I’ve got a problem but it’s the good kind of problem. There’s a backlog of CD’s sitting on my desk deserving of some shout-outs. So much so, it make take two or more additional “Quickies” to clear off this stack. With just a little time for writing at the momentRead More

NICK DERISO: One of those all-star dates that bridges genres, even generations, “The Trumpet Kings” is an amalgamation of so many concurrent joys that it’s a wonder this Pablo release ever got made. We have out front one Big Joe Turner, a 6-2, 300-something pound Kansas City belter known asRead More

Richard “Blue” Mitchell may not have been the best trumpeter in straight-ahead jazz but he’s among the best who didn’t become a household name. Mitchell didn’t display the the sharp timbre and fanciful trips up and down scales like contemporaries such as Freddie Hubbard or Booker Little. He never developedRead More

Since I enjoy listening to forward-thinking musicians of the NYC jazz scene and have discussed a quite few of them already, it’s perhaps inevitable that I was going to touch on trumpeter/composer Dave Douglas. The introduction of a new Douglas CD gives me the perfect excuse to do that. ToRead More

NICK DERISO: There was a time, and not that long ago, when jazz was the music of this country’s youth — a way to rage against the machine, back when the machines were Desotos and Studebakers. So we have here a fairly novel idea: Using the staid conventions of classicalRead More

The story of one of jazz’s most important pianists continues… Last year brought the reissue of Bill Evans’ second album, the delightful but overlooked Everybody Digs Bill Evans, remastered with updated liner notes from original producer Orrin Keepnews. Last month, Evans’ follow-up album has also been released again as partRead More

Dave Stryker can’t seem to stop releasing CD’s and I can’t seem to stop chatting them up. Already this space has been taken up by reviews of a ten-year-old fusion record and a smokin’ hard-bop 2007 release of a sax-guitar quartet co-led with Steve Slagle. Stryker runs the whole gamutRead More

Ellis Marsalis’ ‘Whistle Stop’ served as an important reminder that New Orleans’ jazz patriarch was still a hat-tipping, oh-so-swinging piano man.

NICK DERISO: Pete Fountain, and this is rare, has remained local. Even now, you can still find this almost-mythical 70-something clarinetist at hometown spots in the New Orleans area, playing native-born favorites. Your garden-variety Marsalis talks about the Crescent City, but can’t be found within a country mile of itRead More

Skip the in-concert patter, and Frank Sinatra’s ‘Sinatra and Sextet: Live in Paris’ was a record that couldn’t help but matter.