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TODAY'S ARTISTS


Winard Harper


Winard Harper

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Drummer Winard Harper is passionate about jazz. "This music is powerful," he says. "It can do a lot of good for people. If they'd spend some time each day listening to it, we would see many changes in the world."



Come Into the Light

Come Into the Light





The EDGE


In Memory Of

Eartha Kitt,

1927 - 2008

C'est Si Bon, a 1962 filmed performance

and

Freddie Hubbard,

1938 - 2008

Moanin', a 1962 filmed performance (with Art Blakey)

and

Harold Pinter,

1930 - 2008

A Tribute to Harold Pinter

and

Dock Ellis,

1945 - 2008

A 2007 sidewalk interview with Ellis


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Think About It


"To some will come a time when change itself is beauty, if not heaven."

- Edwin Arlington Robinson, 1869 - 1935



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Today's Gift Idea

Lithographs and Giclees by Barbara Freeman

Chet Baker

 


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Recently Published


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Marybeth Hamilton, author of In Search of the Blues

Leadbelly


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Kate Robinson is the winner of the Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction contest. Her story is called "Off-Key"

Kate Robinson


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Brad Snyder, author of A Well Paid Slave: Curt Flood's Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports

Curt Flood


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Jazz: Through the Life and Lens of Milt Hinton: An online photo exhibit



Milt Hinton

Laughing At Life, by Milt Hinton


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Ben Ratliff, author of Coltrane: The Story of a Sound

John Coltrane

Giant Steps


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In the twenty-sixth edition of Great Encounters, Milt Hinton, David Berger and Holly Maxson, authors of Playing the Changes: Milt Hinton's Life in Stories and Photographs, write about when Cab Calloway and Dizzy Gillespie fought over a thrown spitball

Dizzy Gillespie


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Ralph Ellison biographer Arnold Rampersad, on the complex life of the author of Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison


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What were five of your favorite record albums (or CD’s) when you were twenty years old, and what are five of your favorite CD’s today?

Among those participating in the eleventh edition of Reminiscing in Tempo: Memories and Opinion are Peter Erskine, Steve Khan, Terri Lynne Carrington, Jeff "Tain" Watts, and Ben Ratliff

Steve Khan


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Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life & Times of Doc Pomus author Alex Halberstadt

Doc Pomus

Fruity Woman


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Gary Giddins on his new collection of essays, Natural Selection

Gary Giddins


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Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock 'n' Roll author Rick Coleman

Fats Domino

I'm Gonna Be A Wheel Someday


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"The Future of Jazz" is the third column by Accent on Youth writer Zach Ferguson

Zach Ferguson


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Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era author Elizabeth Pepin

Pony Poindexter and Leo Wright at SFs Bop City, 1950's


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Stanley Crouch on his new collection of jazz essays, Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz

Stanley Crouch


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In cooperation with The Jazz Image author Lee Tanner, Jerry Jazz Musician presents "Masters of Jazz Photography," this month featuring the work of Jerry Stoll

photo of Pee Wee Russell and Gerry Mulligan by Jerry Stoll


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Up From New Orleans: Life Before, During and After Katrina -- A conversation with transplanted New Orleans musicians Devin Phillips and Mark DiFlorio

Devin Phillips


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In the twenty-sixth edition of Great Encounters, Milt Hinton, David Berger and Holly Maxson, authors of Playing the Changes: Milt Hinton's Life in Stories and Photographs, write about when Cab Calloway and Dizzy Gillespie fought over a thrown spitball

Dizzy Gillespie


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An Online Story of Jazz in New Orleans, with an introduction by Nat Hentoff

Jelly Roll Morton

New Orleans was a free and easy place, comments by Jelly Roll Morton


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Now in the Art Gallery

The Art of James Allen



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Test your wits! Subscribe to Quiz Show, which is delivered to your desktop every other Friday .



Play Quiz Show

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Heroes...We all had them. For years, we have been asking the guests we interview to talk about theirs. You can read them at our Heroes page. Now, we invite you to write about the person you recall being your own childhood hero. All submissions are published...



Willie Mays

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Coming Soon

Marybeth Hamilton, author of In Search of the Blues

...ensure you won't miss any of this (and much more in the works) by subscribing to our newsletter.

