James Dapogny at Jazz at Chautauqua, September 2014. Photograph by Michael Steinman. Subscribe Any session with Professor James Dapogny was special and needs to be preserved. In this case, he’s nearly hidden behind the piano, but his sound and swinging energy are vividly present. This music took place at the jam-session-before-the-festival on Thursday night, the festival being the Cleveland Classic Jazz Party, the successor to Jazz at Chautauqua. I have the happiest memories of those weekends, where musicians and civilians mingled at meals and at the open bar and sheet music table, where the ..read more

Subscribe This is news. Nancy Harrow in the recording studio. Nancy Harrow is not only one of our finest, most honest singers. She is also a composer, dramatist, a visionary blessed with an expansive imagination. But she is also a realist, someone who not only observes but sees deeply into the heart of things as they are. I have the honor of knowing her, of conversing with her, of hearing her sing. But it still came as the most delightful shock when I saw this email from her this morning, “Last week I recorded a new song I had just written and I wanted to send it to you to see what you thi ..read more

Subscribe It was even more gratifying than we had any right to expect: the inventive swinging orchestra these four unaffected musicians created, song after song; the friendly camaraderie the music inspired in the room; the reassuring creativity; the sweet musical surprises; the refreshing humility and delightful versatility. All of this in the space of a Sunday afternoon. Here‘s some evidence already shared (if you missed my recent post with Bette Davis adding her own music). The band. Danny Tobias, trumpet, flugelhorn, Eb alto horn; Vince Giordano, bass saxophone, tuba, aluminum double ba ..read more

Subscribe Without further ado: three location recordings of Jimmy Rushing with Donald Lambert at the piano, recorded some time in the late Fifties or early Sixties at Wallace’s Tavern. We don’t know much more than that. Wallace may have been the recordist, and the late Peter Ballance (trombonist at Arthur’s Tavern with the Grove Street Stompers for years and a friend of Lambert’s) may have been the catalyst. The pianist and scholar Sterling J. Mosher III just posted these on YouTube, and they are frankly miraculous. The recording microphone was closer to the piano than to Jimmy, but the pia ..read more

Subscribe I checked my phone this morning at breakfast, as one does (I can remember life pre-smartphone, but that’s an Andy Rooney essay) and saw that the soulful Ali Affleck had shared a performance of UNTIL THE REAL THING COMES ALONG with the Rhythm Rascals, who were Lucas Ferrari, piano; Jacob Ullberger, guitar and banjo; Roy Percy, double bass; Andy Schumm, clarinet and cornet. I didn’t inspect the personnel and just played the video through the phone next to my breakfast. What soulful passionate intensity! No gimmicks, no trickery, just a deep message aimed right at us. And when it was ..read more

Subscribe Trombonist Vic Dickenson had feelings. Make that FEELINGS. Writers who didn’t entirely get him heard him as a double-entendre humorist, someone telling naughty stories through brass, those of us who heard him truly understood his emotions. And they came through fervently on his choice of a solo feature, Ellington’s IN A SENTIMENTAL MOOD. Vic wasn’t chatty with people outside his circle, so he never explained his choice in print, but whenever he played it, he showed his heart. A word about “features.” In the world of small-band swing that Vic found himself from1941 on, much of the ..read more

The band. Danny Tobias, trumpet, flugelhorn, Eb alto horn; Vince Giordano, bass saxophone, tuba, aluminum double bass, tenor guitar, vocal; Randy Reinhart, trombone, euphonium; Arnt Arntzen, banjo, guitar; vocal. The place Brith Sholom, 1900 West Macada Road, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Thanks to the Pennsylvania Jazz Society! and Here’s a hot tune from early in the concert: the tale of a chimney sweeper who enjoys every moment of his opium dreams and “cries for more.” © 1927 Melrose Music NYC Illustration : N.E. Kassel and here’s Sunday’s delicious hot rendition: If that weren’t enough, here ..read more

Subscribe When Duke Robillard puts his guitar down and steps forward to the microphone, the music continues to pour through him. And we are glad. Here’s a particularly touching instance of that: Duke’s vocal performance of WEE BABY BLUES, in honor of the monumental Big Joe Turner. Duke performed it at the Redwood Coast Music Festival, October 8, 2023. Providing noble assistance are Carl Sonny Leyland, keyboard; Josh Collazo, drums; Samuel Wolfe Rocha, double bass; Marc Caparone, trumpet; Mando Dorame, tenor saxophone. And the shades of Abe Bolar, A.G.Godley, Pete Johnson, Don Byas, Hot Lips ..read more

Subscribe It’s reassuring to know that musical treasures are out there, waiting to be discovered. And the man to discover them is our own Fat Cat, Matthew Rivera of The Hot Club of New York, someone I admire: see him in action at the Louis Armstrong Center on March 22, here. Matthew in the wild and more sedately. (And the record is WHO? by Frank Newton; details matter.) and Very recently, Matthew found a set of Recordio 78 discs — “home recordings,” we might call them, of a searing hot band led by altoist James Ostend “Pete” Brown, in 1941. Pete is one of our heroes: he recorded a good de ..read more

Subscribe There’s never been an episode of LAW AND ORDER that uses this 1935 tune by Sam M. Lewis (lyrics) and Pete Wendling, but we’re waiting. As Valerie says, it was done by Red McKenzie, and in our time, by Marty Grosz. While doing online research on it a few years ago, I was shocked, but in a good way, to find that it had become part of a video-game soundtrack. Why and how remains mysterious, but I dream of a generation growing up as Red McKenzie fans, no, addicts. Worse things have happened. Valerie Jo Kirchhoff, “Miss Jubilee,” and her band, “The Yas Yas Boys,” performed this song at ..read more