by S. Victor Aaron This installment of Quickies takes a glance at three new offerings from HighNote Records. HighNote Reocrds, in case you didn’t know, has been around since 1996, a creation of former Muse Records founder and Prestige Records exec Joe Fields. As a longtime veteran of the wholeRead More

Photo: Kevin Westenberg By Pico A year ago I broke with my unusual protocol and included a “non-new” album in a Quickies piece. These Streets by Paolo Nutini had already been out for a couple of years by that time, but the debut album by this exceptionally talented teenaged singer-songwriterRead More

by Nick DeRiso  This is an updated excerpt from a multi-artist piece I had published as part of the statewide Louisiana Folklife Festival’s program book in 1995. Born in 1904, Thomas Edison “Brownie” Ford would travel all over the Deep South — working as a ballad singer, bronc buster, storytellerRead 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

NICK DERISO: Frank Sinatra, 10 years gone, would have been 93 this month. His mystery still lingers with me, as does the memory of a concert — one of Sinatra’s last — when he recaptured all of that complexity. Sinatra was both a pawn to his past and the kingRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Trumpeter and arranger Steven Bernstein might be the hardest working man in music these days. Just these last few years he has garnered a Grammy nomination (for Sexotica by his band Sex Mob) and a Annie nomination for scoring a children’s TV series; released an albumRead More

NICK DERISO: Sam Cooke, for all his power and grace as a singer, established this strikingly brief legacy during the time of the Hit Single. Which meant Cooke’s most well-known albums of the early 1960s were often dotted with dated filler, tunes in the Broadway style of the day orRead More

There is a grail-like anticipation to these recordings, captured during four live performances just as trumpeter Miles Dewey Davis’s career transformed from a twinkling light at dusk into remarkable super nova. Too, these aren’t your run-of-the-mill sideman constellations; they are, actually, all stars. Namely, the band features a still-rising JohnRead More

Nick and I have both been on a long-running campaign here to get Allen Toussiant his due. His imprint on New Orleans R&B, and American music in general is hard to escape but since he’s been more of a behind-the-scenes guy, his name doesn’t usually come up as often asRead More

We think of him as a famous jazz guy. But those who knew Charlie Haden as a child remember him as a bluegrass prodigy in a traveling musical group of relatives.