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Article: So You Don't Like Jazz

Thirty Essential Transformative Guitarists

by Alan Bryson
September 9, 2026

"Best guitarist" lists are inherently subjective--often nonsensical. They rank the unrankable, folding popularity, technique, cultural impact, sales, and personal taste into a single hierarchy. This list takes a different approach, acknowledging thirty guitarists who transformed the instrument itself: they created new techniques, pioneered fresh concepts, expanded its sonic vocabulary, and changed how those who followed them played. ...

Article: So You Don't Like Jazz

Jimi Hendrix: Showman and Sculptor

by Alan Bryson
August 12, 2026

When you think of Jimi Hendrix, chances are something flamboyant or incendiary comes to mind. His Stratocaster in flames at Monterey, or kneeling before a wall of amps at Woodstock. Those are in my memory bank too, but I'm one of a small group of people alive today who actually experienced The Jimi Hendrix Experience. The ...

Article: So You Don't Like Jazz

Iconic Music in Film: Boomer Edition

by Alan Bryson
July 1, 2026

One of the pleasures of looking back at film music from the boomer years is realizing how quickly the walls were coming down. Classical themes turned into jazz-funk hits. Soul records won Oscars. Rock songs became character development. Bluegrass, blues, disco, Latin jazz, and spaghetti-western minimalism all found their way onto the screen, and in the ...

Article: So You Don't Like Jazz

Sonic Loops: Eight Miles High on the Psychedelic Trane

by Alan Bryson
May 15, 2026

In the popular music of the '50s, the landscape revolved around individual vocalists, vocal harmony groups, and instrumental ensembles. In the early '60s, something radical emerged: self-contained groups--a collective of individuals with a group dynamic and identity. They wrote, sang, played instruments, and performed as a unified artistic whole. This represented a structural revolution in how ...

Article: So You Don't Like Jazz

5 Epic Jazz Songs That Forever Changed the World

by Alan Bryson
April 9, 2026

So You Don't Like Jazz normally focuses on ways to turn people on to jazz, but this column focuses on five jazz songs whose impact profoundly changed modern music. In the process they also demonstrated that jazz could be successful in a modern culture dominated by pop, rock & roll, and rhythm & blues. Arguably the ...

Article: The Blue Note Portal

A Waltz for Ludwig

by Blue Note Portal
December 3, 2025

There are rare sacred moments when music stops being sound and becomes light. A perfect note hangs in the air, silence breathes, and for the space of a heartbeat, the veil thins--revealing a place where music lives, along with pure thought, beyond time, space and language. There is only harmonic resonance: the silent conversation between souls ...

Article: So You Don't Like Jazz

All About Music—My AAJ Experience

by Alan Bryson
September 8, 2025

Music & Taste Music and food have a lot in common. Variety is the key--without it, even the best prepared food loses its appeal. It is telling that we speak of “musical taste," even though we experience music through our ears. Genres like jazz and classical music weave together themes, patterns, harmonies, and mathematical ...

Article: So You Don't Like Jazz

The Unlikely Story of Cannonball Adderley's Rise to the Top

by Alan Bryson
August 13, 2025

For me, the most gripping music stories are the tales of “overnight sensations." In the jazz sphere, we have our share. There is the story of an eighteen-year-old Billie Holiday, discovered by producer John Hammond while she was a hostess in a Harlem club. There is the tale of a seventeen-year-old Ella Fitzgerald, whose triumphant debut ...

Article: Django's Cosmic Echo

Afterword: Final Thoughts & Questions

by Alan Bryson
July 9, 2025

Chapters 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 In 2019 the film Yesterday was released. A struggling singer/songwriter is hit by a bus and a “glitch" ...

Article: Django's Cosmic Echo

Chapter Seventeen: The Unspoken Duet

by Alan Bryson
July 8, 2025

Chapters 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 The air backstage at the Teatro Municipal thrummed with a contained electricity. Technicians scurried, musicians tuned, and the ...