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"The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet."

- Mark Twain
JJM

 



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Judgement

by the Pete Zimmer Quintet

Down or Up




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Jerry Jazz Musician Home Page


Welcome to Jerry Jazz Musician

...A website devoted to jazz and American civilization...


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Nominated by the Jazz Journalists Association for "Best Website Concentrating on Jazz," 2006 and 2007


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June 6, 1967 - El Arish, Sinai. Israeli troops raise their flag at a captured airfield in El-Arish

"Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived."

- Abraham Lincoln

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Some Other Spring , by Dexter Gordon



January, 2009


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This Month at Jerry Jazz Musician



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Newly Published

Off-Key,

by Kate Robinson,

the winner of the November, 2008 Short Fiction Contest



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INTERVIEWS
In Search of the Blues author Marybeth Hamilton

Brad Snyder, author of A Well Paid Slave: Curt Flood's Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports

Ben Ratliff, author of Coltrane: The Story of a Sound

Ralph Ellison biographer Arnold Rampersad


Interview Archive

Leadbelly


Off-Key by Kate Robinson SUGGESTED READING
"Off-Key," by Kate Robinson, the Jerry Jazz Musician New Short Fiction winner ...Short Fiction Contest details

"LP Anniversary Song," a poem by Michael S. Harper

Summer Fiction, 2008; five short stories

New Orleans Stories: Jerry Jazz Musician-produced interviews and features, including the participation of writers Gary Giddins, Nat Hentoff, and Thomas Brothers, as well as jazz musicians whose lives were forever changed by Hurricane Katrina


CONTINUING FEATURES

In the twenty-sixth edition of Great Encounters, Milt Hinton, David Berger and Holly Maxson, authors of Playing the Changes: Milt Hinton's Life in Stories and Photographs, write about when Cab Calloway and Dizzy Gillespie fought over a thrown spitball

What were five of your favorite record albums (or CD’s) when you were twenty years old, and what are five of your favorite CD’s today? Among those participating in the eleventh edition of Reminiscing in Tempo: Memories and Opinion are Peter Erskine, Steve Khan, Terri Lynne Carrington, Jeff "Tain" Watts, and Ben Ratliff

"The Future of Jazz" is the third column by Accent on Youth writer Zach Ferguson

Conversations with Gary Giddins, thirteen discussions with the country's most eminent jazz writer

Heroes...We all had them. Our guests speak of theirs

Quiz Show! What do you know about jazz?
Dizzy Gillespie in 1939


Milt Hinton ART
Jazz: Through the Life and Lens of Milt Hinton: An online photo exhibit

In cooperation with The Jazz Image author Lee Tanner, Jerry Jazz Musician presents "Masters of Jazz Photography," this month featuring the work of Hugh Bell

Jerry Jazz Musician and Candlewick Press present Jazz ABZ, a gallery of impressions and text from the colorful book of the same name that features the poetry of Wynton Marsalis, the art of Paul Rogers, and the jazz history of Phil Schaap



COMING SOON

Marybeth Hamilton, author of In Search of the Blues

...and lots more in the works...

Ensure you won't miss any of this by subscribing to our newsletter.

Robert Johnson


Edwin Arlington Robinson Think About It

"To some will come a time when change itself is beauty, if not heaven."

- Poet Edwin Arlington Robinson, 1869 - 1935


In Search of the Blues

Leadbelly, Robert Johnson, Charley Patton -- we are all familiar with the story of the Delta blues. Fierce, raw voices; tormented drifters; deals with the devil at the crossroads at midnight. In an extraordinary reconstruction of the origins of the Delta blues, historian Marybeth Hamilton demonstrates that the story as we know it is largely a myth. According to Hamilton, the idea of something called Delta blues only emerged in the mid-twentieth century, the culmination of a longstanding white fascination with the exotic mysteries of black music. Hamilton participates in a conversation about her book, In Search of the Blues, with Jerry Jazz Musician contributor Paul Hallaman. 		Leadbelly


Curt Flood A Well Paid Slave: Curt Flood's Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports

Upon being traded to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1969, Curt Flood, an All-Star center fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals, wanted nothing more than to stay with St. Louis. But his only options were to report to Philadelphia or retire. Instead, Flood sued Major League Baseball for his freedom, hoping to invalidate the reserve clause in his contract, which bound a player to his team for life. In A Well-Paid Slave, the first extended treatment of Flood and his lawsuit, Brad Snyder examines this long-misunderstood case and its impact on professional sports. In a February 25, 2008 interview with Jerry Jazz Musician contributor Paul Hallaman, Snyder talks about this story that speaks to fans of sports history, legal affairs, and American culture.


