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STRINGIN’ THE BLISS: THE ALCATRAZ ISLANDERS (Part One): MIKIYA MATSUDA, JOHN S. REYNOLDS, CASEY MacGILL, DENNIS LICHTMAN, MATT WEINER, RILEY BAKER (Redwood Coast Music Festival, October 4, 2024) | JAZZ LIVES
This Bay Area group of brilliant lyrical individualists is led by Mikiya Matsuda on lap steel guitar. For this occasion, the "superband" included the inimitable John S. Reynolds on guitar and vocal; Casey MacGill, ukulele, cornet, and vocal; Dennis Lichtman, clarinet and fiddle; Matt Weiner, double bass; Riley Baker, drums. Their first set at the…
ON WITH THE DANCE: The CLOUD DROPS at the STORMY WEATHER JAZZ DANCE FESTIVAL (JONATHAN DOYLE, JACOB ZIMMERMAN, RAY SKJELBRED, MATT WEINER, JOSH ROBERTS, D’VONNE LEWIS, WALTER CANO, JEROME SMITH) | JAZZ LIVES
Thanks to double bassist and videographer Matt Weiner, we can now swing out at a Seattle, Washington dance (December 29, 2024, and January 1, 2025). Here's the wondrous band, The Cloud Drops, with inspired arrangements by Doyle and Zimmerman: Jonathan Doyle, tenor saxophone and clarinet; Jacob Zimmerman, alto saxophone and clarinet; Walter Cano, trumpet; Jerome…
TAKE TWO: JAZZ BASH BY THE BAY (Monterey, California, March 6-9, 2025) | JAZZ LIVES
A long weekend of inspired music in comfortable surroundings in a congenial California city. There you have it. Details here. From left, Danny Tobias, trumpet and Eb horn; Josh Collazo, drums; Jacob Zimmerman, clarinet and alto saxophone. Just three of the jazz heroes who will enliven the Bash. When I wrote my recent post about…
WORDS (AND MUSIC) TO LIVE BY: JOHN LEWIS, BARNEY BIGARD, CLARK TERRY, EDDIE DANIELS, KAI WINDING, JIMMIE MAXWELL, VIC DICKENSON, JOE NEWMAN, SLAM STEWART, BOBBY ROSENGARDEN (Nice Jazz Festival, July 15, 1977) | JAZZ LIVES
Seventeen minutes of pure Ellington-favored Mainstream joy, performed live at the 1977 Nice Jazz Festival: a new discovery, thanks to our friend Franz Hoffmann. The title? A philosophical statement by Ellington's short-lived trumpet star, James "Bubber" Miley, who did so much to give the Ellington orchestras their first aesthetic identity, the "jungle" sound. Nearly a…
FIVE-STAR LOCAL CUISINE (Part Two): STEVE PISTORIUS, JAMES EVANS, TOM SAUNDERS (Steamboat NATCHEZ, December 23, 2024) | JAZZ LIVES
https://jazzlives.wordpress.com/2024/12/30/five-star-local-cuisine-part-one-steve-pistorius-james-evans-tom-saunders-steamboat-natchez-december-23-2024/?preview_id=73768&preview_nonce=09665e6483&preview=true Here's the first part of a delightfully warm December afternoon spent on board the Steamboat Natchez, in the company of Steve Pistorius, piano, leader; James Evans, clarinet, alto saxophone, vocal; Tom Saunders, tuba, vocal. They perform JUBILEE, DOWN HEARTED BLUES, GRANDPA'S SPELLS, and JUST LIKE A MELODY FROM OUT OF THE SKY. I promised…
CONNIE JONES, HARVEY RUBIN, and HOWARD KADISON at the BLUE ANGEL JAZZ CLUB, 225 Bourbon Street, New Orleans (January 24, 1980). | JAZZ LIVES
Thanks to the late Howard Kadison, fine drummer and close friend of cornetist Connie Jones, I can share with you seventy minutes of a trio gig from New Orleans' French Quarter on January 24, 1980. Connie led the band there for a long time, as documented in this 1984 news story: and the reverse: The…
“Oude stijl jazz-festival in Breda, de 8e editie (1978)” | JAZZ LIVES
Here is a ninety-second news story to give those of us who weren't there a flavor of the Old-Style Jazz Festival in Breda, the Netherlands, in May 1978. Veteran trombonist-saxophonist Snub Moseley is visible and audible for a few bars of KANSAS CITY: https://youtu.be/JUZET9kStec?si=a0xEXSQv2DQpH6XC and a relevant holy relic: That late John "Butch" Smith, alto…
