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Marty Sheller: The Name Behind The Sound You All Know, Part 1
by Skip Heller
There are certain musicians who embody eras, even if they're not the player with their picture on the cover. In our contemporary musical climate, Greg Leisz comes to mind. Since 1991, he has popped up on hundreds of acclaimed albums, and without ever really changing his style, he has become centrifugal beyond the considerations of genre ...
Philadelphia, Mon Amour
by Skip Heller
I was born in 1965, in West Philly, so I met the world in 1980 or so. My city was then recovering from two terms of mayor Frank Rizzo, whose corruption was on a level not seen since the glory days of New York mayor Jimmy Walker. Rizzo hated anyone who was young or of color. ...
Death Is Not The End and the Law of Periodical Repetition
by Skip Heller
"Will this wonderful civilization of today perish? Yes, everything perishes. Will it rise and exist again? It willfor nothing can happen that will not happen again. And again, and still again, forever. It took more than eight centuries to prepare this civilization then it suddenly began to grow, and in less than a century it is ...
2020 and Me
by Skip Heller
As I type this, it is December 8, 2020, the fortieth anniversary of John Lennon's murder. I was then a newly-minted barband guitarist, fifteen years old and thinking how the world via the election of Ronald Reagan and music had just suffered the worst season that could ever be. 2020 has been an ongoing ...
Back To... SOUL
by Skip Heller
While everyone else seems to have been attending jazz festivals, I've been flying under the radar with film and TV music jobs, so I haven't had the time to write about the summer's recorded music treasures, and it has been bountiful for record/CD fans. Not least of all because some really careful and wise music fans ...
Pryor Experiences
by Skip Heller
If it seems like everything is being anthologized into a box set these days, that's because it is. While on a trip to Amoeba Music (the enormous record store from where I live about a block), I took stock of all kinds of box sets. There was even one of the Mitch Miller Sing Along With ...
Reliving Elvis
by Skip Heller
No matter how much is written, or by whom, Elvis Presley remains impossible to explain. The usual young white rocker who could sing black" is as inaccurate as any standing American mythology. His legacy has been as mangled as his career was, often to the detriment of the work itself. Yes, at the time of his ...
Carole Simpson Remembered
by Skip Heller
As news of Donald Byrd's passing was leaking out slowly, jazz educator Keith Pawlak sent me a note on Facebook asking if I had heard that pianist/vocalist Carole Simpson had passed away. Her name is barely known except to a few collectors who specialize in female singers of the Eisenhower era. She was during ...
Beyond The Blues
by Skip Heller
Back when I was a kidI was born in 1965the first comprehensive push for children's education about American Black History was on. Elementary school libraries suddenly included books about Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and George Washington Carver, and there were even a few books about jazz and blues for young readers.I wish I could ...