Coltrane: The Story of a Sound

What was the essence of John Coltrane’s achievement that makes him so prized forty years after his death? What was it about his improvising, his bands, his compositions, his place within his era of jazz that left so many musicians and listeners so powerfully drawn to him? What would a John Coltrane look like now -- or are we looking for the wrong signs? The acclaimed jazz writer Ben Ratliff addresses these questions in Coltrane: The Story of a Sound, and joins us in a conversation about Coltrane's sound and influence in a January 29, 2008 interview. 		John Coltrane photo by Lee Tanner


Ralph Ellison Ralph Ellison: A Biography

Ralph Ellison is justly celebrated for his epochal novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953 and has become a classic of American literature. But Ellison’s strange inability to finish a second novel, despite his dogged efforts and soaring prestige, made him a supremely enigmatic figure. In Ralph Ellison: A Biography, Arnold Rampersad skillfully tells the story of a writer whose thunderous novel and astute, courageous essays on race, literature, and culture assure him of a permanent place in our literary heritage. In our August, 2007 interview, Rampersad discusses the book many are calling Ellison's "definitive" biography, as well as a "stellar model of literary biography."


Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life & Times of Doc Pomus

One of the most original, influential, and commercially successful American songwriters, Doc Pomus (1927-1991) is remembered best for the dozens of hits he wrote during rock 'n' roll's first decade. A role model for several generations of composers, Doc was renowned for his mastery of virtually every popular style, from the gutbucket rhythm and blues of "Lonely Avenue" to the symphonic invention of "Save the Last Dance for Me" to the pop confection of "Viva Las Vegas." Alex Halberstadt's Lonely Avenue : The Unlikely Life & Times of Doc Pomus, is a beautifully written narrative that reads like a novel, fortified by full access to Pomus's family and friends, voluminous journals, and archives. Halberstadt joins Jerry Jazz Musician contributor Paul Hallaman in a conversation about the life of this extraordinary American artist. 		Doc Pomus


Fats Domino Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock 'n' Roll

While many think of Elvis Presley as rock ’n’ roll’s driving force, the truth is that Fats Domino, whose records have sold more than 100 million copies, was the first to put it on the map with such hits as “Ain’t That a Shame” and “Blueberry Hill.” In Blue Monday, acclaimed R&B scholar Rick Coleman draws on a multitude of new interviews with Fats Domino and many other early musical legends to create a definitive biography of not just an extraordinary man but also a unique time and place: New Orleans at the birth of rock ’n’ roll. Coleman’s groundbreaking research makes for an immense cultural biography, and is the first to convey the full scope of Fats Domino’s impact on the popular music of the twentieth century. Coleman joins Jerry Jazz Musician contributor Adrienne Wartts in an October, 2006 interview.


From the Interview Archive



"Boogaloo" is a term author Arthur Kempton suggests as an alternative to what was conventionally described as soul music, and a word to distinguish black popular music from jazz. Boogaloo encompassed three generations of signal personalities, from Thomas A. Dorsey, the so-called "Father of Gospel Music," to Sam Cooke, Motown's Berry Gordy, Stax Record's Al Bell, and to the ascendency of hip-hop entrepreneurs Shug Knight and Russell Simmons. Their interconnections and influence on the art and commerce of black American popular music is the theme of Kempton's book, Boogaloo: The Quintessance of American Popular Music. He talks with us in an August, 2003 Jerry Jazz Musician interview.

