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We’ve been reading news today about music composed for monkeys. Most animals don’t respond to music. But is that because music per se is incomprehensible to them, or because it’s customarily created from the spectrum […]
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Miles Davis once said that the history of jazz could be summed up by two names: Charlie Parker and LOUIS ARMSTRONG (1901-71). I’d go further, and claim that the ABC of 20th century pop culture […]
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For a good chunk of the 1940s, the R&B chart (or the “race records” chart, as Billboard called it then) might just as well have been called the LOUIS JORDAN (1908-75) chart: he scored hit […]
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For much of the 1940s, LENA HORNE (born 1917), Hollywood’s “sepia Cinderella,” was relegated to one or two set-piece numbers per film. Opulent, glamorous, and static, her turns in Two Girls and a Sailor and […]
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MILES DAVIS (1926-91) was the son of a dentist, but visited a primal Oedipal rebellion upon the smug bourgeois sadism of his father’s profession. A dentist, as you know, uses your mouth to cause you […]
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FATS WALLER (1904-43) lives in some impossible space between Paganini, St. Augustine, and James Brown. Tracks like “Handful of Keys” show Fats challenging Art Tatum in sublime stride-piano ostentation. But Waller was also fearlessly upfront […]
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The hilo grip on culture may be esoteric, but it’s intimate and comprehensive. It’s a storied jazz combo from the mid-twentieth century — featuring Grammy winner Gene Puerling! It’s a high-concept, low-budget film festival ( […]
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