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Tantilla's Majestic Grip on Richmond's Scene
by Troy Hoffman
The “South's most beautiful ballroom," Tantilla Gardens, at 3817 W. Broad Street, in Richmond, Virginia, was an acoustically treated structure built by the Byrd Theatre Group in 1933. The building stretched a block long, featuring nightly dancing, along with the Nation's greatest dance orchestras. This all took place on the second floor, atop Tiny Town Bowling ...
Showboat's-A-Swingin'
by Troy Hoffman
Washington DC's Showboat Lounge hosted a vast array of ground-breaking talent from the '40s, into the late '70s. The establishment was located at the corner of Columbia Road NW and 18th Street, and owned by Pete Lambros, who maintained an all-jazz policy for many years. The DC Showboat built up the reputation as a mad-house type ...
The Archives of Aquarius: Public Domain In 2025
by Troy Hoffman
The past few years have seen a cornucopia of historic compositional works released into the world of public domain. 2025 (the year of the snake) continues the tradition, marking many significant jazz-oriented recordings slithering into public archives and becoming legally available for usage, interpretation, parody, and more. One of many entered this year is Rhapsody in ...
The Cosmic Sheath: Tragic Musical Phenomenon
by Troy Hoffman
Music is a messaging system used to speak directly to the Gods, but this communication can often go awry. The effects are often magical and of a natural order, but not always pleasant. Music is a cosmic system and preoccupation with it can “wear a hole in the cosmic sheath and allow a direct intuitional awareness ...
Worth the Wait!
by Troy Hoffman
Many historical, live jazz performances have graced the past and thankfully were caught on recording; being released shortly after. For example, Art Blakey Quintet's A Night at Birdland, which is regarded as one of the best live jazz shows ever recorded. The performance is from the winter of 1954, and it was soon released on record ...
Is That Jazz?
by Troy Hoffman
James Brown's funky beats, brought to you by drummer, Clyde Stubblefield, are the most popularly sampled in hip hop, but what about jazz? Has it not significantly impacted hip hop as well? The answer is of course, yes. Especially during the late '80s and early '90s golden-era of the genre. Some of the style's most iconic ...
Mere Noisemakers
by Troy Hoffman
Drummers used to be predominantly known as mere noisemakers (not musicians) coming out of the Vaudeville-era, where percussionists were seen as background tools. They often carried out sound effect cues, sent from studios to theaters, for silent films. This left drummers with the responsible task of mimicking the sounds of hurricanes, car crashes and thunderstorms from ...
Jazz Fest Deemed A Success (Three Years In A Row): A Look Back At The Virginia Beach Jazz Festival 1959-1961
by Troy Hoffman
They say that music is the “great communicator," and if so then jazz is the most fluent. Just a few miles away from the famous jazz club, The Jolly Roger, in Virginia Beach, the Robert E. Lee Amphitheater was newly built to seat 2,000 and was the location of the area's first Virginia Beach Jazz Festival ...
From Showboat-to-Samba: Transculturation of Brazilian Music in America
by Troy Hoffman
By 1957, jazz music was fully stretching out and the bossa nova movement was one of the many impacts. American artists of all types had been expanding their knowledge of international cultures for quite some time, specifically Latin countries and the musical rhythms driving them--one of the earliest being Cuban culture, which began popularizing in the ...
