February 2012
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The Atlantic Cities: The [KC] Jazz District... →
Very interesting look at the modern state of the historic 18th & Vine Jazz District in Kansas City, Missouri, the launching place for such jazz greats as Bennie Moten, Count Basie, Andy Kirk, Joe Turner, and my personal favorite swinging jazz sound.
Take a walk in the Historic 18th & Vine Jazz District in Kansas City, Missouri, and you’ll see some of the storefronts of that bygone ...
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WatchWatch Jazz Legend Cab Calloway Remembers the Music Clubs of Harlem on PBS. See more from Metrofocus.
NPR’s A Blog Supreme lets us know about the upcoming PBS documentary on Cab Calloway as part of their wonderful American Masters series. It hasn’t been announced but I’m assuming it will be available to view after it’s Monday (Sunday in NYC) airdate on the awesome PBS app...
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January 2012
8 posts
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Retronaut: Jazz in Times Square, July 1947 →
I’ve seen some of these floating around in the past, but a couple of these shots by William Gottlieb featured by How to be a Retronaut from the Library of Congress collection were new to me this time.
Check out the Art Hodes River Boat Jazz Band (Kaiser Marshall, Art Hodes, Sandy Williams, Cecil (Xavier) Scott, and Henry (Clay) Goodwin) as they swing Times Square in a horse-drawn carriage...
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Yehoodi: The Musical Legacy of George Reed (Part... →
My good friend and DJ inspiration Mike Thibault adds to the growing pool of original content on Yehoodi with this great piece on the late, great drummer, George Reed. He mentions discovering the great band that we both used to see starting out dancing at the same time in Rochester in the late 90’s.
As a green and eager young Lindy Hopper way back in 1998, I would do just about anything to...
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Guess What Photo is One Of LIFE Magazine Editors'... →
Over the past three years, the staff at LIFE.com has pored over tens of thousands of extraordinary LIFE pictures — including some of the most celebrated photographs ever made. Here, in an exercise that proved thrilling, humbling, satisfying, and exasperating all at once, each staffer selected five all-time favorites. Could we have expanded the list to 10, or 20, or 50 favorites? In a...
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NYE2012: Wynton Marsalis Group: Live In Concert →
NPR aired an amazing concert on New Year’s Eve with Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Wynton Marsalis and an all-star lineup paying tribute to two jazz pioneers. I can think of no better way to swing into 2012 than with this 90-minute concert, now available to stream online thanks to WBGO.
[NPR] January 1, 2012 - The trumpeter leads a Jazz at Lincoln Center band in the music of Jelly Roll...
December 2011
12 posts
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Wandering & Pondering's Lindy Blogging Highlights... →
As always, W&P redefines the word “thorough” by compiling a great list of the best of folks that wrote, shot, and posted about Lindy Hop online in the past year.
Thanks for the mention, Jerry! For my money, Wandering & Pondering is the most consistently insightful and thought-provoking Lindy blog around.
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NYT: Gotta Dance? Swing On Over →
Today the NYTimes published a great writeup about swing dancing in NYC, and heavily featured Yehoodi.com’s Frim Fram Jam, which you probably know I help run.
THERE are swinging parties in Manhattan nearly ever night. The trick is in knowing where to find them.
Take a recent Thursday: Sandwiched between a Blarney Stone and a liquor shop on Eighth Avenue just south of Penn Station and up...
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Last minute update: I'm DJing at Fram tonight! →
Fates aligned for a Festivus miracle, and I made it back to NYC a day early! This allows us to return to the originally announced DJ schedule for December, with me DJing tonight at Frim Fram! See you there!
Be sure to “Like” Fram on Facebook and/or follow @FramDJ on Twitter to keep up-to-date on the latest happenings at Fram.
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MIT builds camera that can capture at the speed of... →
Imaging Science. What.
via Engadget:
A team from the MIT media lab has created a camera with a “shutter speed” of one trillion exposures per second — enabling it to record light itself traveling from one point to another. Using a heavily modified Streak Tube (which is normally used to intensify photons into electron streams), the team could snap a single image of a laser as...
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Free Swinging Holiday Music from George Gee! →
If you’re still looking to get into the holiday spirit, band leader extraordinaire George Gee informs us that he’s made 3 holiday songs from The George Gee Swing Orchestra FREE to download via Reverb Nation! Jingle your bells and head on over for the free tunes.
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NYT: An Aging Jazz Pianist Finds A New Audience →
For years, the donated piano sat upright and unused in a corner of the nursing home’s cafeteria. Now and then someone would wheel or wobble over to pound out broken notes on the broken keys, but those out-of-tune interludes were rare. Day after surrendering day, the flawed piano remained mercifully silent.
