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Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra: A 50th Anniversary Celebration
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.This piece first appeared on the blog on July 5, 2011. I am re-posting it to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Band. The following excerpt...
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Three Vignettes About Jazz
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Stories told by musicians about other Jazz musicians usually reflect more about the musician's personality and character than about their...
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Shelly Manne on 52nd Street [From the Archives]
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Jazz was just beginning in 1920 and drummer Shelly Manne, in a sense, began with it as 1920 was also the year of his birth.Twenty years...
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Inside The New Bill Evans Trio With Gene Lees
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Bill Evans-Jim Hall UNDERCURRENT—United Artists 14003: My Funny Valentine; I Hear a Rhapsody; Dream Gypsy; Romain; Skating in Central...
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Clare Fischer - Surging Ahead
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“Think you can lick it? Get to the wicket.Buy you a ticket. Go!Go by bus, by plane, by car, by train...New York, N.Y..What they call a...
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Wynton Kelly - "A Happy Feeling"
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Of the late pianist Wynton Kelly [1931-1971], Richard Cook and Brian Morton in their Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed. have written: “His...
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"The Far-Out World of Jack Sheldon " by John Tynan
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“... For most of his musical career, [Jack] Sheldon has been best known as an exceptional exponent of the cooler West Coast trumpet sound. …...
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Bob Mintzer - All L.A. Big Band
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Recently, we reviewed on these pages new CD’s from New York based big bands led by John Fedchock, Hector Martignon and Dick Oatts/Mats...
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Klook: Kenny Clarke and The Beginnings of Modern Jazz Drumming
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.How did the Jazz world get from Gene Krupa to Philly Joe Jones?The answer to that question is as central as asking how it got from Benny...
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Jazz Is "Serious" Music - Grover Sales
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved."It was difficult for the public, and impossible for the musical establishment, to take "seriously" a music played by a black subculture...
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Lou Caputo Not So Big Band - "Uh Oh!"
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.In 1959, one of my most cherished LP acquisitions was Gerry Mulligan’s Columbia LP What Is There To Say [CL 1307].Gerry was a taskmasters who...
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Enrico Pieranunzi - My Songbook
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“When Chet decided that we should play a particular piece it was because at that moment he needed exactly that piece to express himself. For...
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Bill Crow: On Becoming A Bassist By GENE FEEHAN
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Bassist Bill Crow is one of the “good guys” in the music and the editorial staff at JazzProfiles always finds room on these pages for more...
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Remembering Willie Bobo: 1934-1983
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Picture this; two drummers talking beside a drum kit that’s set-up inside the Professional Drum Shop on Vine Street in Hollywood, CA just...
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"How To Listen to Jazz" by Ted Gioia - The JazzProfiles Synopsis
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“A revealing story is told of bassist Charles Mingus, who led some of the most creative jazz bands from the 1950s into the 1970s. When one of...
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"Walpurgis Night" - Whitney Balliett on Buddy Rich
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“Whitney Balliett ... was above all a poet, who pursued poetry by other means. He wrote for The New Yorker magazine for almost fifty years,...
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Dave Brubeck and Stan Kenton: Alike and Unalike
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.The following piece by Harry Frost touches on a relationship that I never knew existed. Dave Brubeck and Stan Kenton took such widely divergent...
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"George Russell Finds Music's Missing Link" by Bob Blumenthal
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.The editorial staff at JazzProfiles has made a concerted effort to post as much of the Jazz literature on composer-arranger George Russell that...
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Mark Murphy: The Slow Way Up by Gene Lees
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“The singer who has most influenced Murphy, by his own reckoning, is Peggy Lee. "She has such a creative approach through the lyrics," he said,...
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"Zutty Singleton: The Pioneer That Jazz Forgot" by Martin Williams
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.As long as Martin Williams was around, a man that Gary Giddins has called “... the most influential Jazz critic of his generation,” there would...
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