Jazz

A Sense of Wonder: Ricky Jay, The Magic Arts and Jazz Ricky Jay; photo by Dave Allocca/Starpix/REX/Shutterstock As I watched Ricky Jay’s amazing sleight-of-hand in the new documentary Deceptive...

60 years ago today, Richard Nixon disavowed charges that he was on the take in his “Checkers” speech, but he acknowledged that his family’s black and white cocker spaniel was a gift, and they weren’t giving...

Happy 80th Birthday! Today is Roswell Rudd’s 80th birthday. From Hotchkiss to Yale, Eli’s Chosen Six to the New York Art Quartet, Herbie Nichols to Archie Shepp, Steve Lacy to Cecil Taylor, Alan Lomax...

Roswell Rudd Roswell Rudd died on December 21. He was 82 and had been ill with prostate cancer. Roswell, who alluded to his centuries-old American roots in a composition entitled “Yankee No...

Roy Hargrove Roy Hargrove, the brilliant, Texas-born trumpeter, died on Friday, November 2, at age 49 from cardiac arrest following his hospitalization in New Jersey for kidney disease. Roy was one of...

Still Snap! Crackle! at 88 Back in the day, a magazine article highlighting the longevity of an esteemed group of Boston Brahmins asked one of the octogenarians, it may have been Samuel Eliot Morison,...

It was a big deal at 75, 80, and 85, but now that Roy Haynes’s 90th birthday is here, it feels routine. Roy’s tapped skins and cymbals for over 70 years, and the fashion plate from Roxbury has a franchise...

Today is Ruby Braff’s birthday anniversary.  The cornetist was born in Boston in 1927.  Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, and Lester Young were his heroes. By most accounts Ruby was a prickly personality,...

Ruby Braff Album Today is Ruby Braff’s 90th birthday anniversary. The cornetist was born in Boston in 1927. Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, and Lester Young were his...

What are the odds that on the day #RudyVanGelder died, I’d already scheduled for Jazz à la Mode an album– Wayne Shorter’s Adam’s Apple– that was recorded at his...