Music Industry News

3 Get Life Terms in South African Singer's Killing

Source: All About Jazz
April 3, 2009

Three men convicted of murdering an internationally known South African reggae star in a botched carjacking were sentenced by a judge to life in prison.

Lucky Dube's 2007 killing drew worldwide attention to crime in South Africa, which has one of the world's highest murder rates. The 43-year-old singer was gunned down in his car in front of his children in suburban Johannesburg.

“The accused showed no mercy for the deceased," Judge Seun Moshidi said. “It is difficult for the ...

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1969: Quincy Jones Builds Studio

Source: All About Jazz
April 2, 2009

Feb. 10, 1969 GOOD MORNING: Quincy Jones and Ray Brown are building a music-recording studio. Jones explains it will not only be helpful in today's scene where “The film media and pop music are converging.

We also need a place to experiment" ... Jones requires his own studio, judging by the sked: He just completed “Mackenna's Gold" and “Italian Job" scores overseas, is here noting his fourth Sidney Poitier film, “Lost Man" ("Love of Ivy," “Heat of the ...

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Fans Inundate Natalie Cole with Kidney Offers

Source: All About Jazz
April 2, 2009

Natalie Cole's fans want to give her a kidney. Singer has hepatitis C, and could be on dialysis for rest of her life.

The 59-year-old singer told Larry King on Tuesday that she was diagnosed with kidney failure, and while she was still on his CNN show, dozens of viewers wrote in offering to be tested as possible donors.

Without a donor kidney, Cole says she will be on dialysis for the rest of her life.

The daughter ...

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Hendrix Home Tape for Sale, Shows Softer Side

Source: All About Jazz
April 2, 2009

Recording features 14 tracks, including cover of Dylan song Tears of Rage.

A home recording by Jimi Hendrix, which its owners said showed the 1960s rock icons softer side, will be auctioned next month and is expected to fetch between $70,000 and $140,000.

According to co-owner Mark Sutherland, the tape was recorded by Hendrix in New York in 1968 and then taken to Britain.

Carl Niekirk worked in a photography studio below Hendrixs central London residence where, because there was ...

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Why Music

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
April 1, 2009

The text of a remarkable address is making its way around the internet through the part of the world in which music matters, which is everywhere. Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of the Boston Conservatory's music division, greeted the parents of incoming freshman students. He made the speech in the fall of 2004, but it has taken on new life lately, because of passages like this:

Ben Webster's Centenary

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
April 1, 2009

Since Rifftides began nearly four years ago, I have posted frequently about Ben Webster - but not frequently enough. That would be impossible. Few improvising artists have achieved Webster's level of supremacy at speaking their pieces with eloquence and brevity. I would not suggest that eloquence has fled; it is possible to be eloquent at length. But in the post-Coltrane age of solos as tests of endurance it may be unnecessary to point out that succinctness is not one of ...

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"The Death of the CD-Release Complex"

Source: HypeBot
April 1, 2009

Kyle Bylin, Associate Editor

Introduction

In his seminal release Purple Cow, marketer Seth Godin declared, “The Death of the TV-Industrial Complex." Explaining that, over the past fifty years ever-growing companies had built huge economic engines around the idea of a system that's going away, because the symbiotic relationship between consumer demand and TV advertising could no longer be relied upon to churn out seemingly endless profits. This process of spreading ideas through interrupting people with ads to ...

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Musicians Plead for Increased Arts Funding

Source: Michael Ricci
April 1, 2009

Musicians Linda Ronstadt, Josh Groban and Wynton Marsalis recall their experiences with music before a House panel in hopes of raising the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts to $200 million.

A woman held a BlackBerry over the crowd surrounding Linda Ronstadt to get a shot of the onetime queen of country rock. Someone else thrust an album insert and pen at Josh Groban. “Just one more photo, please," followed jazz musician Wynton Marsalis out of the room. ...

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