Sometimes a record doesn’t smack you across the head on the first listen but at some point…maybe that 3rd or 4th listen…it hits you: “Damn! This is some well made, well played music!” That’s how it was with me for Joel Frahm’s new release, We Used To Dance. Frahm isn’tRead More

The concert had been over for hours, forever. But B.B. King was just getting started.

NICK DERISO: The story goes: Someone asked Fats Waller what jazz is. His reply? “If you don’t know, don’t mess with it.” Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown messed with it on “Just Got Lucky,” and with fine results. In fact, it seemed his string-bending solos found themselves most at home in theRead More

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS — Musicians in white shirts and black pants led a hearse carrying the body of clarinetist Alvin Batiste through the streets of New Orleans on Saturday, and hundreds of mourners attached themselves to the jazz funeral honoring one of the city’s most revered musicians. In the morning,Read More

Next to Sly and the Family Stone and James Brown there might not be another act as influential to funk music than P-Funk, the shorthand name for George Clinton’s twin ensembles Parliament (horns) and Funkadelic (no horns). In fact, they were cited in my last OTM as an influence toRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Since the mid-sixties, jazz musicians have sought to combine electronic instruments with jazz to create something new and fresh sounding. The most obvious result of this mix is called fusion, but others have managed to do it taking different approaches that uses these instruments to actuallyRead More

NICK DERISO: Dug up from some old dusty box in brother Ira’s attic, this scratchy, other-worldly epiphany issued by BMG is remarkable for its ethereal emotion, ageless grace and surprising reliance on (gasp!) commercialism to push art. The first 12 tracks are acetates from “Music by Gershwin,” 15-minute radio programsRead More

NICK DERISO: A trip through the Mississippi Delta this week had me thinking about the old Rooster Blues Records label. Located from 1988-98 inside the Delta Record Mart on Sunflower Avenue in Clarksdale, Rooser Blues releases can still be found in a riverboat-shaped downtown building called Dela’s Stackhouse. “Coahoma theRead More

NICK DERISO: This release came in the wake of an ambitious year that saw Connick issue both a big-band swing record and a three-piece jumping jazz record without vocals. Not only do I not have to tell you which one sold, I don’t have to tell you which style HarryRead More

photo: Genevieve Ruocco Of all the rock or fusion guitarists out there, there’s none out there who possesses the most pleasing tone, amazing technique and exceptional phrasing all wrapped up into one than the Brit Allan Holdsworth. He’s is a guitarist’s guitarist, having influenced everyone from Eddie Van Halen toRead More