The Fourth of July is also celebrated as Louis Armstrong’s birthday, even though in reality it probably isn’t. While the trumpeter was frequently accused of Uncle Tomming, the choice of America’s B-day as his own (his birth certificate was lost) means we remember him more for Uncle Samming throughout a…
About time a bio was written on Sonny Rollins, the last living jazz patriarch, who also met repeatedly with the author as the book was taking shape. Not that the saxman was pleased with the project, to which he admits he “reluctantly agreed, feeling that it would probably be written…
Gumbo loves slamming pud jazz wanna-bes and goo-heavy R&B warblers. But my insensitive editor stubbornly refuses to allot me an extra page for diatribes on, say, how stupid it is to categorize Sade as jazz. Gumbo has, however, been granted an additional 17 syllables, used below to convey a haiku…
Sure, reading about music is no substitute for listening, but probably only a music book is going to show the typical Rolling Stones fan how Jimmy Reed and Muddy Waters were the group’s daddies. Most likely it will be a Miles Davis bio that explains to a recent jazz convert…
Let’s be frugal. Why sell your own body to science for CD money when you can sell someone else’s, especially when the scumbag probably wasn’t a jazz or blues fan anyway? Inclined to feel pangs of guilt over digging up graves, Mr./Miss Sensitive? Then trek down to New Orleans, where…
Let’s be smug. Smug and proud of it, even. Yes, those of us who favor underdog music inevitably experience existential loneliness as we thumb desperately for substance through a collection of Marilyn Manson and Celine Dion albums at a party. Yet somehow we feel superior to the sorry suckers who’ll…
As we bitterly curse the fact that the apocalypse skipped over us, at least there’s some new music to commiserate with. Make a statement against pointless existence and spend your rent money on these new releases. There’s lots of jazz to choose from, plus a few bluegrass and folk offerings…
Listening to the radio, you’d think that there’s only enough progressive jazz, blues, R&B, folk and world music being released to merit an occasional two-hour show. Not so, bubba. There’s loads of great stuff coming out in all of these genres — always has been, always will be. What follows…
Just as there’s a lot of dreadful music worth avoiding, there’s also no shortage of truly rotten books about music to waste your time. As a culture, we’re inclined to think that just because a book makes it into the library, it’s literature. But anyone who’s ever checked out a…
With the release of the Captain Beefheart boxed set Grow Fins: Rarities (1965-1982), rock’s ultimate eccentric is finally honored as a figure who influenced artists as diverse as Tom Waits and Pere Ubu. The five CDs offer 75 outtakes, as well as CD-enhanced live-performance tracks. Ironically, this long-overdue celebration of…
If you’re a Dylan freak, the center of the universe is, of all places, Grand Junction, Colorado. Mick and Laurie McCuistion reside there, operating an enormous business that encompasses damn near everything relating to America’s unofficial poet laureate. In 1993, the couple began publishing the ultimate Dylan fanzine, the glossy…
Fountains of Wayne Utopia Parkway (Atlantic Records) At year’s end, when critics and other know-it-alls compile their best-of lists for 1999, Fountains of Wayne’s Utopia Parkway will be there. Words like “smart” and “quirky” will adorn the disc, and no doubt there will be references to “heavenly” sounds and other…
It took somewhere near 20 phone calls to catch Joey DeFrancesco between tours. His perpetually full schedule is an impressive state of affairs for someone who plays an instrument that until fairly recently was horribly unpopular in jazz for several decades. “I’m in Europe a lot, but it was New…
The pantheon of major Texas blues guitarists would have to include the late, flamboyant Stevie Ray Vaughan, the brilliant albino Johnny Winter–and a quiet, 71-year-old jazzman named Herb Ellis. The aging Texan is a major link between the parallel developments of jazz and blues, as well as one of the…
The most innovative guitarist alive was discovered in 1983 as he played for change on the street corners of Manhattan. Music giants like Frank Zappa and jazzmen Art Blakey and Cecil Taylor were blown away by a 23-year-old Stanley Jordan who radically redefined the potentials of guitar music. Eleven years…
The rock n’ roll lifestyle didn’t drop from the sky with the appearance of the Rolling Stones, you know. Half a century of jazzmen and blues figures had already set the stage with their endless womanizing and love for needles, pills and bottles. And Stan Kenton, pianist, bandleader, eccentric genius,…
It’s become a clich, how fake jazzers like Dave Grusin and the Rippingtons’ Russ Freeman gush endlessly over the merits of their weightless fare, preaching as though their lobotomized music will guarantee happiness for anyone turning an ear and a billfold in their direction. But fellow bloodless brother Bob James,…
Once again, we take a look at what a few local humans liked and didn’t like in the music world this year. From fabulous celebrities such as Charles Barkley and Barry Goldwater to everyday folks you may have seen at your local Circle K or topless bar (Dave and Mariah,…
Good things come in small packages, as the saying goes, but at Christmastime, big packages look a whole lot better under a tree than little ones do. Back in the old days, when Santa left a 12×12 LP, it was a mouth-watering sight the next morning. Sure, CDs may sound…
It’s hard to believe that in 1906, the term “funk” referred to sexual body odors, and only some 50 years later to a music that sounded just as dirty. No one in yer grandma’s lifetime has done as much as George Clinton, the Parliament/Funkadelic kingpin, to supply a soundtrack for…
“I know what I’m striving for, and it’s never to re-create music from the past,” says saxophone prodigy Joshua Redman. “It’s not a goal of mine to call attention to the lost greatness of the jazz legacy or how the music was so much better before.” Joshua Redman doesn’t fit…
There’s an agonizing scene in Saxophone Colossus, the 1986 documentary film about jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins. The tenor man is playing an outdoor gig in New York in which, in the course of three minutes of unaccompanied soloing, he quotes from “A Tisket, A Tasket,” “Over the Rainbow” and “The…
