NICK DERISO: Art Blakey demanded bravado from his bands, and this one was perhaps his most intense and adventurous. Debuting here on Riverside, “Caravan” opens with Blakey’s audacious drum solo — then moves quickly into an assertive and simply awe-inspiring take on a track once defined by Duke Ellington. ARead More

NICK DERISO: Cuban sensation Gonzalo Rubalcaba entered the U.S. not yet a legend, but discovered by one, Dizzy Gillespie. Rubalcaba (very Corea, but with some Hancock mixed in) made a splashy debut on both the Blue Note and Messidor labels in the early 1990s — reinvigorating the Afro-Cuban jazz movement.Read More

The ongoing summer reunion tour by the Police — which included last night’s appearance as part of the Live Earth concerts — got me to thinking about Sting’s solo stuff, an often too-precious group of records that has nevertheless had its undeniable moments of transcendent beauty. You want to likeRead More

NICK DERISO: One of the first R&B hits for Shreveport-based Jewel-Paula Records founder Stan Lewis was by that juke-jointy legend Frank Frost. A take-off the Slim Harpo song “Baby Scratch My Back,” it was finally collected on CD as part of the rollicking “Jelly Roll Blues” in 1991 — andRead More

NICK DERISO: Skid past the first few tracks — an overcooked original, then a couple of snoozers that are just too obvious in their modern cliche — and Dave Kikoski began to live up to his producer’s persistent tips of the hat. That would be Steely Dan guitarist Walter Becker,Read More

James McMurtry, we know now, had only just begun making steel-toe tapping records that take a while to sink in.

Tony Joe White is one of us, pure and simple. Earthy and plain-spoken. Southern and proud. With all the contradictions.

Ed Williams, a good-time throwback, is as much bluesman and blue blood — his uncle and musical mentor was the great slide guitarist J.B. Hutto — so it’s certainly no surprise that he strikes a determined retro stance on “Rattleshake.” What’s cool is that he keeps pulling it off. MatureRead More

Tony Soprano tucked into a booth at a New Jersey diner, one of those old-time places with a selection of jukebox tunes right at the table. He considered, briefly, something by Tony Bennett, then went with Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin,’” and the final, controversial, moments of HBO’s “The Sopranos” —Read More

NICK DERISO: From the trembling strains of the first harpsichord notes here, to the rappy backbeat that follows, to the bubbling funk from later on, to the hard jazz moving through this album after that, it’s clear … Bernie Worrell — the original keyboardist with Parliament-Funkadelic— is crazy. But inRead More