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Billie's Last Chorus
by Rob Mariani
She came on last at a concert that started at midnight at the Lowe's Sheraton on Seventh Avenue in The Village. It was one of those big, everybody-gets-to-play jam sessions they called concerts then, and it probably cost the promoters less than what Kenny G spends on hair gel these days. But there were at least ...
Lullaby of Birdland
by Rob Mariani
This month, instead of writing about a jazz personality, I decided to write about a room. A jazz room which sadly no longer exists but that had a personality as unique as the great musicians who played there. I'm talking about a club called Birdland—the original Birdland on Broadway near 56th Street in Manhattan's Times Square ...
Just Plain Trane
by Rob Mariani
He appeared on a bandstand that was at least two football fields away, at the Randall's Island Jazz Festival in 1960. I had already heard him on record and read what the reviewers were saying about him, and indeed, what seemed to be emanating from the bandstand on that breezy New York summer night were those ...
Crepuscules With Monk
by Rob Mariani
Something was happening down on the lower East Side of Manhattan, down south of 14th Street way down in the rusty Bowery as the summer of 1957 was beginning. News of it spread out through the jazz community like the subterranean rumble of the subways underneath the clubs up on 52nd Street. Monk was ...
Miles On A Good Day
by Rob Mariani
The men's room at Birdland was, like the rest of the club, pretty much about economies of scale. A pair of urinals too close together. One cramped toilet stall. One gray-jacketed, tired old attendant who maybe could feel the vibrations through the walls when Philly Joe was playing “Two Bass Hit." But there was no way ...
The Amazing One
by Rob Mariani
At Birdland, Pee Wee Marquette, the diminutive MC, had a way of shouting into the mike when he announced the names of band members. Anyone who has heard it can not forget it. It made your jaw ache like you'd just eaten a quart of ice cream on a bad filling. “Ladies and gentlemen, ...
Incomparably Quiet: Bill Evans
by Rob Mariani
It was another one of those sticky, half-sunny, end-of-summer New York Sunday afternoons at The Village Vanguard. Down in the tiny, odd-shaped cellar space on lower Seventh Avenue, it wasn't the usual mid-sixties crowd of jazz fans. Most of the people weren't there to hear jazz, they were there to see comedian Lenny Bruce. Bruce was ...
Modern Jazz Quartet: Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise
by Rob Mariani
New York City empties out like a condemned playground on a Sunday afternoon in July. People cooped up in air-dried apartments and offices all week escape in search of sunshine and trees. The good things that still happen in the City on weekends happen mostly inside of little hidden enclaves, isolated places well below street level. ...
Mingus's Fingus
by Rob Mariani
On a chilly November night the fog from the River rolled up Hudson Street rubbing against the big plate glass window of the Half-Note Café on the corner of Spring. Inside, things were warm and busy. Charlie Mingus's sextet was setting up on the bandstand on top of the two-sided bar. People were finding ...
Does Anybody Here Remember Joe (Pass)?
by Craig M. Cortello
Does anybody here remember Joe? That's the question I asked myself in May of 1994 when I learned that my hero had died. As the television show Entertainment Tonight rolled the closing credits one evening, they noted that the legendary jazz guitarist Joe Pass had passed away, while a brief clip from one of his live ...
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