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Interview

Interview: Sharon Marie Cline

Source: Eric Taylor
March 15, 2014

Q: How were you introduced to jazz and blues? A: I grew up listening to classic music. My mother would play records all day, every day on the phonograph while we did our chores. I'd listen to Ella, Sarah, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Wilson, The Duke, and Nat King Cole filling the house with amazing melodies and rhythms, and I'd imagine myself singing their songs on stage while I dusted the living room or whatever my chore was that day. Q: ...

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Interview

Toshiko Akiyoshi: Early Piano

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
March 3, 2014

Toshiko Akiyoshi, 84, is best known today as the long-time leader of a big band. During the latter half of her career, that band has been co-led by Lew Tabackin, whom she married in 1969. She also formed several bands with her previous husband—alto saxophonist Charlie Mariano, whom she married in 1959 and divorced in 1967. Akiyoshi grew up in Japan after World War II when her parents moved back to the country from Manchuria. She began playing piano at ...

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Interview

Terry Teachout On 'Satchmo'

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
February 24, 2014

As Terry Teachout was finishing Pops: A Life, his 2009 biography of Louis Armstrong, he had an idea. Realizing that Armstrong's final performance at the Waldorf in 1971 was an operatic moment—a meet-your-maker crescendo in the life of a great artist—Terry wrote a theatrical work where the trumpeter reflects on his life, and his white manager, Joe Glaser, adds his thoughts. The radical device was having the same black actor play both parts. The result is Satchmo at the Waldorf, ...

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Interview

Tommy Wolf + Fran Landesman

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
February 20, 2014

If many of today's jazz musicians and singers lack anything, it's curiosity. Talent they've got plenty of, but a deep interest in the past beyond what they already know about the music seems alien to their approach. Based on the CDs that cross my desk, the same two dozen standards are being recorded endlessly—At Last, Autumn Leaves, When Lights Are Low, Like Someone in Love, The Very Thought of You and so on. What's hurting the music isn't a lack ...

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Interview

Chicago Loves Bobby Broom

Source: All About Jazz
February 13, 2014

By Don Howze When it comes to jazz, Bobby Broom is the quintessential jazz guitarist and composer. Like Wynton Marsalis, Broom stands true to the history and culture of the founding pioneers of the jazz genre. Broom's style of performing with the same delicate strumming and interpretation made popular by legendary jazz guitarists Wes Montgomery and Les Paul, has made him one of Chicago's favorite artists. Born in Harlem, raised on New York City's Upper West Side and later becoming ...

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Interview

Beryl Booker: 1946-54

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
February 5, 2014

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there were more women in jazz than is customarily known or documented. We tend to think of jazz as men's music, with a smattering of women functioning primarily as novelty acts. Men also thought that way back then, making life doubly difficult for female artists. The view was perhaps best summed up by manager Joe Glaser's comment: “Who wants to come and hear three broads playing jazz?" [Photo above: Beryl Booker] Beyond Mary ...

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Interview

Rowles on Tatum

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
January 15, 2014

Many stories about jazz heroes are apocryphal. This is one is true. One night in the late 1930s, Fats Waller And His Rhythm were playing at the Yacht Club on 52nd Street in Manhattan. Art Tatum, the other half of the Tatum-Waller mutual admiration society, came in to listen. When he first moved to New York, Tatum’s almost superhuman virtuosity at the piano had bowled over every pianist in town, including Waller. Introducing his friend to the audience, Fats said, ...

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Interview

Interview: Carol Stevens, Part 2

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
January 15, 2014

Singer Carol Stevens has a terrific phone voice. It's identical to her singing voice in the late '50s—husky, feminine and full of character. Naturally, it was a pleasure interviewing her—both for the content and just to hear her articulate her points. Carol in the '60s and beyond continued to sing at clubs in New York and New England. She performed with Jimmy Giuffre and others. She also was married to Norman Mailer. But for this interview, Carol preferred to stick ...

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