There is a whole lot of fun, but also a riveting intensity about “When the Saints Go Marching In,” this touchstone for everything that made Louis Armstrong.

by Pico Since the New Orleans Saints is the Official™ NFL Team of Something Else, we were most bummed about the end of the team’s incredible winning streak last Saturday in the ‘Dome at the hands of the Dallas Cowboys. But we still remain hopeful that our boys in theRead More

December 17, 2008. That’s the last time a non-jazz record has appeared on a Quickies column. In the intervening half-year there’s been so many fresh non-jazz records that merits at least a few paragraphs, and sometimes the full fledged reviews can’t adequately cover ’em all. So guess what…it’s a QuickiesRead More

A tucked-away treasure, the Meters never found their own fame like Booker T. and the MGs. No matter. Let it be our secret. Our funky, funky secret.

Marcus Roberts has burst back onto the jazz landscape, 11 years after his last session, with “New Orleans Meets Harlem, Vol. 1” – one of the Florida-born pianist’s most celebrated recordings. A rich and explorative combining of styles from across the legacy, Roberts’ record nevertheless retains its uniquely Southern voiceRead 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 S. Victor Aaron John Scofield isn’t regarded as the top two or three jazz guitarists of the last couple of decades just because he’s such a great guitar player. The thing that sets him apart from almost all the others is his ability to play a different style ofRead More

NICK DERISO: With “New Orleans Meets Harlem,” pianist Marcus Roberts explores the connections between two of jazz music’s most elemental tributaries — building on familiar ideas put in place by Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller, Scott Joplin, Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk. The record, Roberts’ first in eight years, hitsRead More

Irma Thomas, whose Louisiana legend of a voice has darkened into a more expressive place, is taking a similar career tack. The new “Simply Grand,” in fact, finds Thomas moving deeper into the emotional underpinnings of her best work at a time when safer environs would probably be more profitable.Read 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