Results for "Eubie Blake"

Eubie Blake

Ragtime music, with its syncopated, polyrhythmic style, was born, in the 1890s in the black saloons and brothels of southern and mid-western cities like Baltimore and St. Louis. It was at the center of American popular music from the end of the nineteenth century until the 1920s. One of the most enduring ragtime pianists was Eubie Blake, who took that music well into the 1980’s. Eubie Blake was one of the most important figures in early-20th-century African-American music, and one whose longevity made him a storehouse of the history of ragtime and early jazz music and culture. Born in Baltimore in 1883, Blake began playing piano professionally when he was 16; he wrote his first composition, "Sounds of Africa," (later retitled "Charleston Rag") around the same time

Rahsaan Roland Kirk: An Alternative Top Ten Albums Guaranteed To Bend Your Head

By CHRIS MAY

Jazz musicians are rarely called shamanistic but the description fits Rahsaan Roland Kirk precisely. Clad in black leather trousers and heavy duty shades (he was blind from the age of two), a truckload of strange looking horns strung round his neck—two or three of which he often played simultaneously--twisting, shaking and otherwise contorting his body, stamping ...

The Rebel Festival

By KARL ACKERMANN

On the morning of July 4, 1960, there were more than a few signs of the mayhem that had taken place the night before in Newport, Rhode Island. Newport's Millionaires Row woke up to broken store windows, overturned vehicles, and storm drains clogged with garbage and beer bottles. One-hundred-eighty-two people, mostly young, New England college students ...

A Jazz Immuno-Booster: Part 6

By LUDOVICO GRANVASSU

The Jazz Immuno-Booster mixtape series continues. This sixth installment features musical therapy selections by Thana Alexa, Francesco Bigoni, Terri Lyne Carrington, Sarah Elizabeth Charles, Kris Davis, Satoko Fujii and Natsuki Tamura, Alexander Hawkins, Will Holshouser, Ha-Yang Kim, Michael Mwenso, Jessica Pavone, Mark Turner, Happy listening! Stay safe and sane with the help of great ...

February Birthdays and Snooky @100

By MARC COHN

It's the monthly jazz birthdays edition of Gift and Messages, direct from our turntables and CD players in mid-city Baton Rouge to you! We salute the late trumpeter Snooky Young on his 100th birthday with one of the rare recordings under his own name, the out-of-print Horn of Plenty. Great listening, along with tenor birthday madness ...

Women in Jazz, Part 1: Early Innovators

By KARL ACKERMANN

"Lil Hardin [Armstrong]...often imagined herself standing...at the bottom of a ladder, holding it steady for Louis as he rose to stardom." (Stanford Archive of Recorded Sound, 2012). “The all-female band is an anomaly in music, one that must constantly prove itself as a 'band,' and not just 'girls playing music together.'" (Mary Ann Clawson, 1999). Everything ...

David Ostwald’s Louis Armstrong Eternity Band at Birdland

By TYRAN GRILLO

David Ostwald's Louis Armstrong Eternity Band Birdland New York, NY November 22, 2017 Every Wednesday night at Birdland, concertgoers can be sure of having a rollickingly good time with David Ostwald's Louis Armstrong Eternity Band. But on 22 November 2017, this weekly making of music took on a mournful ...