Posted in Shows on Oct 27th, 2008
Sun Ra, whose real name was Herman or “Sunny” Blount, grew up in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1920s and 30s, living within sight of a huge sign welcoming Birmingham visitors to “the Magic City.” It’s a prophetic sign in the Sun Ra legend, for Herman Blount—who was named by his mother after the popular vaudeville magician Black Herman– went on to become a sort of musical wizard, staging shows with dancers, wild lighting, musicians dressed in space costumes, sermons on far-ranging topics, and music that drew on hardbop, big-band, and free jazz, with chanting, electronic keyboards, shrieking saxophones, and a wide array of unusual musical effects that resulted in what he called “cosmo dramas”…
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Posted in Jazz Notes on Jul 15th, 2008
Novelist Nelson Algren and singer Billie Holiday are two iconic figures of mid-20th-century American culture, though Holiday’s name and visage–not to mention her voice–is surely better-known and remembered than Algren’s is today. (At least Starbucks hasn’t taken to hawking copies of The Man With the Golden Arm at the coffee counter yet.) Algren, perhaps, made the mistake of living too long and fading into relative obscurity before his death in 1981.
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Posted in Books, Jazz Notes on Mar 4th, 2008
Around this joint we are big fans of the jazz writer Larry Kart and his book, Jazz in Search of Itself. As I’ve noted in our store section, Kart, who worked at Downbeat and was a longtime reviewer for the Chicago Tribune, “is not just a good critic–he’s a very good writer, whether he’s discussing Wynton Marsalis and the so-called ‘neocon’ musicians, Lennie Tristano…
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Posted in Shows on Oct 22nd, 2007
Sun Ra, whose real name was Herman or “Sunny” Blount, grew up in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1920s and 30s, living within sight of a huge sign welcoming Birmingham visitors to “the Magic City.” It’s a prophetic sign in the Sun Ra legend, for Herman Blount—who was named by his mother after the popular vaudeville magician Black Herman– went on to become a sort of musical wizard, staging shows with dancers, wild lighting, musicians dressed in space costumes, sermons on far-ranging topics, and music that drew on hardbop, big-band, and free jazz, with chanting, electronic keyboards, shrieking saxophones, and a wide array of unusual musical effects that resulted in what he called “cosmo dramas”…
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