Just For Fun

Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.

JUST FOR FUN April 11, 2020

Jazz Snacks for the Pandemic

Jazz fanatics are particularly egregious eaters—too busy listening to pay much attention to food. I believe this array of sweet treats will satisfy even the most ludicrously undeveloped jazz palates. Jack the Gummy Bear Baby Dodds Ruth Junior Cook Mints Chick Webb-lets Almond Joy Spring Twix Beiderbecke Pete Jolly Ranchers Tootie Heath Bars James Reese Europe Cups Bit-O-Honey-In-The-Horn Cheryl Bentyne Chewing Gum Charleston Chew Chasers Wee Dots Good and Plenty o' Nuthin' Eddie Lock-Jaw Breakers Milk Dud ...

JUST FOR FUN March 31, 2020

The Fabulous Nicknames Of Jazz

By Gloria Krolak

Nicknames. Used to be that every baseball player worth his ash bat earned a nickname. The Babe, Yogi Berra, The Kid, Three Finger. Football and basketball were no different. Boomer Esiason, Big Spain, Birdman, Air Jordan. While soccer in America seems to have escaped this mostly male preoccupation of renaming people, golf, that most courteous sport, has its share as well. The Golden Bear, Pink Panther, The Great White Shark. In music, particularly in jazz, nicknames were plentiful, ...

JUST FOR FUN April 1, 2019

ECM Records Announces Change in Name, Direction

By Geno Thackara

European label turns its eye toward the future as EDM. ECM Records will mark its golden anniversary with a defining change in direction, according to an announcement released today. After operating as Edition of Contemporary Music since its small-scale beginning in 1969, the eclectic European label has confirmed plans to adopt the new title Exciting Dynamic Music to signify a wholly revamped outlook. Though the new abbreviation EDM began as a simple typo in a promo poster mock-up, ...

JUST FOR FUN April 1, 2019

RARE!! Florence Foster Jenkins Find

By Nicholas F. Mondello

Dyspepsia Records Announces the April 15 release of “The Greatest Arias and Duets of Florence Foster Jenkins." Dyspepsia CEO, John Featherwhistle announced today that the long-awaited album of the great operatic Diva's hits will be released April 15. Fully re-mastered, re-mixed and enhanced with the latest in digitized auto-tune technology, the recording sheds new light on the legendary Soprano who was memorialized recently cinematically by Meryl Streep. “We here at Dyspepsia are pleased to ...

JUST FOR FUN April 1, 2019

Tragedy Strikes at CES

By Patrick Burnette

In a little-reported story from this year's CES, an audience of over a hundred late-middle-aged men was inadvertently vaporized by a malfunctioning demonstration. Attendees arrived eagerly anticipating the public debut of the latest collaboration between Japan's Mitsubishi Corporation and Sony Music Group, the Chanteuse 3000, Mark IV. This Chanteuse 3000 is a fully programmable “jazz"-singing android capable of performing any song whatsoever -as long as it is from the Great American Songbook. The designers have been close-lipped about the most ...

JUST FOR FUN April 1, 2019

Columbia Releases Miles Davis: The Rest

By Patrick Burnette

The can't-miss box set of the year Miles Davis: The Rest completes Columbia Records' thorough excavation of the great trumpeter's session work. As the press release notes, “Columbia was proud to offer eight steel-spine box sets of Davis' sessions, followed by our 70-disc Complete Studio Albums Collection, followed by our The Genius Of Miles Davis set that collected the steel-spine boxes in a trumpet case, followed by our six-volume Bootleg series, followed by our mono issues on vinyl. Now, with ...

JUST FOR FUN November 29, 2018

Love Jazz, Hate Jazz

By Michael Ricci

Years ago, when I dabbled in cartooning, I developed a presentation style where the character on the left makes a statement with a speech balloon while the character on the right responds with a thought balloon--always in sharp contrast. I had a lot of fun with it. Here, illustrator Keith Henry Brown and I collaborated on this speech / thought exchange. Just in time for the holidays, ;-) we made the illustration available on a poster, ...