the present time, it is not overseen by the US government. Like the web, the adult nature of the medium is going to build a sizeable listenership very quickly. Within a few years, look for an ...