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

NICK DERISO: “Guess Who I Saw Today,” from Nancy Wilson’s second Capitol Records recording “Something Wonderful,” always stops me in my tracks. “You’re so late getting home from the office,” she begins. “Did you miss your train? Were you caught in the rain? No, don’t bother to explain.” And soRead More

NICK DERISO: This is a woman who could fall to whispery sweet nothings, even from the highest precipice, effortlessly. Start with “Something Cool,” issued on Capitol in 1955 and recorded with Pete Rugolo — Stan Kenton’s one-time musical director — and an orchestra. June tumbles, she sidesteps and old Pete,Read More

NICK DERISO: Young Freddy Cole had dreams of performing in the NFL. You might understand why the younger brother of Nat “King” Cole would shy away from playing piano and singing. But a severe injury to one hand led him to listen more closely to the emotions that jazz musicRead More

Al Jarreau has found a good measure of success from applying his unique weave of octave shifting singing and jazz scatting to a wide array of songs ranging from jazz standards to r&b to straight pop. And like Linda Ronstadt and Robert Palmer, he’s had a knack for finding someoneRead More

by Nick DeRiso While it doesn’t have the cohesiveness of 1992’s “Portraits of Ellington,” this makes its own kind of statement. The playlist is an evocative pairing of older, traditional big-band selections by composers like Billy Strayhorn, with more modern tunes from Miles, Monk and Coltrane. In that way, theRead More