(left) Erskine Hawkins Orchestra, featuring Avery Parrish (circled) and (right) Boogie Woogie Red Oh, the stuff you can turn up when Google is really humming and clicking. For instance, seventy years ago today, on March 28, 1943, the Erskine Hawkins Orchestra was playing at the Paradise Theater in Detroit. Since Dead Like Jazz is a […]
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 […]
We have no idea why this popped into our consciousness today, but we thought we’d talk a bit about Soupy Sales. For those of you who are baby boomers around 60 years old, you’ll remember him for his daytime kids show on ABC, Lunch with Soupy, or perhaps from his many TV game-show appearances and […]
Detroit-bred trumpeter Donald Byrd, one of the leading figures in 1950’s jazz, and a prominent participant in pop music and academia in the years after that, has died at the age of 80. The Detroit Free Press ran one of the more lengthy obits yesterday. Read it here. In contrast to the esteem in which […]