Music Industry News

Thanks for the Memory

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
December 11, 2008

The research into Ralph Rainger that has kept me more or less hors de combat from Rifftides lately included the not entirely disagreeable task of watching The Big Broadcast of 1938. Film musicals still recycled vaudeville in those days, so what we get is a series of blackouts draped over a flimsy structure called a plot. It's an excuse to see, among other things, a few vintage W.C. Fields bits and hear Martha Raye, a drastically underrated singer. Part of ...

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Phoebe Snow + Creative Loafing | News

Source: All About Jazz
December 11, 2008

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Blue Note Records Announces More Catalogue Deletions

Source: Night Lights Classic Jazz
December 10, 2008

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Why the Kennedy Center Hates Jazz

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
December 10, 2008

It seems the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has made another honest mistake. I say “honest," because I assume the folks down in Washington, D.C., who head up the Kennedy Center are well educated and cultured. How else can one explain the decision by an organization of this national standing to repeatedly ignore jazz and jazz musicians when handing out its most prestigious annual award?

Upon opening the newspaper over the weekend, I was dismayed to read that once ...

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Biography: Iranian-American Jazz Singer Rana Farhan

Source: All About Jazz
December 10, 2008

Jazz siren Rana Farhan proclaims on her web site: “Jazz is peace." She's not just borrowing 60s flower child rhetoric. She knows firsthand. Born in Iran, Rana grew up listening to any albums she could get her hands on, fostering a love for American blues artists like Brownie McGhee, Leadbelly, and Johnny Winter; while rockin' to Jimmy Hendrix and Janis Joplin. Soon she was begging her older brother to teach her guitar and singing through a microphone she had plugged ...

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Farewell Service for McKenna

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
December 9, 2008

In the Boston Globe, Matt Negrin reports on yesterday's memorial service for pianist Dave McKenna. He includes what one of McKenna's favorite singers said about working with him. 

It was like partially singing with an orchestra and floating on air at the same time, because he was buoyant," said Daryl Sherman, who had sung with the pianist since the 1980s, including at his final performance in the Oak Room in New York City's Algonquin Hotel. She called McKenna the “Woonsocket ...

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Obama: We'll Have Jazz at the White House

Source: Night Lights Classic Jazz
December 9, 2008

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Happy Birthday Gregg Allman!

Source: JamBase
December 8, 2008

THE BEAUTIFULLY GRIZZLED SOUL OF THE BROTHERS TURNS 61 TOMORROW

Gregg Allman has always sounded older than the hills. His voice is caked in river silt and bathtub whiskey, sleepless nights and even rougher dawns. It's a sound that goes way beyond workingman's friendly, taking us down into the valley of true bluesmen and new age romantics, communicators of shared pain and fleeting happiness. That he's also an indestructibly great musician, pounding the keys with a mixture of ...

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