SHOPPING, WITH EDDIE CONDON’S “CONTEMPORARY CHAMBER MUSIC,” 1940-1942 | JAZZ LIVES
Clothes-shopping for "the new season" may be archaic, although trying to buy clothes online is a study in frustration. But actually going to a store to see the new fashions was tremendous fun in New York City, 1940-42, if you were in the right place at the right time. Eddie Condon's wife, Phyllis (Smith) Condon,…
VINCE GIORDANO AND THE NIGHTHAWKS LIVE AT BIRDLAND (January 14, 2025) | JAZZ LIVES
Multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, and scholar Vince Giordano has been leading his ten-piece orchestra since the middle Seventies, which is an astonishing record. Fifteen years ago, I used to visit them at Sofia's in the Hotel Edison and record videos of their performances. But my work was never as good as what you will see now, a…
MARY LOU WILLIAMS, JO JONES, RONNIE BOYKINS (Nice Jazz Festival 7.8.78) | JAZZ LIVES
Another one of the musical and visual marvels captured at the Nice Jazz Festival by French television: forty-five minutes of composer-pianist-icon Mary Lou Williams, her regular bassist Ronnie Boykins, and the entirely unpredictable master of the drums Jo Jones. I say "unpredictable" because by this time, Jo had often abandoned any notion of being a…
CLASSIC VANGUARD SMALL GROUP SWING SESSIONS (Mosaic Records) | JAZZ LIVES
I have been waiting for this music to be issued properly for more than fifty years. The music I'm speaking of is a series of recordings created for the Vanguard label, under the supervision of John Hammond, between December 1953 and March 1957. But before you read any more, I suggest you go here and…
JUST AROUND THE CORNER: THE JAZZ BASH BY THE BAY (March 6-9, 2025, Monterey, California) | JAZZ LIVES
With a few interruptions, I've been attending the Jazz Bash by the Bay since 2011. The music is fine and varied, and the location is congenial. So this is an unabashed encouragement to be there. Monterey is a lovely city, and temperatures in March should range from 47-62 degrees, an improvement on what most of…
JOHN COLTRANE, WYNTON KELLY, PAUL CHAMBERS, JIMMY COBB, STAN GETZ, OSCAR PETERSON (Jazz at the Philharmonic, Dusseldorf, Germany, August 27, 1960) | JAZZ LIVES
The most sectarian of the jazz journalists would have you believe that jazz artists each had a Style and a School, and they were reluctant to leave their little ideological nests. The reality was quite different, as we see here. Their assumption would be that John Coltrane couldn't find common ground with Oscar Peterson, although…
WAY DOWN YONDER IN APRIL 1991 with CHRIS TYLE’S EXCELSIOR JAZZ BAND: BARRY WRATTEN, TOM EBERT, STEVE PISTORIUS, JOHN GILL, EVAN DAIN, HAL SMITH (French Quarter Fest, NOLA) | JAZZ LIVES
From the archives: a video of Chris Tyle's Excelsior Jazz Band, shot by enthusiast Frank Selman, during the April 1991 French Quarter Fest in New Orleans. Appropriately, Jelly Roll Morton's MILENBURG JOYS. In the video, you'll see (and applaud) Hal Smith, drums; Evan Dain, double bass; John Gill, banjo; Steve Pistorius, piano; Barry Wratten, clarinet;…
“STOMP OFF, LET’S GO!: THE EARLY YEARS OF LOUIS ARMSTRONG” by RICKY RICCARDI (Oxford University Press, 2025) | JAZZ LIVES
I've added an exclamation point to the title. The book is just that joyous. And here's the theme song (Chicago, 1926, with Teddy Weatherford, piano; Jimmy Bertrand, percussion): https://youtu.be/oH9_iku2ljg?si=BoQfGJVuMAHMcRdY I've been absorbed by Louis Armstrong since my childhood. This was before the internet, before the proliferation of free music, so when I had only a…
