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News: Interview

Interview: Tammy Burdett

March 15, 2022

Back in February, I posted on Larry Coryell's and Ralph Towner's first videos on YouTube from the early 1960s. Before they became huge jazz stars, they were in a Seattle jazzy pop group called the Individuals that played fancy restaurants and appeared on local TV. What caught my attention and the attention of many readers who ...

News: Interview

Interview: Jenn D'Eugenio of Women in Vinyl

March 14, 2022

Over the weekend, my piece on the surging popularity of vinyl records among millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) ran in The Wall Street Journal's Review section. Amazingly, new LPs last year surpassed the CDs and digital downloads in units sold. What I also found during my reporting is that millennials, who were especially hard ...

News: Video / DVD

Ukrainian Jazz: Freedom Rings

March 9, 2022

If your heart aches watching what is going on in Ukraine in real time, spend time today listening to Ukrainian jazz to understand what freedom and liberty means to the people of that country. And if you're reading this in Ukraine, please know that JazzWax readers worldwide are thinking of you. Here's a 2018 tribute to ...

News: Obituary

Carlos Barbosa-Lima (1944-2022)

March 4, 2022

Carlos Barbosa-Lima, a Brazilian child prodigy whose touch and counterpoint on the guitar were virtually unrivaled and who arranged Antonio Carlos Jobim's music for the guitar in the 1980s at Jobim's request, died on February 23. He was 77. Barbosa-Lima began his professional career at age 12. A master of pop interpretation as well as classical ...

News: Video / DVD

Louis Prima: King of the Swingers

March 3, 2022

Born in New Orleans, trumpeter, singer and entertainer Louis Prima grew up in the city's Italian-American community. He was influenced not only by New Orleans's Black jazz and folk culture but also the tradition of commedia dell'arte that dates back to 16th-century Italy. Comedy's earliest form of improv, this form of street theater poked fun at ...

News: Video / DVD

Chicago: The Terry Kath Experience

March 2, 2022

The band Chicago was one of the most successful jazz-rock bands of the 1970s and '80s. They recorded 36 albums and had 20 Top-10 singles on the Billboard pop chart, including three #1 hits. Seventeen of its first 20 albums were certified platinum (at least 1 million units sold) by the R.I.A.A. Songs like 25 or ...

News: Obituary

Ernie Andrews: (1927-2022)

March 1, 2022

Ernie Andrews, one of the last Black male blues and pop crooners from the 1950s who was a frequent performer at Central Avenue clubs in Los Angeles and whose dry, romantic style was a favorite of jazz fans and musicians, died on February 24. He was 94. Born in Philadelphia in 1927, Ernie's mother sent him ...

News: Video / DVD

More Shorty Rogers, in 1953

February 26, 2022

Yesterday, I received an enormous number of emails from readers who either love Shorty Rogers's Chances Are It Swings or were unfamiliar with the West Coast jazz masterpiece and were happy to be turned on to it. So today, I figured I'd provide clips of Shorty Rogers's transition into a leadership role for RCA in 1953. ...

News: Recording

Shorty Rogers: Chances Are It Swings

February 25, 2022

Trumpeter and flugelhornist Shorty Rogers first recorded for RCA in 1952 as Boots Brown and His Blockbusters. The four sides for two RCA 45s were honking instrumentals with a strong backbeat. According to my 2013 interview with Dave Pell, who was on the '53 session, the Boots Brown dates were for movies. “But then RCA released ...

News: Interview

Interview: SteepleChase's Nils Winther

February 24, 2022

Denmark's SteepleChase Records remains one of the great jazz labels. Founded by Nils Winther in 1972, SteepleChase early on recorded many American jazz giants who began to tour regularly in Europe or had moved there for steady work. If not for Nils, we wouldn't have important recordings by Horace Parlan, Doug Raney, Kenny Drew, Joe Albany, ...