by Nick DeRiso More musical journey than greatest hits, per se, “Let It Roll” is a primer on George Harrison for those who never got past his time with Beatles — and yet a still-intriguing way to reexperience some of his best solo cuts for those who followed along afterRead More

Crosby, Stills & Nash hadn’t produced a new studio record in fifteen years (or ten, if you add Neil Young), but there hadn’t been a more active period of release activity of new/previously unheard material by these three than there have in the last few years. David Crosby and GrahamRead 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

NICK DERISO: Recorded live at the club Memory Lane in Los Angeles over a two-night stand on May 25-26, 1967, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie’s five-track “Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac” is sometimes criticized for its brevity. Sure. There have been boxed sets produced with slighter source material. Still, Gillespie, in particular onRead 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

A rakish character, to be sure, Sonny Boy Williamson II wore a bowler hat and custom-made two-tone three-piece suit, often regaled the crowds with a hands-free harp solo, even took the name of a once-more famous predecessor in order to jump start his career. Williamson, then, was the perfect AmericaRead More

Jazz just lost an all-world trumpeter. Indianapolis’ Frederick Dewayne Hubbard — who died Monday morning from complications following a heart attack a month earlier at age 70 — may not have shaped jazz as the great trumpet men before him like Armstrong, Gillespie and Davis did, but his mastery ofRead More

by Nick DeRiso “Come Together,” a concert first envisioned as a benefit to raise anti-violence awareness through the work of John Lennon, was scheduled to be held on Oct. 2, 2001, at New York City’s famed Radio City Music Hall. Then came Sept. 11. This rangy event, featuring recorded snippetsRead More

Paul Bley’s sixty year career has been primarily one where he’s worked with some of the biggest names in the vanguard of jazz in the quest for experimentation and many times he’s marched to the beat of his own drummer. For a good part of that career, it was alsoRead More