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Documentary: Sonny Greenwich
Canadian guitarist Sonny Greenwich is still with us. He has performed with musicians such as Charles Lloyd, Wayne Shorter, Pharoah Sanders, McCoy Tyner, Chick Corea, John Handy and Sun Ra. So I was excited when I received the following last week from Matt LeGroulx in Montreal: Hi Marc. First, thank you and Brigitte Berman for making ...
Take Five with Gordon Goodwin
by AAJ Staff
Meet Gordon Goodwin Having amassed 21 Grammy nominations, four Grammy wins and three Emmy wins, Gordon Goodwin is one of the most decorated big band leaders in the 21st century. As the leader of Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band, an internationally renowned ensemble with a reputation as one of the most exciting in jazz, ...
Count Basie in London in 1977
There were two TV arts programs called Omnibus. One aired in the U.S. from 1952 to 1961 and was sponsored by the Ford Foundation. The point of the 44 episodes was to raise American taste with educational programming. The show aired on Sunday afternoons at 4 p.m. (ET) on CBS and again on ABC that evening. ...
Franco Cerri (1926-2021)
Franco Cerri, one of the world's finest jazz guitarists whose records and reputation have escaped most American jazz aficionados due to his desire to spend his career in Italy, died on October 18. He was 95. Ruggedly handsome with a joyous sense of swing and impeccable taste, Cerri (pronounced Cherry") made nearly all of his recordings ...
Ira Sullivan: Modern Music From Chicago
Ira Sullivan's first album as a sideman was on Red Rodney's Modern Music From Chicago. Recorded in June 1955 for the Fantasy label, the album featured Red Rodney (tp,vcl), Ira Sullivan (tp,ts,as), Norman Simmons (p), Victor Sproles (b) and Roy Haynes (d). At the time Rodney was appearing at Chicago's Bee-Hive Club along with the musicians ...
Interview: 'Ronnie Singer Was My Brother'
At the end of September, I posted on guitarist Jimmy Gourley. In that post I wrote about Gourley's friend, a Chicago guitarist named Ronnie Singer. According to those who heard Singer, he was on par with Jimmy Raney. Whether that's true or not is beside the point. Let's just say Singer was exceptional. Born June 9, ...
The Beatles: Let It Be
In May 1970, the Beatles released Let It Be a month after they disbanded. I remember hearing it for the first time at age 13 on the driveway of my next-door neighbor in the suburbs. The neighbor was on his bike, I was on my green Schwinn Sting-Ray and two other friends were on theirs. His older ...
Best of Bond...James Bond
Between Acker Bilk's No. 1 Billboard pop-chart hit Stranger on the Shore in early 1962 and the Beatles arrival in America in February 1964, there was James Bond. The technicolor, sexualized action/spy film was a brand new genre, and Sean Connery's Bond was impossibly dashing and daring. Most of all, his British accent defined cool and ...
La Lucha and friends shine in CCJS debut
Nineteen months after the pandemic brought the Charlotte County Jazz Society’s 2018-19 concert season to an abrupt and premature end, the nonprofit’s evening concerts resumed on Monday, October 11 with a musical treat from La Lucha. The Tampa Bay-area trio, consisting of pianist John O’Leary, bassist Alejandro Arenas and drummer Mark Feinman, brought along two guests: ...
The Lex Golden Octet in Hi-Fi
Octets were all the rage in the 1950s. Dave Pell pioneered the format in 1953, and nearly every major jazz player in the city put one together, including Bill Holman and Lennie Niehaus. The reason octets were so popular is they were as close as you could get to forming a big band without going broke. ...


