by S. Victor Aaron It’s no throwaway phrase to say Shemekia Copeland was raised on the blues; her Dad Johnny Copeland established a proud tradition of quality blues as a singer, songwriter and guitarist and put out a slew of notable records in the 80’s and 90’s until his deathRead More

Philip Bailey should have been a star in his own right. Here’s a guy with a falsetto as divine as Russell Tompkins, Jr.’s, served as co-lead singer of the superstar soul group Earth, Wind and Fire and used star producers to handle his first two solo albums. And yet, allRead More

by Nick DeRiso Snooks Eaglin, who had been battling prostate cancer, shot to prominence on the strength of 1959’s “New Orleans Street Singer,” a record that even today is a revelation. Mostly, because it sounds nothing like Eaglin, who was as modern and as inventive and as non-traditional as theyRead More

Getting the word out on some of more esoteric or little-known artists and their albums is something we love doing here at Something Else, hence the name for our little tea room on the interwebs. “Quickies” is where I’ve yakked up a lot of records by musicians who are notRead More

by Tom Johnson I have been a Titanic junkie since I was a teenager, falling deep under the ship’s spell when Dr. Robert Ballard discovered her battered hull lying on the ocean floor. I built model after model, each increasing in complexity, finally culminating in a large scale reproduction ofRead More

It’s been three whole months since our last “Quickies” and in the meantime, the new releases have been piling up on my desk. They’ll be more Quickies soon after this one to catch up, but for now, we present four, new jazz-oriented offerings from last month and all by veryRead More

This is a whodathunkit moment that nearly went un-thunk. Sarah Vaughan, a singer of dizzying range; and clarinetist Woody Herman (then leader of “The Swingin’est Big Band Ever,” as another 1963 recording trumpeted) were jazz legends, both. But they never released a studio recording together, until these broadcast programs —Read More

Sam “Lightnin'” Hopkins, as always, did it in just one take – with the money upfront.

“It’s funny how perceptive parents can be,” ace drummer Lonnie Wilson tells me. “When I was little, my mother was listening to me practice. I was running into the house, listening to a record, then practicing some more.” Musicians call that kind of near-evangelical practice “wood-shedding.” From these lonely, repetitiveRead More

by Pico Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts doesn’t hail from New Orleans (he’s a native of Pittsburgh), but it seems he enjoys hanging out with guys from there. The Marsalis family—Wynton, Branford and Ellis—have enlisted his services, as well other Big Easy luminaries as Terence Blanchard and Harry Connick, Jr. Watts firstRead More