NICK DERISO: You see the name “Sonnier,” you think Cajun. And you’re almost right. Sure, Jon Yudkin played fiddle on Kip Sonnier’s “Truth or a Lie.” Steve Duhon was on accordian. And, yeah, Sonnier is a Louisiana native. Even so, Bobby Terry could be found on pedal steel. And that gave this fun release on the independent Belkin Records label [...]

NICK DERISO: You’ll the find the best of this underappreciated, high-style Mississippi blues pianist on 1950s-era Trumpet Records reissues put out beginning in 1989 by Chicago’s Alligator Records. Run out of a Jackson, Miss., record store, Lillian Shedd McMurry’s locally legendary Trumpet label caught several blues greats just before their moment — including Sonny Boy Williamson II. Love is the [...]

NICK DERISO: Pianist Les McCann is something like a lesser Horace Silver — somebody with a soulful, bluesy delivery who often strayed a step too far into pop. This release showed why: Despite its many joys, a fat electric bass gave the CD an unwanted fusion-y feel — in particular, on the otherwise pleasant “Shambala” and the unfortunately named “New [...]

NICK DERISO: Paul McCartney, still stung by the loss of his wife, was feeling nostalgic in 1999. But instead of rehashing the obvious successes he’d had with the Beatles or Wings, he traveled further back – all the way to the music that first sparked something inside the hearts of a young John Lennon and Paul McCartney: The records of [...]

NICK DERISO: This Smithsonian Folkways release, issued today, is a hot-dawg compilation that sets up both as primer for the new-to-this and reminder for the been-there-done-that crowd. A remarkably deep catalogue has helped the label continue for years with a series of myth-confirming sets. “Classic Piano Blues” is no different, featuring everything from Meade “Lux” Lewis to Champion Jack Dupree, [...]

“Trio Brubeck,” though not the first time that Dad Dave had collaborated with the kids, had the randy feel of a whole new direction for the legendary pianist. Following the 1970s recording “Two Generations of Brubeck,” and the more recent “Quiet as the Moon” with son Darius (also on MusicMasters), Brubeck sat down with other sons Chris and Dan for [...]

Editor’s note: This column ran as part of an obituary package on the national Gannett News Service wire upon Cab Calloway’s passing in 1994. by Nick DeRiso Between the tombstones of the two World Wars, there emerged the knock-down joys of swing music. Perhaps no single figure from the period was more affable, or more famous, than was Cab Calloway. [...]

“Sorcerer” would find Miles Davis letting go of the wheel. That willingness to experiment girded listeners for the coming journey between the more traditional approach Davis was then rapidly abandoning and an aggressive ingenuity which would soon become closely associated with this, his “second great group.” By ’67, all of the names so familiar from the early Miles myth had [...]

Manu Dibango has a perfectly balanced feel for both the lithe American jazz form but also the murkier pleasures of traditional African music. What’s almost criminal is that he couldn’t elicit a second glance on your average U.S. sidewalk. That, despite the fact that Dibango, 60 at the time of this recording, scored his first international hit in 1972, the [...]

NICK DERISO: Starting her career with a winning performance at a Paradise Theater amateur contest in her native Detroit, Betty Carter first came to a large number of ears as a vocalist with Lionel Hampton’s group in the late 1940s. (Hamp, in fact, is the one who gave her the early nickname Betty Bebop.) Later, she partnered with Ray Charles [...]