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On the web since 1999
In the book’s prologue, published here in its entirety, the author writes about some of “The Real Ambassador’s” challenges getting to the stage.
...June 16th, 2022
The author discusses the enigmatic and extraordinary pianist, composer, and band leader, whose most notable achievements came during a time of major societal and cultural change, and often in the face of critics who at times found his music too technical and bombastic.
...July 6th, 2020
The introduction to Philip Clark’s book “Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time” is excerpted here in its entirety.
...May 15th, 2020
. . . . photo by Bouna Ndaiye/used by permission of Gerald Horne Gerald Horne, author of Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music . ___ . . …..Jazz music — complex, ground breaking and brilliant from its early 20th century beginnings — would eventually become America’s … Continue reading “Interview with Gerald Horne, author of Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music“
...February 12th, 2020
Mac’s Restaurant and Nightclub in Eugene, Oregon is where the blues aficionados in Central Oregon congregate to enjoy Cajun type bar food and dance joyously to pounding, power guitar driven blues. Our friends Alan and Susan go there a couple times a month to satisfy their boogie dance cravings. Whenever my wife and I pass through Eugene, we end up at Mac’s with Alan and Susan. They also attend a lot of blues festivals around their neck of the woods and can be considered connoisseurs.
I too love the blues. I also love jazz. Susan loves the blues. She does not love jazz, “modern” jazz to be specific. Susan explains that when she’s dancing at Mac’s, she feels the pounding bass and drums and screaming vocalist and Fender Stratocaster vibrating her bones and muscles and eyeballs. That’s her heaven. That’s how she wants to
...September 3rd, 2018
Wizard of Cool
Eyes liken to a bird of prey
having seen, what we would
never see as he blew phenomenal
madness into the heavens
taking our breath away
On a level, others tried to perpetrate
my first time, Live at the Blackhawk
July 20th, 2018
all day a light breeze baptizes the landscape
gentle and captivating as a Paul Desmond solo
bushes rap windows and walls with rhythms
unusual and unexpected that Joe Morello would
approve would groove to and trees sway with
...September 1st, 2017
Doug Ramsey’s biography of saxophonist Paul Desmond is a lavish, detailedwork of art, filled with photographs, letters, and memories of a complexand frequently inspiring life. “Paul Desmond: A Life Told in Pictures,Music and Memories,” a Jerry Jazz Musician production published in cooperation with Ramsey and Parkside Publications, features photographs and excerpts from the book, as well as sound samples of Desmond’s music.
...April 6th, 2013
Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond is the story of a jazz artist who transcended genres to establish one of the most immediately recognizable sounds in all of music. Long before his success as the alto saxophonist with the Dave Brubeck Quartet, decades before he wrote “Take Five ,” Desmond determined that he would be himself, never a disciple or an imitator, whatever the cost.
...March 1st, 2013
At the height of the ideological antagonism of the Cold War, the U.S. State Department unleashed an unexpected tool in its battle against Communism: jazz. From 1956 through the late 1970s, America dispatched its finest jazz musicians to the far corners of the earth, from Iraq to India, from the Congo to the Soviet Union, in order to win the hearts and minds of the Third World and to counter perceptions of American racism.
In Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War, Penny Von Eschen escorts readers across the globe, backstage and onstage, as Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and other jazz luminaries spread their music and their ideas further than the State Department anticipated.
...August 22nd, 2005
Excerpted from Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond by Doug Ramsey
By the fall of 1956, Joe Dodge was worn down by the travel and the intense schedule and wanted to be with his family. He told Brubeck it was time to look for another drummer. In the Quartet’s New York stays, Desmond had heard Marian McPartland’s trio and was impressed with Joe Morello, the drummer who had been working with her since 1953. Morello, born in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1928, played there with alto saxophonist Phil Woods and guitarist Sal Salvador before he moved to New York
...April 29th, 2005
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