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TODAY'S ARTISTS


Winard Harper


Winard Harper

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Drummer Winard Harper is passionate about jazz. "This music is powerful," he says. "It can do a lot of good for people. If they'd spend some time each day listening to it, we would see many changes in the world."



Come Into the Light

Come Into the Light





The EDGE


In memory of

Arthur C. Clarke,

1917 - 2008

2001: A Space Odyssey film introduction

90th Birthday Reflections


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Think About It


"The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery. They're the kind of people who'd stop to help you change a flat, but would somehow manage to set your car on fire. I would be reluctant to entrust them with a Cuisinart, let alone the economy. The Republicans, on the other hand, would know how to fix your tire, but they wouldn't bother to stop because they'd want to be on time for Ugly Pants Night at the country club."

- Dave Barry



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Today's Gift Idea

Lithographs and Giclees by Barbara Freeman

Chet Baker

 


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Recently Published


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Ben Ratliff, author of Coltrane: The Story of a Sound

John Coltrane

Giant Steps


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Mark Kerstetter is the winner of the Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction contest. His story is called "Mountain"

Mark Kerstetter


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Ralph Ellison biographer Arnold Rampersad, on the complex life of the author of Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison


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What were five of your favorite record albums (or CD’s) when you were twenty years old, and what are five of your favorite CD’s today?

Among those participating in the eleventh edition of Reminiscing in Tempo: Memories and Opinion are Peter Erskine, Steve Khan, Terri Lynne Carrington, Jeff "Tain" Watts, and Ben Ratliff

Steve Khan


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Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life & Times of Doc Pomus author Alex Halberstadt

Doc Pomus

My New Chick


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Gary Giddins on his new collection of essays, Natural Selection

Gary Giddins


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Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock 'n' Roll author Rick Coleman

Fats Domino

I'm Gonna Be a Wheel Someday


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Blowin' Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics author John Gennari on jazz criticism


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"The Future of Jazz" is the third column by Accent on Youth writer Zach Ferguson

Zach Ferguson


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The Producer: John Hammond and the Soul of American Music author Dunstan Prial

John Hammond


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Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era author Elizabeth Pepin

Pony Poindexter and Leo Wright at SFs Bop City, 1950's

Ascension -- Edition II


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The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records author Ashley Kahn

John Coltrane

Ascension -- Edition II


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Stanley Crouch on his new collection of jazz essays, Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz

Stanley Crouch


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In cooperation with The Jazz Image author Lee Tanner, Jerry Jazz Musician presents "Masters of Jazz Photography," this month featuring the work of Jerry Stoll

photo of Pee Wee Russell and Gerry Mulligan by Jerry Stoll


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Up From New Orleans: Life Before, During and After Katrina -- A conversation with transplanted New Orleans musicians Devin Phillips and Mark DiFlorio

Devin Phillips


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In our twenty-fifth edition of Great Encounters, Dunstan Prial, author of The Producer: John Hammond and the Soul of American Music, writes about when Hammond "discovered" Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday


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An Online Story of Jazz in New Orleans, with an introduction by Nat Hentoff

Jelly Roll Morton

New Orleans was a free and easy place, comments by Jelly Roll Morton


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Now in the Art Gallery

The Art of James Allen



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Test your wits! Subscribe to Quiz Show, which is delivered to your desktop every other Friday .



Play Quiz Show

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Heroes...We all had them. For years, we have been asking the guests we interview to talk about theirs. You can read them at our Heroes page. Now, we invite you to write about the person you recall being your own childhood hero. All submissions are published...



Willie Mays

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Coming Soon

"Playing the Changes: Milt Hinton's Life in Stories and Photographs" -- a photo essay

Brad Snyder, author of A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood's Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports

...ensure you won't miss any of this (and much more in the works) by subscribing to our newsletter.

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On May 1, books and CDs will be given away to twelve randomly selected Jerry Jazz Musician newsletter subscribers.


Get all the details

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"The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet." "

- Mark Twain
JJM

 



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Judgement

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Down or Up




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Jerry Jazz Musician Home Page


Welcome to Jerry Jazz Musician

...A website devoted to jazz and American civilization...


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Nominated by the Jazz Journalists Association for "Best Website Concentrating on Jazz," 2006 and 2007


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Photo © Toby Gascoyne

"Difference of opinion is helpful in religion."

- Thomas Jefferson

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Nothing Ever Was, Anyway, by Paul Bley



May, 2008


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This Month at Jerry Jazz Musician


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Newly Published

What were five of your favorite record albums (or CD’s) when you were twenty years old, and what are five of your favorite CD’s today?