Then came a new resident, a musician in his 80s with a touch of forgetfulness named...
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November 2011
8 posts
Jazz24 & NPR's Jazz All-Time Top 100 →
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NPR Take Five: Willie 'The Lion' Smith, Stride... →
Wilie “The Lion” Smith is a terribly overlooked genius and one of the most influential pianists in jazz history. NPR’s A Blog Supreme does its part to remedy that:
The life of stride pianist Willie “The Lion” Smith was the stuff of legend, but unfortunately, some of that legend seems to have come from Smith’s own imagination. For example, Smith always ...
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ad liminem: Your DJs aren’t doing this for the... →
(via Wandering & Pondering)
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NYT: Louis Armstrong Museum Gains Photos, 78s, and... →
78s, Photos, Even Sweat From Brow of a Legend
Another fragment of Louis Armstrong’s legacy is back where it belongs.
The Armstrong museum and archive in Queens has received a treasure-trove of rare 78-r.p.m. records, bootleg tapes, five personal letters, candid photographs, European posters, news clippings, discographies, even weight-loss tips — 192 cubic feet in all — from the estate of a...
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Audio Slideshow: Yiddish in Jazz →
Yiddish - a language once spoken by more than 10 million Jews - had a profound effect on American culture in the first half of the 20th Century.
It originated in central and eastern Europe - and spread to the United States when thousand of immigrants arrived in New York.
Zalmen Mlotek is the Artistic Director of the city’s last surviving professional Yiddish theatre - the Folksbiene.
With...
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October 2011
10 posts
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Compilation of soulful, R&B, and rocking gospel,... →
via BoingBoing:
“This May Be My Last Time Singing” is a rousing collection of African-American gospel from the latter half of the last century. Interestingly, the tracks were compiled from 45s, many of which were pressed in very small runs for the congregations where the music was recorded. The curator, Mike McGonigal — of whose musical/editorial vision you might be...
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Gigs: Tonight I'm DJing the dance and contest at... →
Lindy Hop Thursdays!
DJs Larry Kang and Ryan Swift!
Bring a partner and enter our free strictly contest judged by Dave Graybill, Laura Jeffers and last year’s winners Elaine Silver and Adam Lee!
10 pm: tap-out prelims 11pm: Finals
Top prize: Free admission to Fram for one full year! Runner-up wins a pair of shoes from Dancestore.com!
Drink, lounge, be merry and best of all:...
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Interview: Buster Smith via Nathaniel C. Standifer... →
Transcription of an amazing video interview with Buster Smith by James Standifer. It’s part of the Black American Musicians section of the Video Archive of Oral History in the University of Michigan’s African-American Music Collection. Many, many more interviews at the link.
This collection was begun in 1968, and it contains approximately 150 videotaped interviews. It...
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NPR: Five Titans of Texas Tenor Sax →
When jazz fans talk about the Texas Tenor saxophone sound, they’re talking about a sound which is very robust, sometimes raw, and which mixes the musical vocabularies of swing, bebop, blues and R&B. It’s that honking, bar-walking saxophone sound that used to blast from jukeboxes coast-to-coast. Here are five examples of that sound from saxophonists who hail (and wail) from...
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Watch Count Basie Block Party - Watch more Music Videos at Vodpod.
Count Basie’s Block Party - Anyone seen a long version of this clip?
September 2011
9 posts
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NPR: Five Jazz Sides for the Age of Prohibition →
Five great tracks about taboo booze from A Blog Supreme:
It’s easy to romanticize or oversimplify the relationship between jazz and Prohibition, but the banning of alcohol and the subsequent rise of speakeasies clearly played a role in the music’s evolution during its early days. Jazz musicians found ample employment opportunities in the numerous new nightclubs, formed...
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NPR: Evolution Of A Song: 'St. Louis Blues' →
W.C. Handy, known as the “Father of the Blues,” didn’t exactly invent the blues, as his nickname might imply. Instead, this savvy African-American songwriter and publisher tapped into the soul of his people and took their rustic sound — a combination of work songs, field hollers and spirituals — and shared it with the rest of the world. He popularized The Blues.
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Phil Schaap Jazz: Schaap Shop Jazz Memorabilia →
Phil Schaap Jazz is an attempt to consolidate a lifetime’s worth of knowledge and passion into a single website where jazz lovers can read, listen, shop, and enrich their understanding of America’s most important music.
The site itself is divided into 2 sections: Schaap Shop Jazz memorabilia and Schaap radio archives. The shop is currently stocked with unique items and Schaap...
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