First Time I Saw
Billie's Last Chorus
by Rob Mariani
She came on last at a concert that started at midnight at the Lowe's Sheraton on Seventh Avenue in The Village. It was one of those big, everybody-gets-to-play jam sessions they called concerts then, and it probably cost the promoters less than what Kenny G spends on hair gel these days. But there were at least a dozen top-flight groups including Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Chet Baker's quartet, Al Cohn and {{Zoot Sims with Conte Candoli. But Billie Holiday was ...
read moreCooking with Philly Joe
by Rob Mariani
Sitting over by the bar in the cheap seats at Birdland during a Monday night jam session, I watched a group of aspiring young drummers roll their eyes and shake their heads in disbelief. I saw them nudge each other, smile and even laugh out loud. They sat forward with their chins on their hands watching and listening intently to the great Philly Joe Jones. Philly Joe was playing with his old buddy, Elmo Hope, on piano and ...
read moreDiana Krall
by Rob Mariani
The twilight skies over the aged wood shingled roofs at the Newport Tennis Hall of Fame were looking ominous. The air was damp and flecks of rain started and stopped as we walked into the beautiful Stanford White-designed courtyard with its hanging flowerpots and dark green shutters. It was like traveling back to another era of summery charm and Victorian opulence. The seats had been set up on one of the famed plush grass courts. The sight lines to the ...
read moreCoda For Elvin
by Rob Mariani
Coda: a musical passage used to conclude a movement. It had been over 40 years since I'd seen Elvin Jones in person. Now here he was at 72-plus years of age, appearing with his Jazz Machine at the Regattabar in Cambridge, Mass., an exquisitely intimate room with a sound just perfect for acoustic jazz. Outside a March rainstorm swept the streets and tapped staccato notes on the windows. As the place began to fill up, I estimated that ...
read moreLullaby of Birdland
by Rob Mariani
This month, instead of writing about a jazz personality, I decided to write about a room. A jazz room which sadly no longer exists but that had a personality as unique as the great musicians who played there. I'm talking about a club called Birdland—the original Birdland on Broadway near 56th Street in Manhattan's Times Square (before it got Disney-fied.) It billed itself as “The Jazz Corner of the World," and in the sixties and seventies it undoubtedly ...
read moreConnie Kay Plays the Drums Impeccably
by Rob Mariani
The impeccable Mr. Connie Kay plays perfectly. If you say that sentence out loud in a chamber where there is just the slightest echo, and emphasize the “p" sounds and the hard “c" sounds just a little, you get a feeling of what this remarkable percussionist's drumming actually sounds like. In all music, I don't think there's ever been anything quite like Connie Kay's cymbals. You could detect the ping of his ride cymbal out of a thousand--dry ...
read moreSaturdays With Mort (Fega)
by Rob Mariani
We've embedded John Mariani's dedication to his brother Rob (the author) on his Almost Golden radio show which is embedded in the Soundcloud section below. Coming out of the fifties at 19 years old, I'd had my fill of doo-wop and R&B. One windy Saturday afternoon in April, I heard this music on the radio coming from a little station in New Rochelle, NY, WNRC AM & FM. There was no sledge hammer back-beat and no loopy falsetto ...
read moreMingus's Fingus
by Rob Mariani
On a chilly November night the fog from the River rolled up Hudson Street rubbing against the big plate glass window of the Half-Note Café on the corner of Spring. Inside, things were warm and busy. Charlie Mingus's sextet was setting up on the bandstand on top of the two-sided bar. People were finding their tables in the half-dark room. Al, the waiter with the smart-ass New York accent, was delivering drinks and wise cracks to the regulars. ...
read moreThe Amazing One
by Rob Mariani
At Birdland, Pee Wee Marquette, the diminutive MC, had a way of shouting into the mike when he announced the names of band members. Anyone who has heard it can not forget it. It made your jaw ache like you'd just eaten a quart of ice cream on a bad filling. “Ladies and gentlemen, he shrilled with the mike pressed right to his mouth, popping it and then causing ear-shattering feed back. “ We'd like to bring to ...
read moreWho's The Hippest Chick In Town? Anita.
by Rob Mariani
Who the hell shows up at a midnight jam session at the Loews Sheraton Theater in Greenwich Village wearing white, elbow-length gloves, a little, flowered print dress and a hat that looks like an inverted birdbath? Who dares to show up on stage like that where guys like Zoot Sims and Conte Candoli and Al Cohn are playing? And then proceeds to not merely hold her own on the scat vocals, but to actually kick some ass up there?
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