Cadenza
December 2005 By Gary Giddins
Brand New Old Music
So I was lying back, listening to three of my favorite LP box sets on the old turn-table--Buddy Bolden's Funky Butts and Uptown Struts: Bootleg Recordings, Volumes 1-6, Fate Marable's Rollin' on the River, 1918-21 and King Oliver's Live! From Lincoln Gardens...
November 2005 By Gary Giddins
The Battle of New Orleans
The waters that drowned New Orleans are the waters that established the incomparable city as a key port before the railroad replaced shipping as the primary vehicle of trade. They gave New Orleans a unique cultural character, blending elements of the continental...
October 2005 By Gary Giddins
Great Danes
How disconcerting to arrive at Copenhagen Airport in early July, midway through the Copenhagen Jazz Festival (CJF), and run into Joe Lovano and Hank Jones, who had played the previous evening's tribute to Ben Webster and were now flying out. The schedule...
September 2005 By Gary Giddins
Jubilant Power
On June 3, the eve of his 70th birthday, Ted Curson played the night away with Henry Grimes at Greenwich Village’s Cornelia Street Café. With jazz, you never know: A much-hyped event may sink into a slough of expectations and a little-noted one-nighter keep...
July/August 2005 By Gary Giddins
Weep for Wes
Among seminal albums of the 1960s, Wes Montgomery's Smokin' at the Half Note holds a unique place. The 1965 recording represented the guitarist's rare return to small groups; except for an uneven quartet session with Jimmy Smith, it would be his last. Verve...
June 2005 By Gary Giddins
Birds of a Feather
Roy Haynes, opening at the Village Vanguard two days after his 80th birthday, told me that earlier in the day a newspaper editor complained about a new photograph: "This must be old. Don't we have something recent?" Even in person, it's difficult to see...
May 2005 By Gary Giddins
Holiday Seasons
We live under the sway of artists who haunt our lives, who take hold at an early age and never let go; they inform us of our progress in the world as our perceptions of them change. Faulkner once said that Don Quixote had to be read three times, in childhood...
April 2005 By Gary Giddins
Here's Ware
David S. Ware's Live in the World may be a gamble for him and his label, Thirsty Ear, but it's a treasure for his admirers. This three-volume offering (four hours of music) is a thunderous declaration that consists of three quartet performances: a 1998 radio...
March 2005 By Gary Giddins
Last Year's CD Shelf
The past year was strong enough on the CD front to make me want to revisit favorite discs and comment on some of those I feel reasonably certain will remain in my lifetime CD rotation. Unlike my colleagues, who have a superior sense of deadline responsibility...
January/February 2005 By Gary Giddins
Post-Jazz TV
When Ken Burns' Jazz aired in 2001, I figured that its popular acclaim coupled with the complaints of those who faulted it for ignoring the past 40 years (particularly the avant-garde) would unleash a slew of documentaries to set things right. I did hear...