Among those participating in the eleventh edition of Reminiscing in Tempo: Memories and Opinion are Peter Erskine, Steve Khan, Terri Lynne Carrington, Jeff "Tain" Watts, and Ben Ratliff


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INTERVIEWS
Ben Ratliff, author of Coltrane: The Story of a Sound

Ralph Ellison biographer Arnold Rampersad

Alex Halberstadt, author of Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life & Times of Doc Pomus

Rick Coleman, author of Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock 'n' Roll

Gary Giddins on his new collection of essays, Natural Selection


Interview Archive

John Coltrane photo by Lee Tanner


The Life of Jackie McLean a poem by Michael Harper SUGGESTED READING
"The Life of Jackie McLean," a poem by Michael S. Harper

"Mountain," by Mark Kerstetter, the Jerry Jazz Musician New Short Fiction winner ...Short Fiction Contest details

An Online Story of Jazz in New Orleans: With an introduction by Nat Hentoff

Rifftides, Doug Ramsey on jazz

Jazz It Up TV, a jazz entertainment news series, hosted by Greg Thomas



CONTINUING FEATURES

What were five of your favorite record albums (or CD’s) when you were twenty years old, and what are five of your favorite CD’s today? Among those participating in the eleventh edition of Reminiscing in Tempo: Memories and Opinion are Peter Erskine, Steve Khan, Terri Lynne Carrington, Jeff "Tain" Watts, and Ben Ratliff

"The Future of Jazz" is the third column by Accent on Youth writer Zach Ferguson

In the twenty-fifth edition of Great Encounters, Dunstan Prial, author of The Producer: John Hammond and the Soul of American Music, writes about when Hammond "discovered" Billie Holiday

Conversations with Gary Giddins, thirteen discussions with the country's most eminent jazz writer

Heroes...We all had them. Our guests speak of theirs

Quiz Show! What do you know about jazz?
Steve Khan


Charlie Parker and bassist Teddy Kotick photo by Hugh Bell ART
In cooperation with The Jazz Image author Lee Tanner, Jerry Jazz Musician presents "Masters of Jazz Photography," this month featuring the work of Hugh Bell

Jerry Jazz Musician and Candlewick Press present Jazz ABZ, a gallery of impressions and text from the colorful book of the same name that features the poetry of Wynton Marsalis, the art of Paul Rogers, and the jazz history of Phil Schaap



COMING SOON

"Playing the Changes: Milt Hinton's Life in Stories and Photographs" -- a photo essay

Brad Snyder, author of A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood's Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports

...and lots more in the works...

Ensure you won't miss any of this by subscribing to our newsletter.

Milt Hinton


Dave Barry Think About It

"The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery. They're the kind of people who'd stop to help you change a flat, but would somehow manage to set your car on fire. I would be reluctant to entrust them with a Cuisinart, let alone the economy. The Republicans, on the other hand, would know how to fix your tire, but they wouldn't bother to stop because they'd want to be on time for Ugly Pants Night at the country club."

- Humorist Dave Barry


Coltrane: The Story of a Sound

What was the essence of John Coltrane’s achievement that makes him so prized forty years after his death? What was it about his improvising, his bands, his compositions, his place within his era of jazz that left so many musicians and listeners so powerfully drawn to him? What would a John Coltrane look like now -- or are we looking for the wrong signs? The acclaimed jazz writer Ben Ratliff addresses these questions in Coltrane: The Story of a Sound, and joins us in a conversation about Coltrane's sound and influence in a January 29, 2008 interview. 		John Coltrane photo by Lee Tanner


Ralph Ellison Ralph Ellison: A Biography

Ralph Ellison is justly celebrated for his epochal novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953 and has become a classic of American literature. But Ellison’s strange inability to finish a second novel, despite his dogged efforts and soaring prestige, made him a supremely enigmatic figure. In Ralph Ellison: A Biography, Arnold Rampersad skillfully tells the story of a writer whose thunderous novel and astute, courageous essays on race, literature, and culture assure him of a permanent place in our literary heritage. In our August, 2007 interview, Rampersad discusses the book many are calling Ellison's "definitive" biography, as well as a "stellar model of literary biography."


Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life & Times of Doc Pomus

One of the most original, influential, and commercially successful American songwriters, Doc Pomus (1927-1991) is remembered best for the dozens of hits he wrote during rock 'n' roll's first decade. A role model for several generations of composers, Doc was renowned for his mastery of virtually every popular style, from the gutbucket rhythm and blues of "Lonely Avenue" to the symphonic invention of "Save the Last Dance for Me" to the pop confection of "Viva Las Vegas." Alex Halberstadt's Lonely Avenue : The Unlikely Life & Times of Doc Pomus, is a beautifully written narrative that reads like a novel, fortified by full access to Pomus's family and friends, voluminous journals, and archives. Halberstadt joins Jerry Jazz Musician contributor Paul Hallaman in a conversation about the life of this extraordinary American artist. 		Doc Pomus


Fats Domino Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock 'n' Roll

While many think of Elvis Presley as rock ’n’ roll’s driving force, the truth is that Fats Domino, whose records have sold more than 100 million copies, was the first to put it on the map with such hits as “Ain’t That a Shame” and “Blueberry Hill.” In Blue Monday, acclaimed R&B scholar Rick Coleman draws on a multitude of new interviews with Fats Domino and many other early musical legends to create a definitive biography of not just an extraordinary man but also a unique time and place: New Orleans at the birth of rock ’n’ roll. Coleman’s groundbreaking research makes for an immense cultural biography, and is the first to convey the full scope of Fats Domino’s impact on the popular music of the twentieth century. Coleman joins Jerry Jazz Musician contributor Adrienne Wartts in an October, 2006 interview.


