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Jazz Inside And Out: Select Posts from 2013-2015
by John Goodman
Here's a selection of posts from my now-discontinued blog, Jazz Inside and Out. I started writing it in summer 2013 and persisted for about six years. As 2016 rolled around, like many others I got quite taken over by politics, and my posts reflected that. Readership went up, jazz took a sabbatical. Politics and ...
Margie Evans, Iconic And Sophisticated Queen Of The Blues, Dies At 81
Margie Evans, a legendary, international Blues and Gospel entertainer, songwriter, music producer, actress, music historian, community activist and motivational spokeswoman, who broke barriers for African American female Blues performers with poise, dignity and sophistication, died on March 19, 2021. In addition to her musicianship, Evans is noted as an activist for parity in music education as ...
Logan Richardson: To Boldly Go Where No Jazz Has Gone Before
by Chris May
In a 2016 interview, Kansas City-born alto saxophonist Logan Richardson said: “Jazz will constantly change because there's constantly a new us, new times. There will always be a fight from the conformists--but they don't represent where the tradition is coming from." Richardson was talking not long after the release of his adventurous Blue Note album, Shift, ...
Jazz Musician of the Day: Jay McShann
All About Jazz is celebrating Jay McShann's birthday today! “The Last of the Blue Devils” Jay “Hootie” McShann landed in Kansas City in the 1930s, and along with fellow pianist and bandleader Count Basie, established what came to be known as the Kansas City sound: blues rooted jazz driven by swinging horns laid over a powerful ...
Donald Byrd & Lou Donaldson
by Joe Dimino
In honor of the new jazz book Sittin' In by Jeff Gold, we dedicate an entire hour to the music of the 1940s and 1950s. The hour begins with Charlie Parker and ends with Dizzy Gillespie. In between those titans, we profile a huge swath of jazz music and hear from the author about the book, ...
Howard University Jazz Ensemble: Hi-Fly
by Jack Bowers
In 2020, the superb Howard University Jazz Ensemble from the US capital marked its forty-fifth anniversary. Since its inception in 1975, the ensemble has had only one director, Fred Irby III, its founder and guiding force for lo these many years. One year after organizing the group, Irby assembled its members for a visit to a ...
Charlie Parker: Ten High Flying Albums Of Paradigm Shifting Genius
by Chris May
Born in Kansas City, Kansas in 1920, and brought up across the state line in anything-goes, jazz-friendly Kansas City, Missouri, controlled from the mid 1920s to the late 1930s by the spectacularly corrupt politician Tom Prendergast, alto saxophonist Charlie Parker lived fast and hard and passed in 1955, aged only 34 years. A founding father of ...
Sex & Drugs & Jazz & Jive: Top Ten Stash Records Albums
by Chris May
With all the transgressive flair you would expect of bohemian New York City in the 1970s and 1980s, Bernie Brightman's Stash Records made its name with a hugely entertaining series of sex and drugs-themed compilations of swing-era recordings. The first was Reefer Songs in 1976. But Brightman's legacy extends much further. There was a finite amount ...
John Scofield: One For Swallow
by Ian Patterson
From time to time in his storied career John Scofield will take a look over his shoulder and re-examine some of the music that has fed into his own, personal brand of jazz. The influences are many, for no matter the context that Scofield engineers, his distinctive sound always carries something of the blues, a little ...
John Scofield As A Sideman: The Best Of…
by Ian Patterson
John Scofield is a modern-day jazz legend, one of the most instantly recognizable voices on the guitar, and an inspiration to many. In a solo career that began in earnest in 1977, Scofield has carved out his own sound on dozens of albums, including his tribute to Steve Swallow, Swallow Tales (ECM, 2020), a trio album ...
