Jazz Articles about Jay Lepley

About Jay Lepley

Album Review

Terry Waldo & The Gotham City Band: Treasury Volume 3

Read "Treasury Volume 3" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
June 6, 2026

When it comes to ragtime jazz, pianist, historian, author, and cultural preservationist Terry Waldo literally wrote the book. Said book is This Is Ragtime (Jazz at Lincoln Center, Inc., 1976), widely regarded as the most thorough and authoritative guide to one of modern jazz's early precursors. Treasury, Volume 3 is the last in a trilogy of recordings by Waldo's Gotham City Band devoted to the best of traditional ragtime music. This is exuberant toe-tapping jazz, radiating happiness and ...

Album Review

Terry Waldo & the Gotham City Band: Treasury, Volume 2

Read "Treasury, Volume 2" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 28, 2025

Like any other handiwork you can name, contemporary jazz did not emerge from a vacuum. It sprang forth from a variety of sources, including but not limited to bebop, cool jazz, swing, trad jazz (Dixieland), blues, stride and perhaps the granddaddy of them all, ragtime. Yes, ragtime. Before there was King Oliver or Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington or Woody Herman, Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson or John Coltrane, there was ragtime. And for those who surmise that ragtime ...

Album Review

The New Wonders: The New Wonders

Read "The New Wonders" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
October 16, 2023

In the vast array of jazz styles, if there is one segment which rises phoenix-like over time, it is the music of the first third of the Twentieth Century, the era which saw Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Duke Ellington, and other individuals and bands ignite popularity. With “the New Wonders," NY-based cornetist, vocalist, arranger and ardent student of that early jazz era Mike Davis has pulled together some of New York's finest trad players in a romp and stomp collection ...