Natural Selection

Long recognized as America's most brilliant jazz writer, the winner of many major awards -- including the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award -- and author of a highly popular biography of Bing Crosby, Gary Giddins has also produced a wide range of stimulating and original cultural criticism in other fields. With Natural Selection, he brings together the best of these previously uncollected essays, including a few written expressly for this volume. In a June, 2007 interview, Giddins -- a long-time contributor to Jerry Jazz Musician -- discusses Natural Selection, his career path, and again demonstrates the unique intelligence that has made him one of his generation's most important cultural critics. 		Natural Selection by Gary Giddins


Jazz and Its Critics Blowin' Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics

In Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and its Critics, John Gennari provides a definitive history of jazz criticism from the 1920s to the present. The music itself is prominent in his account, as are the musicians — from Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington to Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Roscoe Mitchell, and beyond. But the work takes its shape from fascinating stories of the tradition’s key critic s— Leonard Feather, Martin Williams, Whitney Balliett, Dan Morgenstern, Gary Giddins, and Stanley Crouch, among many others. Gennari shows the many ways these critics have mediated the relationship between the musicians and the audience — not merely as writers, but in many cases as producers, broadcasters, concert organizers, and public intellectuals as well. In an August, 2006 interview, Gennari discusses his book, described by Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn author David Hajdu as "groundbreaking and essential."


The Echoing Green

The 1951 regular season was as good as over. The Brooklyn Dodgers led the New York Giants by three runs with just three outs to go in their third and final playoff game. And not once in major league baseball’s 278 preceding playoff and World Series games had a team overcome a three-run deficit in the ninth inning. But New York rallied, and at 3:58 p.m. on October 3, 1951, Bobby Thomson hit a home run off Ralph Branca. The Giants won the pennant. Joshua Prager's The Echoing Green follows the reverberations of that one moment – the Shot Heard Round the World – from the West Wing of the White House to the Sing Sing death house to the Polo Grounds clubhouse, where a home run forever turned hitter and pitcher into hero and goat. Prager discusses the famous game – and the sign stealing scheme the Giants employed to get to it – in a November, 2006 interview with Jerry Jazz Musician contributor Paul Hallaman. 		Bobby Thomson 1951


John Hammond The Producer: John Hammond and the Soul of American Music

John Hammond is one of the most charismatic figures in American music, a man who put on record much of the music we cherish today. A pioneering producer and talent spotter, Hammond discovered and championed some of the most gifted musicians of early jazz -- Billie Holliday, Count Basie, Charlie Christian, Benny Goodman -- and staged the legendary "From Spirituals to Swing" concert at Carnegie Hall in 1939, which established jazz as America's indigenous music. Then as jazz gave way to pop and rock Hammond repeated the trick, discovering Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, and Stevie Ray Vaughan in his life's extraordinary second act. Dunstan Prial, author of The Producer: John Hammond and the Soul of American Music, discusses the life of the legendary producer in a November, 2006 interview.


Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era

The Fillmore in the 1940's and 1950's was an eclectic, integrated, and hopping neighborhood dotted with restaurants, pool halls, theaters, and shops — many minority-owned — and boasting two dozen active nightclubs and music joints within its one square mile. Although it has been commemorated in songs, poems, and in Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, few people today know of the rich history of the Fillmore and its musical legacy because it vanished abruptly and so thoroughly due to redevelopment in the 1960s. In an August, 2006 interview, Elizabeth Pepin, who along with co-author Lewis Watts wrote Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era, talks with Jerry Jazz Musician contributing writer Adrienne Wartts about the Fillmore's history as the San Francisco Bay area's jazz and cultural center. 		Pony Poindexter and Leo Wright at SFs Bop City 1950s


Reverend Ralph Abernathy From the Interview Archive


Ralph David Abernathy and Martin Luther King Jr. were inseperable and together helped to establish what would become the modern American Civil Rights Movement. They preached, marched, and were frequently jailed together. Donzaleigh Abernathy, Ralph's youngest daughter, has written Partners to Historyas a testament to the courage, strength, and endurance of these men who stirred a nation with their moral fortitude. She also pays tribute to the thousands of unsung heroes -- the other partners to this history -- who were foot soldiers in the endless struggle for freedom, justice, and equality. She writes, "Far too many sacrifices were made for our freedom to let history repeat itself. It is for these peaceful warriors, the soldiers of freedom, that I pause to remember the road that brought us all across." In a January, 2004 interview, Ms. Abernathy talks about her life as a child of the Movement, and to remember the two visionaries who changed the course of American history, and inspired the world. The interview features rarely seen Abernathy family photos.

