Jazz Articles
Daily articles including interviews, profiles, live reviews, film reviews and more... all carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. You can find more articles by searching our website, see what's trending on our popular articles page or read articles ahead of their published dates on our future articles page. Read our daily album reviews.
Trying To Get Good: The Jazz Odyssey of Jack Sheldon
by Randall Robinson
This article was originally published at All About Jazz on June 5, 2008. Finding Validation Trying To Get Good: The Jazz Odyssey of Jack Sheldon is a film that tells the story of trumpeter-vocalist-actor-comedian Jack Sheldon's remarkable life and career. Beginning with his impoverished childhood in segregated Florida and proceeding to his formative Hollywood teenage years with the legendary Chet Baker, the film follows Sheldon's career as he swings through the Stan Kenton and Benny Goodman bands, creating ...
read moreJack's Gone! No He Isn't; Yes He Is; No He Isn't...!
by Jack Bowers
As I sat down to write this month's column, word came that trumpeter Jack Sheldon had died. No sooner had I written a few words about that when word came that trumpeter Jack Sheldon had not died. After some back-and-forth on the internet (is he or isn't he?), the last report, it seems, was the true one. According to his wife, Dianne, Jack Sheldon is alive and well, a statement that was confirmed when someone phoned Sheldon's home and Jack ...
read moreTrying To Get Good: The Jazz Odyssey of Jack Sheldon
by Michael Steinman
Jack Sheldon Trying To Get Good: The Jazz Odyssey of Jack Sheldon Bialystock & Bloom, Inc./February Films 2009Born in 1931, the near-legendary West Coast jazzman Jack Sheldon—trumpeter, singer, comedian, actor—has played and recorded with Stan Kenton, Chet Baker, Dexter Gordon, Peggy Lee, Benny Goodman, Red Norvo, Bill Harris, Art Pepper, Anita O'Day and Tierney Sutton, as well as leading his own groups. His horn has been heard on movie soundtracks, he was ...
read moreJack Sheldon: Still Going Strong
by Larry Taylor
For Jack Sheldon, a beacon for some sixty years on the West Coast jazz scene, 2008 is turning out to be a very good year. At 76, the celebrated trumpet player, vocalist, bandleader and TV personality, is the subject of a new documentary film, while his jazz career continues to accelerate.He was there when the so-called West Coast Jazz—a cooled-down version of hard bop—was born. He calls himself a “survivor" from the period. “Only a few of us ...
read moreJack Sheldon and the California Cool Quartet: It's What I Do
by C. Michael Bailey
If West Coast jazz has a tone, it is dry ice cool. Trumpeter, vocalist and actor Jack Sheldon, the entertainment triple threat, played a big part in forging this tone in the period following Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool (Blue Note, 1949). That recording was the shot over the bow of bebop that gave rise to the Left Coast cats perfecting what Miles started, just as Mozart perfected Haydn's brand of classicism. Sheldon's huge personality and capacity for practical ...
read moreJack Sheldon & Jack Marshall: Freaky Friday: The Jazz Opera
by Jim Santella
Humor and jazz from the early 1960s give this short opera plenty of sex appeal. The music that Jack Sheldon created, and the dialogue that he wrote with Jack Marshall, comes from an era when beach movies were popular and Elvis was giving the big-screen heartthrob performances that would last forever.Howard Roberts' guitar, Sheldon's trumpet, and vocals by both Sheldon and Nancy Kelly give this precursor to Schoolhouse Rock a terrific ambience. Tongue-in-cheek humor abounds from start to ...
read moreJack Sheldon in New Orleans
by Jim Santella
Jack Sheldon Jack Sheldon in New Orleans Kultur 2005 At a live 1984 performance in Lulu White's Mahogany Hall on Bourbon Street, Jack Sheldon and his all-star ensemble perform a program of straight-ahead jazz pieces that finds them sizzling as if there's no tomorrow. Sheldon's voice was then quite clear and his trumpet playing was as great as it is today. A real swinger who takes pleasure in doing it right, the ...
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