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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 ...
John Hartford: Aereo Plain/Morning Bugle: The Complete Warner Brothers Recordings

by Skip Heller
This 1971 album was to the emerging newgrass movement approximately was Bill Evans' Village Vanguard recordings were to jazz piano trios: the flexible blueprint for the genre. Evans and singer/multi-instrumentalist John Hartford both successfully found ways to dissolve the soloist and his enablers" tyranny, working instead towards the integrated ensemble as the musical engine.
Ernie Kovacs and Edie Adams For Beginners

by Skip Heller
Fifty years after his death, Ernie Kovacs is de rigueur. Mainstream, even. His angular, imaginative approach to humor was impossible to imitate, but his influence on television-specifically television comedy-is intractable. He's the Thelonious Monk of the small screen. And just trying to play in a Monkish style always points out that Monk is Monk and nobody ...
Frank M. Young and David Lasky: The Carter Family - Don't Forget This Song

by Skip Heller
Frank M. Young and David Lasky The Carter Family: Don't Forget This Song 192 pages ISBN 978081988361 Abrams ComicArts 2012 In recent years, the music biography has turned notable corners. The post-punk generation, coming largely from the world of fanzines and urban weekly newspapers, has become a big chunk ...
Your Past Will Come Back To Haunt You: Omnivore and Dust To Digital - Two Record Labels That Matter

by Skip Heller
When I was growing up, a great many labels actually worked hard at having an identity. Blue Note meant something, as did Stiff, Rounder, Sugar Hill, Fania and many more (even some of the majors). Music fans actually bought stuff with a sense of trust for the people who put it out. Packaging, production style, taste, ...
Crimejazz: The Sound of Noir

by Skip Heller
Crimejazz! In 1923, Caroll John Daly wrote Knights of the Open Palm. Published June of that same year in the pulp magazine Black Mask, its protagonist was Race Williams, an acerbic private eye. This was the first hardboiled crime story, and it touched off a world of crime fiction. That same year, trumpeter Louis ...
Los Lobos: Kiko - 20th Anniversary Edition

by Skip Heller
Los Lobos Kiko: 20th Anniversary Edition Shout! Factory 2012 Looking over the punk-era rise of Los Angeles roots rock, reveals an embarrassment of musical riches. The prototypical outfit was The Blasters, a literate working class rockabilly-tinged barband whose songs (written by Dave Alvin) were knowing, compassionate stories of real American life, ...
A Few Frames Of Public Access Art

by Skip Heller
Music and television have always worked together, and through the history of the medium, apocolypses have happened because the world was tuned in together. Language quickly becomes hyperbole when people recall Elvis Presley or the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, Ricky Nelson's fantastic weekly performances on his parents' show (The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet), any number ...
Art Restoration: Laurie Pepper and Widow's Taste Records

by Skip Heller
It was F. Scott Fitzgerald who wrote, In American life, there are no second acts," which means he clearly was not an Art Pepper fan. Pepper was one of the great alto saxophonist stars of the bop era, famed not only as a Stan Kenton sideman, but also for his own albums as a ...
England Swings Like A Pendulum Do

by Skip Heller
Several years ago, when the Skip Heller Trio was touring all the time, I came across a disc called London Is The Place For Me: Trinidadian Calypso In London, 1950-1956 (Honest Jons, 2002), a collection of calyspo music recorded in London. The music and accompanying thick booklet were full of revelations: the history of postwar migration ...