“Am I Blue” is a largely forgotten argument for Ray Charles’ striking ability to synthesize jazz, blues, country and gospel into music with a broader appeal. That’s saying something, considering that it appears on The Genius of Ray Charles, a half-big band/half-strings Atlantic release that became one of his mostRead More

Photo from Gary Sellers’ website by Nick DeRiso Blues guitarist Gary Sellers has a depth of passion, and a delicate touch at melding styles, that belies his youth. Whatever grade he’s in, though, Sellers has done his homework. Listening to his new recording Soul Apparatus, you hear Gregg Allman inRead More

Photo by Mark Seliger by Nick DeRiso “The Afterlife,” featured on Paul Simon’s forthcoming album So Beautiful or So What, is pulsing and sinewy — almost like a lost track from Graceland. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. See, Simon has said the premise of this new recording wasRead More

Photo from Gregg Rolie’s website by Nick DeRiso Gregg Rolie, a founding member of Santana and then Journey, is probably best remembered as this tiny speck playing keyboards in a sold-out arena. That makes the deeply introspective new EP Five Days, recorded live with just piano and vocals, an unexpectedRead More

by Mark Saleski In the past handful of years, I have jettisoned a few distractions: namely, sports and television, which are sort of related. Rounding out the list is politics. I have decided that, because my thoughts on “the right thing to do” are so far outside of the mainstream,Read More

by S. Victor Aaron A marimba, a vibraphone, a stand-up bass, percussion and a little kora. A little bit of American jazz, a dash of Caribbean and a side of African folk music, but not quite like any of the three. How sweet the sound. That’s the kind of soundRead More

A Fragile Tomorrow builds out from the country-rock synthesis of pathfinders like the Band and the Byrds – but there’s something else here.

by Nick DeRiso Though not the hoped-for third-act triumph, Ella and Oscar still has its enduring charms. See, Oscar Peterson, a hard-banging piano genius as bluesy as he was inventive, should have made the perfect foil for Ella Fitzgerald on this stripped-down date, set for reissue on March 15 byRead More

photo from philadelphiaweekly.com by S. Victor Aaron One of Frank Zappa’s latter day live documents is called Make A Jazz Noise Here. Anyone who’s followed Zappa knows that while Zappa rarely really played jazz as we tend to think of jazz, a lot of his music adopted the exacting, open-endedRead More

by Mark Saleski In the recent Southern Music issue of the Oxford American, musician John Engle speaks of “The Vastness,” the idea that the world’s store of knowledge is so vast that “if you tried to take it all on at once it would crush you.” It’s true. And thereRead More