Jazz Articles about Andy Martin

About Andy Martin

Album Review

Larry McCray's Heartbreak City, released on Keeping the Blues Alive Records, is steeped in grit, anguish, resilience and hard-won joy. The album reflects the life of a working-class blues man who sharpened his craft in the clubs of Saginaw after shifts on the General Motors assembly line, before touring nationally and eventually across Europe with Albert Collins. Every track carries the emotional weight of decades spent earning success the hard way, drawing deeply from McCray's Arkansas roots while sounding fully ...

Album Review

Judy Whitmore: Let's Fall in Love

Read "Let's Fall in Love" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
July 6, 2025

Polymath Judy Whitmore has taken time away from her busy and productive career(s) to record her fifth album, Let's Fall in Love, and like the first four, it is a smooth and delightful tour of memorable themes from the Great American Songbook, sung with radiance and heart by one of the leading exponents of popular song on today's scene. Whitmore does not sing jazz (no scatting or improvising here); she leaves that in the capable hands of ...

Album Review

Judy Whitmore: Come Fly with Me

Read "Come Fly with Me" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
February 6, 2024

When the multi-talented Judy Whitmore sings “Come Fly with Me," it is an invitation that is almost impossible to resist, especially as the lovely and charming vocalist is also a pilot who is licensed to fly anything from jets to seaplanes to hot air balloons. On her latest album, backed by a big band and twenty-six member string section with arrangements by Hollywood top gun Chris Walden, Whitmore beckons listeners to fly with her to romantic places around the world ...

Liner Notes

Lorraine Feather's Language Turns A Witty Phrase

by Ken Dryden
March 31, 2023

I got to know Lorraine Feather through reviewing several of her CDs, amazed by her gifts as a lyricist and singer, who was equally at home with witty songs and tender ballads. I first met Lorraine when she was performing at the late lamented Manhattan club Danny's Skylight Room with pianist Shelly Berg. We would chat during IAJE conferences and I was delighted when she invited me to write the liner notes for this CD. This release stands the test ...

Album Review

Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band: The Reset

Read "The Reset" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
December 16, 2021

Gordon Goodwin's dynamic Big Phat Band rumbles back onto the scene with The Reset, a somewhat less-than-big-phat album whose dual purpose, according to Goodwin, is to express hope and gratitude in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic and to honor one of Goodwin's mentors, the late Sammy Nestico. Goodwin calls the album an EP, whose twenty-eight minute playing time places it in roughly the same ballpark as a vinyl LP from the good old days before digital recording and streaming. ...

Album Review

Doc Stewart Big Band Resuscitation: Code Blue!

Read "Code Blue!" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
June 5, 2014

"Doc" is much more than a nickname to Chris Stewart: it's a profession. And straight-ahead jazz is far more than a pastime: it's a passion. For the past sixteen years, Doc Stewart's day gig has been ER physician at the Mayo Clinic Hospital in Scottsdale, AZ. Long before that, however, Stewart was a working musician who played alto sax with a number of big bands including those led by Tom Kubis, Ladd McIntosh, Matt Catingub, Louie Bellson, Toshiko Akiyoshi / ...

Album Review

Doc Stewart and Big Band Resuscitation: Code Blue!

Read "Code Blue!" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
May 19, 2014

Those who subscribe to the notion that big band music is a dying musical art form, are obviously unaware of Chris “Doc “ Stewart and his star-studded Resuscitation big band that have just given the genre a shot in the arm, a jolt of electricity and some life-saving musical medicine with the amazing Code Blue! An alto saxophonist by passion and pleasure, Stewart is actually an emergency room doctor with the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, AZ, practicing the trade for ...