NICK DERISO: Finding an impressive record by Lionel Hampton, known for both his harmonic and rhythmic sophistication, is easy. Finding one that delights as much as its intrigues anymore, however, is rare. His legacy, now more than ever, is secure: Born in Louisville, Ky., in 1908, Hamp would record hundredsRead 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: 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

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: 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

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.

To call this the most successful melding of New Orleans-style rag with hard Chicago blues presupposes that there ever was one before. Eurreal “Little Brother” Montgomery, as was his way, tills up new earth here, and with remarkable results. A stride pianist of great wit and power, Montgomery had theRead More

NICK DERISO: Volume 2 gives an idea of how considerable a wake the 1940s Miles Davis Nonet left. Taking its name from Davis’ legendary 1950 recording, this welcome, if belated, compilation scoops up all of the Capitol cuts from the early ’50s by two of the nonet’s most important disciples,Read More

NICK DERISO: What an enveloping, unforgettable experience: Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and drummer Max Roach, then bop’s most visible surviving pioneers, performing as a duo in a completely improvised concert. Neither had ever recorded a more free-form album, yet still there remains a deep affection for what came before — andRead More