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Results for "Brilliant Corners, a Boston Jazz Blog"
The Infernal Vuvuzela, Scarcity and the Breath
The World Cup has resuscitated the vuvuzela, formerly known to us boomers as “can I have one of those big horns?"These horns (always red) stuck out the top of the 2-wheeled carts dragged along by guys working the crowds at parades and ballparks. They also had banners, mylar balloons and the industrious ones had ...
Sweet, Hot and Smooth Roots
Now, ladies and gents, the promised jazz cage scrap between Fletcher 'Hatchet' Henderson and 'Grapplin' Guy Lombardo, or should we say, the familias Henderson and Lombardo. It's tag team, as both come brothered-up, but Fletcher and Horace are outgunned by the Lombardo mob: Guy, Carmen, Liebert and Victor.Henderson does higher ed. and pledges Alpha ...
Sweet, Hot and Smooth©
Sometimes people don't know a good, no, a brilliant idea when it bites' em on the tweet. Alex W. Rodriguez @arodjazz was looking for advice on how to write a “smooth jazz" chapter for his jazz curriculum and I suggested he trace its roots back to the age-old dichotomy between “sweet" and “hot" jazz (Notice the ...
Road Worriers.
Now that the Jazz Biz elements are in remission and bloat stuff crashes and burns all around, it is time to address the disheveled condition of touring in America. If baby boomers were responsible for destructive aesthetic misconceptions about what would sell, the blame for the grotesque and pathetic lack of a working circuit ...
A Cylindrical Paper Cup Filled with Booze
Way back in the Lost Hang post, I said I'd fill in the details about Little Stevie's trumpet lessons with John Coffey. Here goes.My first trumpet teacher came to the house. A big jolly man, he reached down to his butt and said to me, “Now, you can tell your jughead friends this, but ...
The Return of Jazz Shtick
Cymbal-HeadWhy did Louis Armstrong's standing in the jazz scene plummet during his “Hello Dolly" era, as if he had not been The Man? The reason may be that 1964 was about the time that jazz lost its sense of humor. Not its sly, oblique sense of humor, but the acceptance of a broad style ...
All Hail the Jazz Prodigy
Oy. Why do jazz writers love prodigies so? Can this be a deeply-seated musical inferiority complex rearing its ugly head? “We stole one from the classical boyos"? “You see! Our music is so great that even the prodigies dig it!"Shoot. If ever a genre did not have to prove that the genius of its ...
RIP Fred Anderson
Howard Reich has the details on the passing of Fred Anderson following a heart attack earlier in the month. I'm not particularly familiar with Mr. Anderson's work but I understand his leadership role in Chicago, a city that is laudably proud of its contributions. One thing I noticed in the article was the role of Dan ...
The Loss of the Targeted Hang
My last post bemoaned the disappearance of local places to buy horns. Another aspect of moving instrumental sales online was the demise of places where you could do what you might call a “targeted hang." That is, a place where musicians could indulge themselves with some serious checking in and screwing off, while convincing themselves they ...
Pawn Shops and the (Jazz) Underclasses
One measure of the way things have been going for the jazz underclasses and the working poor in general over the last 20 years is to look at what's happened to pawn shops.Pawn shops are like tidal wetlands. You take estuaries for granted until a weather catastrophe hits and your split-level gets washed out ...
