Jazz News

Reggie Workman's New School Annual Dual Concerts, December 15 @ The New School

Source: The Cinarae Group
December 14, 2008

Legendary Bassist Reggie Workman directs the “next generation" of Jazz with his New School Annual Dual Concerts event featuring the New School's Futuristic and Coltrane Ensembles. Bring the family for this FREE holiday fete of music by the great John Coltrane, John Carter, Reggie Workman, Sonelious Smith, as well as exciting originals by these promising students at this world-class jazz program!

Reggie Workman NEW SCHOOL ANNUAL DUAL CONCERTS The NS Coltrane Ensemble (7pm) & The NS ...

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Obama Should Follow Carter's Lead and Bring Jazz Back to the White House

Source: All About Jazz
December 13, 2008

If President-elect Barack Obama wants to make a bold cultural statementone that resonates deeply with his autobiography and with the legacy of his adopted hometown, Chicagothere's a compelling way to do it: Teach the White House to swing (again).

That's what President Jimmy Carter did in spring 1978, casting the unique brilliance of a presidential spotlight on a distinctly American art form. Carter convened a galaxy of jazz luminaries at the White House, to spectacular effect. Eubie Blake (at 95), ...

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Chris Brown Billboard Artist of the Year

Source: All About Jazz
December 13, 2008

The accolades keep coming for Chris Brown this time, he's been named Billboard's top artist of 2008. R&B enjoyed solo hits such as With You and Forever.

Chris Brown won three awards at the American Music Awards in November, including artist of the year. “It's bigger than what I can ever imagine. It's unexpected totally, so it's a surprise," Brown said in an interview Thursday. It shouldn't be too much of a surprise for Brown. He not only nabbed ...

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Aretha Franklin Among Performers at King Concert

Source: All About Jazz
December 13, 2008

A free concert featuring Aretha Franklin will be held at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington to pay tribute to the Reverend Martin Luther King Junior.

The show is being sponsored by the performing arts center and Georgetown University. It will take place on January 19, which is Martin Luther King Day. Since 2003, the program has featured Kennedy Center honorees and popular entertainers. Franklin was an honoree in 1994.

The event will also include ...

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Pinup Queen Bettie Page Dies at 85

Source: Michael Ricci
December 13, 2008

Bettie Page, the brunet pinup queen with a shoulder-length pageboy hairdo and kitschy bangs whose saucy photos helped usher in the sexual revolution of the 1960s, has died. She was 85. Page, whose later life was marked by depression, violent mood swings and several years in a state mental institution, died Thursday night at Kindred Hospital in Los Angeles, where she had been on life support since suffering a heart attack Dec. 2, according to her agent, Mark Roesler. A ...

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Actor Van Johnson MGM's Voiceless Sinatra Dies

Source: Michael Ricci
December 13, 2008

Van Johnson, MGM's boy-next-door, dies at 92. Johnson rose to stardom in 'A Guy Named Joe' and 'Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.' His World War II-era films drew such a huge bobby-soxer following that columnists dubbed him 'The Voiceless Sinatra.' Van Johnson, who soared to stardom during World War II as MGM's boy-next-door in films such as “A Guy Named Joe" and “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" and became one of the era's top box-office draws, died Friday. He was 92. Johnson, ...

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Why a Music Tax is a Mistake

Source: All About Jazz
December 13, 2008

Techdirt's Mike Masnick On Why a Music Tax Is a Mistake

Techdirt founder Mike Masnick has followed the twists and turns of the digital music debate for more than a decade, offering some of the most prescient and lucid information and arguments on the topic anywhere. Today he tackles growing calls for a voluntary music-licensing scheme, pushed most recently by Warner Music Group to universities, that would basically allow file sharing by having ISPs impose a surcharge on all users ...

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Online Rebel Publishes Millions of Dollars in U.S. Court Records for Free

Source: All About Jazz
December 13, 2008

Carl Malamud wants access to all public legal documents in the U.S. to be free to the public. If you want to search federal court documents, it's not a problem. Just apply online for an account, and the government will issue you a user name and password. Did I say it's FREE!

And once you log in, the government's courthouse search engine known as Public Access to Court Electronic Records or PACER, will charge you 8 cents a page to ...

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