Illness notwithstanding, I ventured out into the bitter cold of Saturday night for the second half of the Easthampton Jazz Festival’s nighttime lineup with the […]

“Finesse” earned Stewart the French Grand Prix for the best composition of 1939, and Gunther Schuller considers it “the most remarkable in its effect…Four simple guitar chords…

Alas, the Worcester-born pianist Barbara Carroll has died at age 92. My Worcester-born mother told me about her the first time I mentioned jazz, for […]

As for fame, Wardell Gray, who composed “Twisted” and was depicted as an iconic jazzman in Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, was a brilliant, in-demand saxophonist, influenced by Lester Young and the new direction that jazz was taking in the mid-forties.  He worked for a Who’s Who of bandleaders including Earl Hines, Benny Carter, Billy Eckstine, Benny Goodman, and Count Basie, and with such trailblazing colleagues as Charlie Parker and Dexter Gordon. 

Stan Getz died twenty-six years ago on June 6, 1991. Jazz à la Mode was a ninety-minute show back then, and I spent several nights […]

Count Basie introduces Jimmy Forrest as “my man” in this rare footage of the saxophonist from a 1974 concert filmed in Poland.