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 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

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

by Pico Ken Burns’ epic PBS documentary on jazz spent nearly all its time on the history up to 1960 and little afterwards. The implication was that jazz stopped becoming revolutionary and more evolutionary after Ornette Coleman ushered in the “new thing” at the beginning of the sixties. Thus, thereRead More

As Mac Rebbenack, aka Dr. John the Night Tripper, says: He’s done “whatever I had to do to get the job did.” Over the years, this amounts to a list of jobs including, but not limited to, snot-nosed duck-tailed rocker, record producer, songwriter, way-out psychedelic pop star, reliable recording-session sidemanRead More

by Pico The title A Ride To The Other Side isn’t intended to mean anything deep, but nevertheless the music is a thrill ride to the side of that soulful funky acoustic jazz of the sixties. Trumpet player Derrick Gardner is firmly behind the wheel driving that bus. Derrick Gardner,Read More

by S. Victor Aaron Let’s get this out of the way first: “Do The Hate Laugh Shimmy” is a title that the artist took from an e.e.cummings poem. Don’t ask me what it means (even the artist is not entirely sure), but it’s sounds stylin’ all the same. The stylin’Read More

NICK DERISO: Take some time with this one, which underscores the impressive contributions of a guy who first blew us away backing up with bluesman ZuZu Bollin, later came to fame playing a sideman’s role with Ray Charles, made some bold moves in jazz — then settled into R&B andRead More

NICK DERISO: When Duke Ellington strolled out on stage for this 1958 date, it had been 25 years since he’d previously appeared in Europe. Still, though he was kept away by a war and a drawn-out dispute between the U.S. and Brit’s musicians unions, you could say Ellington had madeRead More