Jazz Articles about Mort Weiss

Mort Weiss: Mort to Come

by Sammy Stein
December 24, 2012

Mort Weiss is a clarinetist with attitude. He has also achieved what few would dare--taking a break from music for almost 40 years and then making a successful comeback. Every man is a sum of his parts, his life story put together like pieces of a jigsaw. For some, the puzzle is simple, pieces slot together easily with all the clichés: steady home, school, college, first instrument, the break, career, marriage, kids, life, more or less in that order. For ...

Why Do I Write These Articles?

by Mort Weiss
June 30, 2012

The following will be an exercise in candor. I like to see my name in print on a Major--the major jazz web site. And I hope it will further better my record sales. I like to think that folks/people are finding things of interest in my remembrances that I've accumulated within my persona over a long life time--most of which was lived in and around the highly complex (yet very simple) world of jazz. And last but not least, it ...

Reefer Madness and Me

by Mort Weiss
June 12, 2012

How the above title turned me on to the love of jazz. It was 1939 and I was four years old and my parents took me to my first moving picture show that being the above (I kinda had eyes for Gone with the Wind) and to hear Clark Gable say that filthy word at the end of the movie--but they had other plans--maybe because the title on its release was Tell your Children. It was financed by a church ...

A First-Take Life, With Everything From Hard Times To Hard Rock

by Mort Weiss
June 2, 2012

When I first started doing these articles I gave no thought as to the chronological order in which they occurred. Because of all the response regarding these little tidbits of the various happenings in my life as a jazzman (hey, there's no other name for it is there?) I will endeavor to fill in the blanks as we go forward on this journey of my life in jazz and and other minor obsessions. Who knows? Some of these ...

Mort Weiss: Mort Weiss Meets Bill Cunliffe

by C. Michael Bailey
March 5, 2011

If it is a Mort Weiss recording, bebop cannot be very far away. Competent bop clarinetists are as scarce as hen's teeth, the most critically accepted being Tony Scott, Buddy Defranco and Weiss. Weiss' most recent recordings, Mort Weiss Meets Sam Most (SMS Jazz, 2006) and B3 and Me (SMS Jazz, 2006), reflect his solid bop reverence. Weiss' Mort Weiss Meets Bill Cunliffe brings the clarinetist into orbit with pianist Bill Cunliffe, another jazz musician sympathetic to ...

Mort Weiss: Raising the Bar: The Definitive Mort Weiss

by Samuel Chell
September 20, 2010

In late 2006, clarinetist Mort Weiss told his unusual story to R. J. Deluke in an exclusive interview for All About Jazz, appropriated titled “Mort Weiss: Sets Sail with Clarinet." His narrative is the timeless, archetypal journey of the hero's circular route to hell and back--much like that of Homer's legendary mariner, Ulysses, except that in Weiss' case, the outcome was far from known. With Raising the Bar, Weiss completes his journey, and provides impressive if less than definitive closure ...

Mort Weiss: All Too Soon - A Jazz Duet For Clarinet and Seven String Guitar

by Samuel Chell
November 24, 2008

Mort Weiss All Too Soon: A Jazz Duet for Clarinet and Seven String Guitar SMS Jazz 2008

Not the least of this album's attractions is the title. To those few listeners familiar with the tune, “All Too Soon" might summon up one of Duke Ellington's more obscure compositions, were it included in the disc's playlist of no fewer than a dozen jazz “classics." Or it could be a reminder of the irreparable loss to ...