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Give Your Regards to Broadway—and Hollywood
by Con Chapman
Those who recognized the complexity and beauty of jazz early on--such as twentieth century French critic Hugues Panassié--rightly characterized it as American's unacknowledged classical music. Their sentiment came to fruition in the wrong way by the end of the century when the genre had fallen from its peak to its current lowly status, tied for last ...
A Tale of Two Jazz Humbugs
by Con Chapman
"Humbug" is a little word of great utility that has unfortunately passed out of general usage. It means, according to Webster's Dictionary, “a person who does not live up to his claims; impostor." While it carries the connotation of deception or trickery, it was more generally applied to what we would today call--with less compactness--a pious ...
The Rat Pack vs. the Kids in the Kitchen: Are Those Our Only Choices?
by Con Chapman
It was a more important anniversary than most so we decided to splurge on a local restaurant that always gives me buyer's remorse when I get the check. My wife and I are both getting up in years and we eat out at what she used to jokingly refer to as “blue hair hours," ...
Jazz Inside And Out: Select Posts from 2013-2015
by John Goodman
Here's a selection of posts from my now-discontinued blog, Jazz Inside and Out. I started writing it in summer 2013 and persisted for about six years. As 2016 rolled around, like many others I got quite taken over by politics, and my posts reflected that. Readership went up, jazz took a sabbatical. Politics and ...
Moers Provides a Festival Blueprint for the Future
by Phillip Woolever
Germany's Moers Festival has a long-standing reputation for expanding the boundaries of top-quality musical formats. Performance scope and content is always unique, but last year's 2020 edition provided even more noteworthy distinction than usual. That truly exceptional pandemic production featured typically abundant instrumental, vocal and electronics highlights but more important, even at a greatly reduced scale, ...
Zappa and the burning strings
by Mick Raubenheimer
Zappa. A glimpse. The composition was entering its fifth mood, a diabolical, gleeful, lurching rhythm, led by deep-plowed violin. The song was “Revised Music for Violin and Low Budget Orchestra," it was written for Jean-Luc Ponty by Frank Zappa. A new instrument dawned into my framework as that composition wheezed and moaned and ranted ...
Ornette Coleman: An Outsider Cracks the Egg
by S.G Provizer
Part 1 | Part 2 There are two ways a musician can make a significant impact on jazz. One is to mobilize virtuosity and knowledge to push the current boundaries of the music. There are a number who fall in this category, but unassailable examples are Louis Armstrong, Art Tatum and Charlie Parker. The ...
Frank Sinatra: Myth, Reality and a Critic Standing in Line at Arby’s
by S.G Provizer
The mere act of re-releasing a 1960 Frank Sinatra album speaks to the fact that his name still creates ripples when tossed into the cultural pond; still has the power to inspire a reaction when other other vocal stars of yore have receded into distant memory. An ocean of ink has been spilled in portraits and ...
The Trump Files
by Gene L. Ford
Having observed--from a safe distance--president Donald Trump's pathetic and propaganda-driven response to the coronavirus pandemic, the nation's collapsing economy, the horrific death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police and the coast-to-coast protests that have followed, your intrepid reporter was moved to present (as Fox News would assert) a more “fair and balanced" narrative ...
Craft Recording's "Chet" is a Rare Win for Baker
by Patrick Burnette
"There's a little white cat out here who's going to eat you up." —Charlie Parker (to Miles Davis) Chet Baker and Miles Davis. Two trumpet players born three years apart. Both unusually handsome and slight of build. Both lacking, as trumpeters, the qualities most often associated with those brass alphas of the jazz ...
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