Like Ahmad Jamal, Cecil Taylor and Paul Bley, Ramsey Lewis is a jazz pianist who first emerged in the 1950s and is still with us today. Unlike those other cats, though, Lewis was never accused of challenging the existing conventions of jazz. With crossover hits like “The In Crowd” andRead More

NICK DERISO: Recorded live at Montreal’s Rising Sun Club in January 1977, and later reissued by Just a Memory Records in ’99, “Hoochie Coochie Man” stands as one of the last testaments to the Gospel of Muddy. He was the bridge between country and city cool, an urban griot withRead More

NICK DERISO: With reggae, the song’s meaning isn’t always the point. More often, it’s the grooving from side to side. That was largely the case with Jamaican-born Leroy Shakespeare, whose Metroplex-based band made a bar-band legend by incessantly crisscrossing the South from 1988-2001. This recently reformed group was notably votedRead More

It must be tough to make a name for yourself as the little brother of such a towering figure in jazz as alto sax great Julian ‘Cannonball’ Adderley. Nat Adderley never did quite reach the legend status that his elder sibling did, but did manage to gain acclaim as aRead More

NICK DERISO: You would call Johnny J.’s stuff rockabilly, but that’s too small of a space. He’s got some blues in one corner, some echoey 1950s-era balladry in another. Carl Perkins, Fats Domino and Buddy Holly are party guests. This is the point where blues, jazz, country and rhythm musicRead More

Back in, oh, October of last year I got a wild hair and raved on a free form electrified cello performance by that late, lamented demon of the bowed bass, Tom Cora. The name of the stringed stream of conscienceness was called “Halleluhjah Anyway.” Back then, I made mention ofRead More

The title of this Chicago song, named after a Greek character who eternally pushes a rock up hill only to have it roll back down, is sadly ironic.

They are, these odds and ends, the last great treasure left by one Sam Maghett — better known as Magic Sam. This god of the tremolo embodied (just as fully, but with far less fanfare) the same gritty and adventurous West Side Chicago swagger more commonly associated with Buddy GuyRead More

by Mark Saleski I love to collect books about writing. Old ones, new ones. Books about technique, books about process. My favorite among these is the writing memoir. An older example of this might be Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. More recently, there’s been Steven King’s On Writing. At the topRead More

NICK DERISO: Finding an impressive record by Lionel Hampton, known for both his harmonic and rhythmic sophistication, is easy. Finding one that delights as much as its intrigues anymore, however, is rare. His legacy, now more than ever, is secure: Born in Louisville, Ky., in 1908, Hamp would record hundredsRead More