“Two Famous Johns” – a true jazz story by Bob Hecht
The writer remembers an evening in New York’s Half Note in 1964 when he witnessed a John Coltrane performance that was also attended by the pop singer Johnny Mathis
...April 16th, 2026
true jazz stories
“With Barry Harris at the 11th Street Bar” – a true jazz story by Henry Blanke
The writer recalls a special experience with the great pianist Barry Harris.
...November 19th, 2025
“Two Jazz Survivors” – a true jazz story by Bob Hecht
A remembrance of a personal friendship with the late Sheila Jordan, one of the most unique vocalists in jazz history.
...August 14th, 2025
“Escalator Over the Hill – Then and Now” – by Joel Lewis
Remembering the essential 1971 album by Carla Bley/Paul Haines, inspired by the writer’s experience attending the New School’s recent performance of it
...August 4th, 2025
True Jazz Stories: “Hippie In a Jazz Club” – by Scott Oglesby
The author relates a story that led to his eventual friendship with the jazz greats Sheila Jordan and Mark Murphy…
...November 23rd, 2024
True Jazz Stories: “An Evening With George,” by Terry Sanville
The writer tells his story of playing guitar with a symphony orchestra, backing up jazz legend George Shearing.
...January 11th, 2024
True Jazz Stories: “Well You Needn’t: My Life as a Jazz Fan” by Joel Lewis
The journalist and poet Joel Lewis shares his immensely colorful story of falling in love with jazz, and living with it and reporting on it during his younger days in New Jersey and New York
...October 23rd, 2023
“Frank Zappa Presents Edgard Varèse” — a poem by Martin Agee
In the winter of 1981 we were hired to play Downtown—
a performance in Greenwich Village billed “Frank Zappa Presents:
a Musical Tribute to Edgard Varèse.” I sat on stage,
wearing black, tuning my violin, warming up,
looking out at the audience milling around, most of them
covered in tattoos and piercings of every body part
November 14th, 2022
“Memories of Ray” — a true jazz story by Alan Swyer
The author writes of his friendship with Ray Charles, and his son’s 2000 interview with him.
...October 21st, 2022
“Yalies Save Ellington Tune from Obscurity,” a true jazz story by Janet Lever, with Brad Dechter
The authors describe the circumstances surrounding the creation of an extended version of Duke Ellington’s little-known 1953 composition “Janet”
...June 30th, 2022
“So What!…or, Where were you when you first heard Kind of Blue?” — a true jazz story by Bob Hecht
Bob Hecht recalls his experience of first hearing “Kind of Blue,” the 1959 jazz album by trumpeter Miles Davis
...April 21st, 2022
“The Sybil on 34th Street”– a true jazz story by Ray Robinson
The author recalls an eventful evening listening to a jazz singer at New York’s McAlpin Hotel in the early 1970s
...April 12th, 2022
“Heliocentric Ra Ra” — a story of finding artistic inspiration in the music of Sun Ra, by Meisha Synnott
The two versions of the 1965 album The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra (Vol. 1) were part of the inspiration for Meisha Synnott’s enlightening artistic exploration
...March 20th, 2022
“Smoke” — a true jazz story by John Riley
The author’s experience with racism, ignorance, poverty, and jazz in the American South of the 1960s.
...March 2nd, 2022
“The Cloth Coat” — a true jazz story by Ray Robinson
We’re going through Security at Dublin airport, headed to Philadelphia, thinking about what’s ahead of us. There’s something sinister about lines of people queuing up to be processed. Nobody likes it. Belt, jacket, phone, laptop, wallet. Do they need my shoes? Everyone feels displaced, dehumanized somehow.
...February 10th, 2022
“A Quick Kill: A Final Episode Among Brothers” — a true story by J.S. Kierland
Three in the morning in the Hollywood Hills feels like five in the morning anywhere else. The coyotes and owls cross the northern boundaries and stray down under the big HOLLYWOOD sign that glistens in the moonlight at the top of Beachwood Canyon. Field mice, possum, snakes, and house cats become fair game for the wild intruders that prowl the narrow streets and canyons for a quick kill and a quiet meal with the family.
...January 11th, 2022
True Jazz Stories: A remembrance of jazz aficionado Al Summ
Friends remember Al Summ, whose love and appreciation of jazz showed up in a variety of ways. His artwork was found (and rescued) by his friends Dan Brown, Dave Watson, Bob Crimi and “Andy” – a.k.a. “The Gang of Four”.
This remembrance is a reminder of how jazz and its culture can touch the soul of an enthusiast, and a demonstration of a longtime, devoted friendship. I am proud to assist the “Gang” in sharing their heartfelt connection to their departed friend.
...November 24th, 2021
“Opus For Mary Lou,” a true jazz story by John Bliss
. . photo by William Gottlieb/Library of Congress Mary Lou Williams, c. 1938 . . ___ . . Opus for Mary Lou By John Bliss . …..“Baloney Bliss,” Mary Lou Williams said, lacing into my father. …..Mary Lou was Black and brought a spiritual magic into my white world. Her nose was petite like an … Continue reading ““Opus For Mary Lou,” a true jazz story by John Bliss”
...October 11th, 2021
True Jazz Stories: Musical Adventures of Joe Maita, Sr.
. . Joseph Maita, Sr. c. 1935 . ___ . …..My father Joseph Maita (Sr.) was affable, charismatic, and loving – gifted as a musician and, ultimately, a successful business owner. He was also extraordinarily complex and challenged by having to make choices so many young parents find themselves confronting – following … Continue reading “True Jazz Stories: Musical Adventures of Joe Maita, Sr.”