“BEST O LUCK ALWAYS” | JAZZ LIVES
Although there are a few online, I don't recall seeing a Ben Webster autograph, and whoever SYDNEY was or is, he or she got the special treatment from Ben, who was not in a hurry to sign carelessly: I, for one, have no doubt of the sincerity of that wish. Here's some appropriate music from…
A QUIET TRIUMPH IN RED BANK (Part Two): ALEX OWEN, FELIX LEMERLE, SCOTT RITCHIE (September 1, 2024) | JAZZ LIVES
We were vacationing at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, at the end of August, but when I heard that the lyrical cornetist Alex Owen was playing in Count Basie's home town, I got properly dressed and headed over to the Triumph Brewing Company for a rewarding afternoon of swing. Alex had with him the nimble guitarist…
LOVE’S GONE WRONG BUT THE MUSIC’S SO RIGHT: DAWN GIBLIN, ERIK McINTYRE, MIKE KAROUB, CHRIS TABACYZNSKI, ALEX BELHAJ (Tenacity Brewing, Flint, Michigan, December 27, 2024) | JAZZ LIVES
Dawn Giblin is a genuine Hidden Treasure, and she deserves the initial caps. She's known and admired in and around Ann Arbor, Michigan, and her early champion was a musician with impeccable taste, Professor James Dapogny. Dawn subtly and quietly keeps making lovely music with gifted colleagues, but the chances to see and hear her…
“CULTURAL EXCHANGE”: THE SWEDISH JAZZ KINGS IN JAPAN (TOMAS ORNBERG, BENT PERSSON, ROY WILLIAMS, FRANS SJOSTROM, OLLE NYMAN, RAY SMITH: October 9, 1984) | JAZZ LIVES
Passion and expertise marked the work of the Swedish Jazz Kings. Or, if you like, strap in and time-travel back to the mid-Twenties for a complete immersion in hot jazz, no museum-archaism or stiffness about it. Their evocations of Bechet, Buster, Louis, Teagarden, and Rollini are frankly thrilling. (During the ensembles of CHATTANOOGA STOMP, my…
THE INTIMATE CIRCLE, IN THE DARKNESS: VALERIE KIRCHHOFF and ETHAN LEINWAND (Yaqui’s on Cherokee, St. Louis, June 25, 2024) | JAZZ LIVES
We are so used to the barriers between musicians and the audience in live performance that we may take them for granted. In a concert or at a festival, the musicians are on a raised stage or platform with a substantial distance between them and us. There may be distracting colored lighting. There are certainly…
A CURE FOR JANUARY’S COLD: TED SHAFER’S JELLY ROLL JAZZ BAND (Papa Ray Ronnei, Bob Mielke, Phil Howe, Ray Skjelbred, Ted Shafer, Jim Cumming, 1967) | JAZZ LIVES
Thanks to drummer / scholar Hal Smith for introducing me to this performance. I love hearing New Orleans-styled bands approach venerable pop songs with care and warmth. And in New York City, where I am at the moment, we surely need warmth. This week's temperatures will be in the thirties at best, and my weather…
JUDY WEXLER SINGS, “NO WONDER” | JAZZ LIVES
Judy Wexler exudes a happy exuberance when she sings: the easy confidence of someone who knows well what she is doing and is having fun doing it. On her new CD, NO WONDER, this comes across immediately. Exercising a reviewer's prerogative, I began with WISH YOU WERE HERE, which is admittedly a pretty song but…
NATHAN GROOVES THE RABBIT’S BLUES | JAZZ LIVES
I am not alone in applauding Nathan Tokunaga, the young Californian with immense musical intelligence and the kind of soulfulness you don't learn in any Jazz Studies program. Here he is, delighting the band (check out their body language and expressions) while the dancers at Lindy Focus get in the groove. The song is Johnny…
THE WORLD JOE BOUGHTON CREATED (2009) | JAZZ LIVES
