So, you’re Andy Griggs, a sugar-sweet pop-country singer from West Monroe, La. And you’re standing in the lonely bull’s eye of center stage, guitar in hand. There are hundreds and hundreds of pairs of eyes looking back. “The adrenaline!” you say, whispering. “There’s a difference between 1,000 people and 15,000.Read More

To take the old-school harmonic brilliance of Duke Ellington into the realm of John Coltane — soon to establish himself as the picture of avant garde, stimulatingly free, out there in such a way as to legitimately draw comparisons with the spiritual — was, you imagine, a challenge of equalRead More

NICK DERISO: You see the name “Sonnier,” you think Cajun. And you’re almost right. Sure, Jon Yudkin played fiddle on Kip Sonnier’s “Truth or a Lie.” Steve Duhon was on accordian. And, yeah, Sonnier is a Louisiana native. Even so, Bobby Terry could be found on pedal steel. And thatRead More

NICK DERISO: You’ll the find the best of this underappreciated, high-style Mississippi blues pianist on 1950s-era Trumpet Records reissues put out beginning in 1989 by Chicago’s Alligator Records. Run out of a Jackson, Miss., record store, Lillian Shedd McMurry’s locally legendary Trumpet label caught several blues greats just before theirRead More

NICK DERISO: Pianist Les McCann is something like a lesser Horace Silver — somebody with a soulful, bluesy delivery who often strayed a step too far into pop. This release showed why: Despite its many joys, a fat electric bass gave the CD an unwanted fusion-y feel — in particular,Read More

NICK DERISO: This Smithsonian Folkways release, issued today, is a hot-dawg compilation that sets up both as primer for the new-to-this and reminder for the been-there-done-that crowd. A remarkably deep catalogue has helped the label continue for years with a series of myth-confirming sets. “Classic Piano Blues” is no different,Read More

“Trio Brubeck,” though not the first time that Dad Dave had collaborated with the kids, had the randy feel of a whole new direction for the legendary pianist. Following the 1970s recording “Two Generations of Brubeck,” and the more recent “Quiet as the Moon” with son Darius (also on MusicMasters),Read More

Editor’s note: This column ran as part of an obituary package on the national Gannett News Service wire upon Cab Calloway’s passing in 1994. by Nick DeRiso Between the tombstones of the two World Wars, there emerged the knock-down joys of swing music. Perhaps no single figure from the periodRead More

NICK DERISO: Starting her career with a winning performance at a Paradise Theater amateur contest in her native Detroit, Betty Carter first came to a large number of ears as a vocalist with Lionel Hampton’s group in the late 1940s. (Hamp, in fact, is the one who gave her theRead 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