by Nick DeRiso From the South, but not really, Diana Jones sings with an unforgettable, old-time lonesomeness — like a late-arriving featured act at an old Carter Family jubilee. She then expands on the familiar bluegrass vocabulary with a character-driven, literary touch, nowhere to better effect than on the newRead More

by Nick DeRiso  Sammy Kershaw has always come off as a working-man’s country star. It’s no put on. He arrived for a scheduled interview having just finished mowing his own grass, weed eating and all. “I love physical work,” says Kershaw, a Louisiana-born son of a farmer, a former WalRead More

by Nick DeRiso  This is an updated excerpt from a multi-artist piece I had published as part of the statewide Louisiana Folklife Festival’s program book in 1995. Born in 1904, Thomas Edison “Brownie” Ford would travel all over the Deep South — working as a ballad singer, bronc buster, storytellerRead More

“The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album” remains, for me, one of the three or four most engrossing vocal jazz recordings — along with Sinatra’s Jobim collaboration, Ella performing with Satchmo and Nat “King” Cole’s “After Midnight.” But what made the initial Bennett/Evans project, and its follow up — 1976’s “Together Again”Read More

The frontman from ? and the Mysterians once said that voices from the future told him they would still be playing “96 Tears” in the year 10,000. So far, so good.

“Live at Montreux,” which focuses on tunes from Wayne Shorter’s then-new album “High Life,” might have been just another night in a lifetime of concert dates — if not for the former Miles Davis sideman’s still prodigious, almost hypnotic ability on the sax. That, and some bonus cuts from MontreuxRead More

Marcus Roberts has burst back onto the jazz landscape, 11 years after his last session, with “New Orleans Meets Harlem, Vol. 1” – one of the Florida-born pianist’s most celebrated recordings. A rich and explorative combining of styles from across the legacy, Roberts’ record nevertheless retains its uniquely Southern voiceRead More

This is an updated excerpt from a multi-artist piece I had published as part of the statewide Louisiana Folklife Festival’s program book in 1995. Thomas suffered a fatal heart attack later that same year, in his hometown of Shreveport, La., ending a career that spanned seven decades: On his oldRead More

by Nick DeRiso Benny Spellman’s “Fortune Teller,” a witty early-1960s story song, is one of my touchstone party records. Everything about it is perfectly New Orleans, from the pounding piano to this sizzling island-tinged percussion, from a group of yelping, mesmerizingly groovy R&B backup singers to its not one butRead More

by Nick DeRiso  To think, we almost never heard Carmen McRae sing these songs. Even though she was an early acolyte of Billie Holiday, McRae was at first better known as a pianist. (In fact, upon meeting her, Holiday was said to be so impressed that she recorded McRae’s “DreamRead More