Visit our interview archive


Reminising in Tempo: Memories and Opinion

"Reminiscing in Tempo," is part of a continuing effort to provide Jerry Jazz Musician readers with unique forms of "edu-tainment." As often as possible, Jerry Jazz Musician poses one question via e mail to a small number of prominent and diverse people. The question is designed to provoke a lively response that will potentially include the memories and/or opinion of those solicited. In the feature's eleventh edition, Peter Erskine, Steve Khan, Terri Lynne Carrington, Jeff "Tain" Watts, and Ben Ratliff are among those who answer the question, What were five of your favorite record albums (or CD’s) when you were twenty years old, and what are five of your favorite CD’s today? 		Steve Khan


Street Musicians, by William Johnson Accent on Youth

"The Future of Jazz" is the third column by Accent on Youth writer Zach Ferguson



Conversations with Gary Giddins

In our continuing series of Conversations with Gary Giddins, Bing Crosby's biographer and the country's preeminent jazz writer -- who was prominently featured in Ken Burns' Jazz -– talks with us about jazz festivals 		Gary Giddins


The Trotters versus the Lakers, 1948 Great Encounters

Great Encounters are book excerpts that chronicle famous encounters among twentieth century cultural icons. This month, Ben Green, author of Spinning the Globe: The Rise, Fall, and Return to Greatness of the Harlem Globetrotters, writes about the initial game between the Minneapolis Lakers and the Trotters in Chicago, 1948


Heroes

Heroes...We all had them. Mantle, Mays, Satchel Paige, Wonderwoman, Davy Crockett - even Pippi Longstocking!

Excerpted from exclusive Jerry Jazz Musician interviews, our guests talk of theirs...

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"A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom."

- Bob Dylan

Roberto Clemente was a hero to NPR's Scott Simon


Louis Armstrong New Orleans Stories

Original Jerry Jazz Musician produced content devoted to the importance of New Orleans culture, including a conversation on the city with Gary Giddins; An Online Story of Jazz in New Orleans -- with an introduction by Nat Hentoff; and Up From New Orleans: Life Before, During, and After Katrina -- a conversation with transplanted New Orleans musicians Devin Phillips and Mark DiFlorio


The A Love Supreme Interviews

John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme is a deeply moving suite of spirit and song, and one of the twentieth century’s most critically acclaimed musical works. The A Love Supreme Interviews take shape around the central theme of the recording’s lasting effect on those we talk to. McCoy Tyner, Gary Giddins, Joshua Redman, Ashley Kahn, Francis Davis, Nat Hentoff, poet Michael Harper and others participate.

Listen to poet Michael Harper read

Dear John, Dear Coltrane.

John Coltrane's A Love Supreme


Cipher by Colleen Anderson - photo by Sondra Peron New Short Fiction Award

Colleen Anderson of Vancouver, British Columbia is the winner of the Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction contest. Her story is called "Cipher".

New Contest Details

Read contest winning stories



The Ralph Ellison Project

Ralph Ellison left an indelible mark on our culture, and not only because of Invisible Man. He was friendly with and mentored many of today's most influential critics and musicians. It is a worthwhile endeavor to reach back and discover the rich world he wrote of, and to understand his philosophy surrounding music and its connection to American traditions, rituals and literature. In our critically acclaimed The Ralph Ellison Project, nine prominent American writers, educators and filmmakers discuss Ellison's life, and the complex and intriguing man at its core... 		Ralph Ellison


Jack Johnson is discussed with biographer Geoffrey Ward Celebrating African American History

Our interviews are a great source of entertainment and information, featuring noted historians, biographers, critics and musicians who take on the topics of Ralph Ellison, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Jack Johnson, Reverend Ralph Abernathy, Richard Wright, the Civil Rights Movement, the influence of jazz on American culture, and many others. Visit our page celebrating African American History.


The Art Gallery

Among the world's finest music art can be viewed on your monitor when you visit the Jerry Jazz Musician Art Gallery...Paintings, sculpture, and digital photographs by 33 artists are on display now. Artist Theo Moore's Bird is an example of what you will find here. 		A portrait of Charlie Parker by Theo Moore


Willie The Lion Smith

Quiz Show!

This legendary musician studied with Sidney Bechet and took his place in Willie "The Lion" Smith's group. Who was he?

Play Quiz Show!



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