Visit our interview archive

 Berry Gordy


Steve Khan Reminising in Tempo: Memories and Opinion

"Reminiscing in Tempo," is part of a continuing effort to provide Jerry Jazz Musician readers with unique forms of "edu-tainment." As often as possible, Jerry Jazz Musician poses one question via e mail to a small number of prominent and diverse people. The question is designed to provoke a lively response that will potentially include the memories and/or opinion of those solicited. In the feature's eleventh edition, Peter Erskine, Steve Khan, Terri Lynne Carrington, Jeff "Tain" Watts, and Ben Ratliff are among those who answer the question, What were five of your favorite record albums (or CD’s) when you were twenty years old, and what are five of your favorite CD’s today?


Accent on Youth

"The Future of Jazz" is the third column by Accent on Youth writer Zach Ferguson

Street Musicians, by William Johnson


Gary Giddins Conversations with Gary Giddins

In our continuing series of Conversations with Gary Giddins, Bing Crosby's biographer and the country's preeminent jazz writer -- who was prominently featured in Ken Burns' Jazz -– talks with us about jazz festivals


Great Encounters

Great Encounters are book excerpts that chronicle famous encounters among twentieth century cultural icons. This month, Milt Hinton, David Berger and Holly Maxson, authors of Playing the Changes: Milt Hinton's Life in Stories and Photographs, write about when Cab Calloway and Dizzy Gillespie fought over a thrown spitball 		Dizzy Gillespie in 1939


Roberto Clemente was a hero to NPR's Scott Simon Heroes

Heroes...We all had them. Mantle, Mays, Satchel Paige, Wonderwoman, Davy Crockett - even Pippi Longstocking!

Excerpted from exclusive Jerry Jazz Musician interviews, our guests talk of theirs...

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"A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom."

- Bob Dylan



New Orleans Stories

Original Jerry Jazz Musician produced content devoted to the importance of New Orleans culture, including a conversation on the city with Gary Giddins; An Online Story of Jazz in New Orleans -- with an introduction by Nat Hentoff; and Up From New Orleans: Life Before, During, and After Katrina -- a conversation with transplanted New Orleans musicians Devin Phillips and Mark DiFlorio 		Louis Armstrong


John Coltrane's A Love Supreme The A Love Supreme Interviews

John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme is a deeply moving suite of spirit and song, and one of the twentieth century’s most critically acclaimed musical works. The A Love Supreme Interviews take shape around the central theme of the recording’s lasting effect on those we talk to. McCoy Tyner, Gary Giddins, Joshua Redman, Ashley Kahn, Francis Davis, Nat Hentoff, poet Michael Harper and others participate.

Listen to poet Michael Harper read

Dear John, Dear Coltrane.



New Short Fiction Award

Kate Robinson is the winner of the Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction contest. Her story is called "Off-Key".

New Contest Details

Read contest winning stories

Off-Key by Kate Robinson


Ralph Ellison The Ralph Ellison Project

Ralph Ellison left an indelible mark on our culture, and not only because of Invisible Man. He was friendly with and mentored many of today's most influential critics and musicians. It is a worthwhile endeavor to reach back and discover the rich world he wrote of, and to understand his philosophy surrounding music and its connection to American traditions, rituals and literature. In our critically acclaimed The Ralph Ellison Project, nine prominent American writers, educators and filmmakers discuss Ellison's life, and the complex and intriguing man at its core...


Celebrating African American History

Our interviews are a great source of entertainment and information, featuring noted historians, biographers, critics and musicians who take on the topics of Ralph Ellison, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Jack Johnson, Reverend Ralph Abernathy, Richard Wright, the Civil Rights Movement, the influence of jazz on American culture, and many others. Visit our page celebrating African American History. 		Jack Johnson is discussed with biographer Geoffrey Ward


A portrait of Charlie Parker by Theo Moore The Art Gallery

Among the world's finest music art can be viewed on your monitor when you visit the Jerry Jazz Musician Art Gallery...Paintings, sculpture, and digital photographs by 33 artists are on display now. Artist Theo Moore's Bird is an example of what you will find here.


Quiz Show!

Before working with Woody Herman (and eventually marrying his singer Frances Wayne), this renowned composer/arranger contributed arrangements to Earl Hines' big band, and subsequently played trumpet with, among others, Charlie Barnet, Horace Heidt and Charlie Spivak. Who was he?

Play Quiz Show!

Miles by Leith OMalley


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