New York City, while always the main mecca of jazz, enjoyed a period of full flower during World War II that will likely never be seen again in any genre or town. Prior to the war, jazz had been an uptown thing, flourishing in small, integrated Harlem clubs, segregated cabarets and black dance palaces like […]
From left to right (above): Sidney Bechet’s soprano sax, Louis Armstrong’s first cornet, Lester Young’s tenor, Roy Eldridge’s trumpet Aficionados of practically anything enjoy the arcane, the ephemeral, the trivial, the obscure and even the bizarre about whatever it is that captures their devotion. Students of “serious” history are no exception. And they certainly don’t […]
Like fans of Kevin Bacon, we’re fascinated by odd relationships, familial and otherwise. Not necessarily the truly strange ones, like the estimate that 8% of all Asians living today are descendants of Genghis Khan. Say what? Apparently, it’s so, but we’re not sure they asked everyone involved for proof. Talk about the wrath of Khan! […]
YouTube, Vimeo and DailyMotion are full of great—if often grainy—videos of jazz. This one looks pretty bad, but trust us: it’s one of the greatest things you’ll ever hear, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the state of jazz as it sat on the cusp of free improvisation in the early 1960’s. This is John Coltrane’s […]