I met the remarkable Joe Boughton (above, Dick Hyman to his left and Milt Hinton, right, mid-Eighties) more than twenty years ago when I was able to attend my first jazz weekend at Chautauqua, New York. I still shake my head in delighted amazement when I think of all the music he made possible. His…
AIRBORNE YET EARTHY: THE DAN BLOCK QUARTET (DANNY TOBIAS, SEAN SMITH, BEN ZWEIG, Mezzrow, January 1, 2025) | JAZZ LIVES
I've admired Dan Block and Danny Tobias for twenty years now: as versatile passionate players, candid melodists. They both have more expansive imaginations than they sometimes are encouraged to reveal in playing situations, and Dan's new quartet allows them to roam, with glorious results. Room to breathe, to sing, to surprise and delight us. Last…
“THAT’S NEAT. WHERE’D YOU LEARN IT?” | JAZZ LIVES
What does one do when one finds out that one's lover has much more amorous sophistication than one anticipated? Applaud, enjoy, or ask suspicious questions? In the early Thirties, this was a serious subject, if popular songs measure what people are thinking. Graduate students in Cultural Studies, take note. But not here. This 1935 song,…
FIVE-STAR LOCAL CUISINE (Part One): STEVE PISTORIUS, JAMES EVANS, TOM SAUNDERS (Steamboat NATCHEZ, December 23, 2024) | JAZZ LIVES
At its best, New Orleans cuisine is flavorful, hot, and tasty (see above). It's also true of the music. On our recent trip to that city, the OAO and I had a few opportunities to sample the sounds, and they were warm and memorable. Here's the first installment of our visit, an afternoon cruise on…
JAM SESSION COAST-TO-COAST (Part Two): DENNIS LICHTMAN, JON-ERIK KELLSO, CLINT BAKER, RAY SKJELBRED, MATT MUNISTERI, MATT WEINER, HAL SMITH (Redwood Coast Music Festival, October 6, 2024) | JAZZ LIVES
The delights did not cease. In my previous post about the closing set at the Redwood Coast Music Festival, a romp for listeners, musicians, and dancers in equal measure, I referenced this hallowed record date that shared music made by Eddie Condon's New York heroes and the Californians known as the "Rampart Street Paraders." The…
YES, IT IS HOT IN HERE: THE SWEDISH JAZZ KINGS with HAL SMITH at SAN DIEGO (November 28, 1987) | JAZZ LIVES
The Swedish Jazz Kings have long been a favorite of mine, and this combination, Bent Persson, trumpet, cornet; Kenneth Arnstrom, reeds; Tomas Ornberg, clarinet, soprano saxophone; Ray Smith, piano; Borre Frydenlund, banjo, vocal*; Michael Daumling, tuba, double bass; Hal Smith, drums, is especially fine. Here is a set they performed at the San Diego Dixieland…
WE WERE ALL YOUNG ONCE. DON EWELL, TOO. | JAZZ LIVES
The facts: Don Ewell, American jazz pianist. Born, Baltimore, Maryland, November 14, 1916. Died, Pompano Beach, Florida, August 9, 1983. The finest appreciation of Ewell in print was done by Hal Smith for The Syncopated Times, essential reading with reminiscences by musicians who played and studied with him, and I couldn't add much to it.…
A LOVE NOTE TO MELODY: MICHAEL KANAN, HORACIO FUMERO, GUILLEM ARNEDO (2024) | JAZZ LIVES
This performance is a great gift: serene and calm, a hug for a worthy melody. Michael Kanan, piano; Horacio Rumero, double bass; Guillem Arnedo, drums. The splendidly understated video is by Nil Mujal at "El Club," Sitges, Catalonia, Spain. The song here is a pretty one, written by Bernie Hanighen and Paul Cates, music and…
JAM SESSION COAST-TO-COAST (Part One): DENNIS LICHTMAN, JON-ERIK KELLSO, RAY SKJELBRED, MATT MUNISTERI, MATT WEINER, HAL SMITH (Redwood Coast Music Festival, October 6, 2024) | JAZZ LIVES
