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 […]
Jimmy Forrest
The
Count Basie introduces Jimmy Forrest as “my man” in this rare footage of the saxophonist from a 1974 concert filmed in Poland.
Nat Hentoff, 1925-2017, R.I.P.
Nat Hentoff, a restless, uncompromising paragon of modern, independent journalism, died on January 7, 2017, in New York at the age of 91. His family […]
Dizzy Reece
Happy 85th Birthday
Dizzy Reece‘s 85th birthday was yesterday. Alphonso Son Reece was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on January 5, 1931, and after attending a school renowned for […]
Frank Wess In the Tradition
Wess may have been the last saxophonist in the Count’s realm to have had a direct link to Lester Young, and to the glorious tenor tradition of the Swing Era.
2016: Favorites in Words and Music
Season’s Greetings! As your dutiful host of Jazz à la Mode, I maintain a fairly breathless pace keeping up with the great music that continues to issue from the jazz world. Here are 45 albums that stood out along the way in 2016.