For this installment of Quickies, the inaugural releases of a new label dedicated to presenting the music of talented up and coming jazz musicians are highlighted. These musicians are all members of an artist collective, the Brooklyn Jazz Underground, and this spring saw the launching of the collective’s Brooklyn JazzRead More

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 periodRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Last month Al Green released a new album, Lay It Down, which I’d recommend to any fan of pure, old-school soul. Later this month Chicago’s Stone Of Sisyphus, originally record in 1993, will finally be officially released. But twenty years even before that was taped, bothRead More

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 theRead More

by S. Victor Aaron This is one I’ve been eagerly anticipating for a while; I’ve even said as much when I reviewed his last album, Perceptual. The wait finally ended on May 8 with the release of Season Of Changes. In that eight year span, Blade was providing drumming forRead More

NICK DERISO: The second LP by vibesman Milt Jackson on Quincy Jones’ Qwest label made his late-career reemergence complete. Where the earlier “Reverence and Compassion” featured small-group offerings coupled with lush, orchestral pieces, “The Prophet Speaks” — issued just five years before Jackson’s passing — was far bluesier and muchRead More

by S. Victor Aaron With the tragic, unexpected death of Sean Costello, the blues world lost a guy I and others thought was the Next Big Thing in that idiom. The good news is that there are still others out there working hard to put their own stamp on theRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Most of the times that I choose a song for this here “One Track Mind” series is because the song simply sounds good to me. Then I’ll dive into my spiel as to why it does. Today’s OTM has it’s own intrinsic virtues, too, but itRead More

by Pico One in a while, you come across a musician who so effectively cobbles together a wide range of styles so effortlessly you swear you’ve heard it somewhere before…but you can’t quite put a finger on it. New York City born and bred troubadour K.J. Denhert is one ofRead More

NICK DERISO: The most interesting thing about this soundtrack recording from the Beatle-based movie “BackBeat” was that it didn’t include, you know, any Beatles music. Was — co-leader of the now-forgotten 1980s rock group Was (Not Was), but more famous by then as the producer who gave Bonnie Raitt’s careerRead More