Jazz Music Blog

Thad Jones's 90th

Moments after I’d posted this morning’s blog touting Chick Webb as the Battle of the Bands champ at the Savoy Ballroom, I spotted some great footage of the Thad Jones-Mel Orchestra under a banner r

Chick Webb: The Savoy King

Chick Webb's early death has tended to obscure the status he enjoyed among his peers during his lifetime.

Ben Webster

Today is Ben Webster’s 104^th birthday anniversary. Webster came to fame with Duke Ellington, but the tenor saxophone was a later addition to Duke’s tonal palette as trumpets, tromb

Marian McPartland's 95th

Below is the blog entry I posted on Marian McPartland a year ago. Today is her 95th birthday, and as this small world would have it, I sat next to Huey, the producer of the McP

Happy St. Patrick's Day 2013

Let's begin today's wearing of the green with Bob Wilber (here under the photo of Louis Armstrong that graces the rear wall of Smalls Jazz Club) and Ehud Asherie performing "Struttin' With Some Bar

Charles Lloyd

Today is Charles Lloyd’s 75^thbirthday. He's celebrating the milestone with a concert at the Metropolitan Museum of Art tonight, and he’ll be at

Dameronia on NPR

I wrote about the new Tadd Dameron biography here on February 21, his 96th birthday anniversary, and featured his music that night in Jazz a la M

George Coleman: Memphis Modes

Today is George Coleman's 78th birthday. We'll hear the Memphis native in tonight's Jazz a la Mode.

Ellington in Zurich

Bill Cosby brought a copy of Duke Ellington at Newport to play before his benefit for New England Public Radio on Saturday night at Symphony Hall in Springfield. It was quite a thril

Anita O'Day Keeps the Doctor Away

The Jazz a la Mode Film Series resumes at Amherst Cinema tonight with an encore presentation of A

Bill Cosby, the Max Roach of Comedy

New England Public Radio will enjoy the good fortune of Bill Cosby's performance at Springfield Symphony Hall on Saturday. The great comedian is appearing in a

Tadd Dameron

Paul Combs dedicates his new biography of Tadd Dameron to four jazz greats who “made [him] promise that [he] would see this project throu

Joe Henderson's Page One

If the expression “auspicious beginning” hadn’t already been coined by 1963, Joe Henderson’s Page One would have inspired it.

Prez-ident's Day

Today is President’s Day, the holiday I like to conflate with Lester Young. I doubt Prez would have made a good president, and we know from his court martial that the U.S.

Robert Johnson Photo Questioned

After writing about this picture a couple of weeks ago, I heard via e-mail and Facebook from se

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