(left to right) Jerry Goodman, Stuff Smith, Regina Carter (continued from part 2) Jean-Luc Ponty, like Stephane Grappelli before him, was something of a teen prodigy among French violinists. As early as 1960, Ponty was wowing his countrymen with his biting, complex, hard bop lines, and by the late 1960’s, he had garnered international attention. […]
The video here features Stuff Smith’s extroverted violin with Kenny Drew’s trio, filmed at the Club Montmarte in Copenhagen in 1965. Hearing Smith in typically fine form here reminded us of the rarity of great jazz fiddlers. Not only have they worked the peripheries of jazz since its inception, they almost exist in spite of […]
The scene inside Ernest Tubb’s Record Shop, on Broadway in downtown Nashville. At any given moment, you’ll find local musicians jamming or pitching their latest tunes on a stage at the back of the store. Dead Like Jazz has no designs on competing with Frommer’s, Lonely Planet or even Trip Advisor when it comes to […]
Every time we hear Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion on National Public Radio, we get a giggle out of his longtime “sponsor”, Powdermilk Biscuits. Utilizing a Powdermilk jingle that changes a bit every week, and which often contains all manner of musical quotes, inside jokes and oddball references, Keillor’s fine on-air band and guests […]
Well, perhaps not exactly. But John Travolta did star in a particularly bad 1980 movie called “Urban Cowboy” (a follow-up to his bigger, and less-maligned, music picture, “Saturday Night Fever”), which effectively marks the closest thing we can isolate as an exact time of death for genuine country music in America. And, as everyone knows […]