Dec 31, 2014
To all who are traveling on an evening that often becomes "amateur night" take extra care and pick that designated driver!
A perennial favorite song for New Year's Eve, and the Offical SNC Song of the evening is Frank Loesser's classic, "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?" Written in 1947, when Loesser was already an...
Dec 29, 2014
2014 was a very difficult year for the jazz community, as a number of its leading lights passed on to what a friend of mine would call the “Celestial Band”. In the ten plus years I have been blogging, I do not recall a year when we lost the likes of Charlie Haden (bass), Horace Silver (piano), Jim Hall (guitar),...
Dec 25, 2014
Merry Christmas to you all. I am a practicing Jew who does not celebrate Christmas as the birth of the messiah. However, I can appreciate the universal themes of peace, love and understanding that are prevelant this time of year, and so the Offical Straight No Chaser song of Christmas Day is "Peace", written by Horace...
Dec 24, 2014
It's December 24, which means that once again it's time to break out the Official Straight No Chaser Song of Christmas Eve. It's not really a song, actually, but Louis Armstrong reciting "Twas the Night Before Christmas", in his inimitable raspy voice.
Recorded on February 26, 1971 at his home in Queens, New York, this...
Dec 24, 2014
Wayne Shorter had only recently been drafted into Miles Davis’ Quintet when he entered Rudy Van Gelder’s studios in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Shorter had already released five albums under his own name, and had been a leader during the previous five years with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.
The sessions...