My title harks back to a fabled Columbia record featuring Eddie Condon's band (plus guests) on one side and the Rampart Street Paraders on the other: New York meets California. The 2024 evocation at the Redwood Coast Music Festival for the closing extravaganza at the Eagle House had fewer participants, but generated just as much…
NANCY HARROW HAS CREATED A NEW CD! | JAZZ LIVES
There's special, there's extra-special, and there's Nancy Harrow. She deserves more than one exclamation point. If you know her and her work (singer, composer, lyricist, playwright, thinker) the news that she has created a NEW compact disc, SECOND THOUGHTS, is something to celebrate. And if you don't know her, please come to a stop and…
BEAUTY AND SERENITY: CONNIE JONES, KRIS TOKARSKI, BRYAN BARBEROT (New Orleans, 2014) | JAZZ LIVES
An episode of pure beauty, so typical of the late cornetist Connie Jones (1934-2019) -- here meditatively and lovingly considering a Johnny Mercer ballad with Kris Tokarski, piano; Bryan Barberot, drums, recorded in 2014 in New Orleans. Kris said, "I remember that gig, it was in the Windsor Court lobby bar and Connie was subbing…
ALI MAKES A FULL AND FRANK CONFESSION | JAZZ LIVES
Not criminal. Endearing. Last June, Ali Affleck and The Traveling Janes created beauty at the Ascona Jazz Festival. They are Ali Affleck, vocals and percussion; Katie Cavera, banjo and guitar; Susanne Ortner, clarinet and alto saxophone; Danielle Price, tuba; Amanda Lee, piano: In this video, the song is I'M CONFESSIN', which I have heard done…
TWO TIMES: MATTHEW RIVERA, SCOTT WENZEL, and ME (WKCR-FM) | JAZZ LIVES
Any excuse to play this record is a good thing (Lips Page, Eddie Barefield, Bill Basie, Eddie Durham, Walter Page, Willie McWashington, at the end of the monumental December 13, 1932 Moten date for Victor). The song -- one that relies on the listener's eagerness to assume lewdness -- is by Ben Samberg, who, as…
“SAVE MUSIC, SAVE THE ARCHIVE!” | JAZZ LIVES
I know first-hand how few musicians are paid fairly for their work. This has been true all the way back to the vocal quartet on the corner in New Orleans singing MY BRAZILIAN BEAUTY (DOWN ON THE AMAZON) and forward to the virtuoso pianist I know who used to play three long sets in a…
HOT AND RARE: BILL RIDDLE, DON EWELL, FRANK CHACE, JERRY BLUMBERG, EPHIE RESNICK, MARTY GROSZ (1948-50) | JAZZ LIVES
What follows is a thirty-minute tape from the private collection of Joe Boughton, made available by his family. It is small-band hot music performed in Chicago and Baltimore by some of the greatest practitioners of the art, although some of them are almost completely unknown. These items do not appear in the standard jazz discographies,…
ALWAYS LOOKING FORWARD TO SOMETHING: JOHN SCURRY’S MUSICAL STORIES | JAZZ LIVES
John Scurry has a surfeit of identities, but that causes no problem for any of us. Guitarist, "a left-handed banjo player" with a Red Onion past, composer, painter. All those identities coalesce happily because John is a born teller of stories. A conversation with him is an endearing series of observations, narratives, and thoughtful connections.…
MORE HOT MUSIC FROM NEWCASTLE: BENT PERSSON, THOMAS WINTELER, GRAHAM HUGHES, RICHARD EXALL, DAVID BOEDDINGHAUS, PHIL RUTHERFORD, JACOB ULLBERGER, RICHARD PITE, GUNTER ANDERNACH (Friday, November 5, 2016) | JAZZ LIVES
After the formal presentations concluded at the Whitley Bay Classic Jazz Party on Friday, November 5, 2016, the unbuttoned lively fun began anew in the Victory Pub (of the Village Hotel, Newcastle) and I was there to record the hot music, which continues to gratify and uplift. I've already shared a rousing SHEIK OF ARABY…