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    Featuring the complete text of chapters 1 – 5 from Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told By the Men Who Made It, a 1955 book by Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff

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    Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original

    Thelonious Monk is the gripping saga of an artist’s struggle to “make it” without compromising his musical vision. It is a story that, like its subject, reflects the tidal ebbs and flows of American history in the twentieth century.

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    She didn’t dance to the music; she danced with it. The melody wrapped his arms around her and the chords ran ivory fingers through her curls. Harmony whispered in her ear and she laughed at all his jokes. She twirled up and down scales with him, the hem of her skirt swirling a single syncopated beat behind her.

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    Featuring photographs and excerpts from the Paul Desmond biography, "Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond," by Doug Ramsey

     

     

  • An Online History of Jazz in New Orleans
  • Interview with Thelonious Monk biographer Robin D.G. Kelley
  • Short Fiction Contest-winning story: “The Valley of Ashes," by Anna Dallara
  • Paul Desmond: A Life Told in Pictures, Music and Memories
kelley Interviews » Biographers

Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original

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“The piano ain’t got no wrong notes!” So ranted Thelonious Sphere Monk, who proved his point every time he sat down at the keyboard. His angular melodies and dissonant harmonies shook the jazz world to its foundations, ushering in the birth of “bebop” and establishing Monk as one of America’s greatest composers. Yet throughout much of his life, his musical contribution took a backseat to tales of his reputed behavior. Writers tended to obsess over Monk’s hats or his proclivity to dance on stage. To his fans, he was the ultimate hipster; to his detractors, he was temperamental, eccentric, taciturn, or childlike. But these labels tell us little about the man or his music. […] Continue reading »

sonnyrollins Features

Who was your childhood hero?

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Childhood Heroes — We all had them

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


Sonny Rollins was a hero of saxophonist Joshua Redman

JJM Who was your hero, Joshua?

JR My musical hero?

JJM Well, that or your boyhood hero…

JR I think my mom was my hero. My mom took great care of me and she was a person I looked up to. I didn’t really have heroes like clear role models, like people or figures that I idolized…I think the first record I ever bought was a Sonny Rollins record, Saxophone Colossus, and from that point on Sonny Rollins became a hero of mine. I was nine or ten or so at the time, and my mom paid for the record… […] Continue reading »

luis Literature

Poetry by Luis Lazaro Tijerina

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Death is a Trumpet Note Away
(To the Jazz Trumpeter, Lee Morgan)

I hear your trumpet notes splitting the evening skies,
breaking up a piano solo, then a sparse hot guitar
opens the modal line for your slow bursts of almost
cornet sounds… a river flow of “Avotcja One”-
trumpet sounds “into a bed of plaints” and flurries
[…] Continue reading »

corwin Literature

Poetry by Arlene Corwin

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So Much To Do, So Little Time To Do It In

For Michel Petrucciani

A little man, glass bones disease.
A la Lautrec: two prodigies.
At thirty-six his lungs gave out.
We cried, we would not be consoled.
[…] Continue reading »