Posted in Jazz Notes on Aug 5th, 2008
*Pianist Michael Weiss, a longtime musical associate of the late Johnny Griffin, has written a remembrance of the saxophonist.
*The new issue of WaxPoetics includes a great article on Herbie Hancock’s early-1970s Warner Brothers era. Also check out the pieces on Sam Rivers (did you know that he recorded some jam sessions with Jimi Hendrix?) and Lalo Schifrin. (Content not available online–I bought my copy at Ye Olde-Fashioned Record Store, but you can order it through the link above.)
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Posted in Shows on Jul 28th, 2008
“Here were the children of the American bop night,” Jack Kerouac wrote in his 1957 novel On the Road, which, like many of Kerouac’s other writings, celebrated and invoked the music of Charlie Parker, Lester Young, and many other jazz greats. We’ll mark this weekend’s 50th anniversary of the publication of Kerouac’s best-known book with a program that explores his relationship with jazz, including recordings he made with saxophonists Al Cohn and Zoot Sims…
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Posted in Jazz Notes on Jan 9th, 2008
With all the bad news one is accustomed to hearing about the state of jazz these days (as bad as being a Cubs fan, it sometimes seems)–low CD sales, clubs closing, etc.–it’s pretty safe to say that the music’s doing well on the Internet, at least. In the past, I’ve sometimes thought that the [...]
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Posted in Videos on Nov 25th, 2007
A few years ago I caught a late-1940s Robert Mitchum movie on AMC called The Big Steal. Mitchum played an Army lieutenant on the run in Mexico, trying to absolve himself of a stolen payroll for which he’d been framed. His feminine foil was Jane Greer, as a woman disillusioned and exploited by her playboy lover (portrayed by Patric Knowles). Rife with crackling dialogue and great south-of-the-border scenery, the film also hooked me with an epic chase scene (in which Greer, not Mitchum, is the driver), a progressive-for-its-time treatment of the leading lady and the Mexican police officers, and an engaging chemistry…
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Posted in Books, Jazz Notes on Oct 17th, 2007
Indiana University Jacobs School of Music professor Phil Ford, heard recently on our Night Lights program Jazz and Jack Kerouac, will be giving a talk this Friday (Oct. 19) on private acetate recordings that Kerouac, John Clellon Holmes, and Allen Ginsberg made in the late 1940s and early 1950s. I’ve had occasion to hear a brief bit of one of the acetates, which featured Keroauc, Holmes, and Seymour Wise doing scat/bop vocalese accompaniment…
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Posted in Shows on Aug 27th, 2007
“Here were the children of the American bop night,” Jack Kerouac wrote in his 1957 novel On the Road, which, like many of Kerouac’s other writings, celebrated and invoked the music of Charlie Parker, Lester Young, and many other jazz greats. We’ll mark this weekend’s 50th anniversary of the publication of Kerouac’s best-known book with a program that explores his relationship with jazz, including recordings he made with saxophonists Al Cohn and Zoot..
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