Sep 29, 2012
This is the 300th podcast for my show! It hardly seems possible that when I started eight years ago I would have this much to show for it, and over 1.1 million downloads from around the world.
To celebrate, I thought I would take a moment to examine the song from which the blog takes its title - "Straight, No Chaser"...
Sep 27, 2012
Paste magazine tends to deal with alternative rock music, but from time to time they come through with an interesting jazz posting. To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the passing of the great bass player Jaco Pastorius, they gathered six bass players to talk about his legacy.
Click here for a read, as six bass...
Sep 26, 2012
It's a question that jazz fans had to ponder. Why did the venerable Duke Ellington decide to record a session with John "Sheets of Sound" Coltrane? Fifty years ago to day they met at Rudy Van Gelder Studios, in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, to record tracks that would become an Impulse! Records releae early the next year.
The...
Sep 23, 2012
September 23 marks the anniversary of the birth of John William Coltrane in Hamlet, North Carolina. His impact on the world of jazz is still being felt three quarters of a century later.
One of the more unusal aspects of Coltrane's legacy is the founding of the St.John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in San Francisco....
Sep 21, 2012
Is “Stretch Music” is the new Next Big Thing in Jazz, and perhaps music in general? I had discussions about the music released recently by Robert Glasper and Christian Scott with several writers covering the Detroit International Jazz Festival earlier this month, and they all felt that a number of jazz musicians...