...June 20th, 2021
“My Father Sings” — a prose poem (and true jazz story) by William Minor
I grew up in a household where music was second nature, always present, ingrained. My mother could sight read well and played not only classical pieces on the piano (Schumann, Liszt, Chopin) but show tunes—the full range of Gershwin, Cole Porter, Rogers and Hart, Irving Berlin, which she and I sang together.
...November 1st, 2020
“Sinatra and Me” — a true jazz story by Paul Brophy
Frank Sinatra floated through the air in my boyhood home and Philadelphia neighborhood. My mother and two of her older sisters, Henrietta and Marge, had seen young Frankie in person at Atlantic City’s Steel Pier in the late 1930s, the thrill that wed these young Italian-Americans to Frank for life. “It’s Always You” reached them. He was part of our Staffieri family — their fantasy husband.
...October 3rd, 2020
“Un Euro? An Evening at the Rome Jazz Festival” — a true jazz story, by Dan Morey
Mother and I took the metro to the Piazza del Popolo, then boarded a northbound tram for the Parco della Musica, where the Rome Jazz Festival was being held.
...July 29th, 2020
“The Night McCoy Tyner Said ‘That’s Cool'” — by T. S. Davis
.It must have been the late 1980s when my girlfriend and I put on our best clothes and shelled out more money than we had to hear McCoy Tyner at the very elegant Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley in downtown Seattle.
...March 14th, 2020
“All Blues: The Story of a Lost Friendship” — a true jazz story by Bob Hecht
…..I have to wonder how many friendships have been forged over mutual love of Miles Davis’ album, Kind of Blue. The one I want to tell you about came to pass in an unlikely setting back during the winter of 1963…
...December 19th, 2018
“Whistlin’ the Bird” — Two True Jazz Stories by Bob Hecht
Part 1: Confirmation (1969)
It wouldn’t be the first time my penchant for whistling jazz tunes got me in trouble…nor the last.
I’d been crazy about whistling from my boyhood. Perhaps I inherited my obsession from my late father. He wasn’t a jazz fan like I am, and I barely even remember him whistling—he wasn’t around much when I was a boy and he died when I was twelve—but my mom later told me he was an outstanding whistler. “He could do triple tonguing and everything,” she said.
So maybe it was in my DNA. But at any rate, after his death I determinedly taught myself to whistle. I have a good ear and decent sense of pitch, so I found I could easily get in sync with whatever music I was hearing. And then I practiced and practiced, whistling along with jazz compositions and solos for years until I got
...September 17th, 2018
A true jazz story — “The Sober Years” by Robert Hecht
From a small balcony above the stage of the Maybeck Recital Hall in Berkeley, I’m looking down on the jazz duo of bassist Red Mitchell and pianist Roger Kellaway, while tapping my foot to the earthy, swinging beat they are laying down.
It’s a Sunday afternoon in 1992 at this unique venue. The recital hall is part of a house originally built by the famed architect Bernard Maybeck in the early twentieth century. (Maybeck designed the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, along with many other notable buildings in that city.) The hall accommodates only about 50 people, and it’s a warm, redwood-paneled room with beautiful leaded glass windows on three sides. It actually feels a lot like being in a little chapel—but the religion being worshipped here is that of acoustic jazz, primarily of the pianistic variety.
For several years now, ‘The Maybeck’ as it’s familiarly called, has hosted a who’s-who of
...July 5th, 2018
A true jazz story: “Woody ‘n Me” — by Robert Hecht
I’m driving up Raymond Boulevard toward downtown Newark. In the darkness the huge lighted sign atop the Public Service Electric & Gas Company serves as a beacon for approaching the city. Yet tonight something is off with the sign, and I laugh out loud as I see that its ‘L’ has burned out…and that it is now offering ‘PUBIC SERVICE’ to the community!
I am on my way to work at radio station WHBI where I am a staff announcer but also produce a nightly jazz show. On the car seat next to me is my
...May 21st, 2018
“In Your Own Sweet Way” — A Bill Evans Memory, by Robert Hecht
It was the kind of New York night not fit for man nor beast. Sleet and wind whipping about, snow banks and ice everywhere. With my ‘49 Dodge slipping and sliding on the Village streets, I make my way to the Vanguard to catch the midnight set. The small sign outside the entrance inconspicuously announces: “Bill Evans Trio.” This is the 1962 edition of the trio, reformed after bassist Scott LaFaro’s death the year before; and this is the club where Bill had played his last sets with
...January 25th, 2018
“Bird Lives” — a memory of Charlie Parker’s Kansas City, by Robert Hecht
The night I truly ‘got’ the shining genius of Charlie Parker I was in my girlfriend’s apartment on the Lower East Side. The year was 1961. I was nineteen, she was much older and hipper, and had turned me on not only to some great music but to getting high as well. She had all the essential jazz records, including the one on the turntable that night. It was The Fabulous Bird, on the old Jazztone label, consisting of reissues of some of Bird’s phenomenal 1947 Dial sessions. She had a very low-fi stereo—I can still see the nickel she had scotch-taped to the tone arm to keep it in the grooves. But the fidelity didn’t matter, in part at least because this evening I had just smoked a
...January 3rd, 2018
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The Sunday Poem
The Sunday Poem: “Refreshing My Education” by Mike Mignano
The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work...
Mike Mignano reads his poem at its conclusion.
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