Jazz

Worcester’s First Lady of Jazz Radio Mary Mardirosian came to WCUW in Worcester, Massachusetts, on a Tuesday morning in 1979 after hearing me make a plug for volunteers at the station. She called...

It’s hard for me to imagine Jazz a la Mode without Arbors Records. Arbors may not be as historically significant as Commodore or Blue Note, Verve or Prestige, but for the last 20 years it’s been a godsend...

[Note: This is a revised edition of the memorial tribute I wrote for Max Roach after attending his funeral on August 24, 2007. It was published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette. Roach died nine years ago...

Max Roach at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in Hackensack, NJ, 1956; photo by Francis Wolff What a find! Here’s the Max Roach Quintet, complete with an interview, at the Alhambra in Paris in 1960. Note...

January 10 was Max Roach’s 90th birthday anniversary.  I met Max in 1979 when I invited him to Worcester for the first solo concert of his career.  I was awestruck at the prospect of meeting...

At Work on Christmas Eve Milt Jackson, Miles Davis, Bud Powell Miles Davis had a genius for making the most of limitations, whether they involved his own as a trumpeter, or others whose playing compelled...

An Audience with Miles Last year, as I was watching an appearance by Miles Davis on Time Out, a Philadelphia talk show hosted by Bill Boggs, I was surprised to see John Swana, Christian McBride, and...

NPR Music reported this month on the 50th anniversary of Miles Davis’s concert at Philharmonic Hall (now Alice Tully) at Lincoln Center in New York.  The concert took place on Lincoln’s birthday,...

See It Now! European Concerts by Miles, Wayne, Herbie, Tony, and Ron In 2011, Sony released the first volume in its Bootleg Series, Miles Davis, Live in Europe. The four-disc collection documents...

No Blues A week ago I wrote about a pair of concert performances by the Miles Davis Quintet that were filmed during its 1967 tour with the Newport Jazz Festival in Europe. The tour essentially closed...