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Art Farmer, Benny Golson and The Jazztet
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“It's amazing when you think back about how many great musicians were working together then. You need a little mileage to see how good it...
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Shelly Manne and His Men "Live" at The Manne Hole
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“Enthusiasm” palpably exudes from the following insert notes by the esteemed Jazz critic and author Leonard Feather which he penned for the...
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Charlie Palmieri - El Gigante de Las Blancas y Las Negras
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.I have shared before on these pages how during my earliest attempts at playing Latin drum rhythms I was admonished to - “Do it right!; “Hey...
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Stan Getz - The Complete Roost Recordings
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“*****Stan Getz:The Complete Roost Recordings Roost 859622-2 3CD “So much attention has fallen on Getz's later work that these magnificent...
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Fred Hersch's Jazz Epiphany
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“Given … [the] dramatic incidents in Mr. Hersch’s life, readers might be tempted to skip over the portions of this book dealing with the craft...
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Barney Wilen: Jazz, French Culture and Bleak Chic
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.At one point in my professional career, Paris was a frequent destination of my business travels. The work involved a large insurance...
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Caricature and Syncopation – The Art of The Unexpected
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.In Art, caricature is generally a gross exaggeration and/or oversimplification of someone’s features.In Jazz, syncopation comes from a rhythmic...
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Art Blakey and Muscle Jazz
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“Art Blakey was one of jazz's staunchest advocates throughout his long life in the music. The little speech he would deliver at the end of...
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Erwin Blumenfeld and Bill Evans - Superimposition and Overdubbing [Revisited]]
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Given the vagaries of copyright law, the blog got one back from the regulators and it features in the form of the video at the end of this...
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Lennie Tristano On Multi-Taping, Competition, Recording Echo, Rhythm Sections...
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Nat Hentoff is right about one thing, when you talk with Lennie Tristano as he did in the following interview which appeared in the May...
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The Evolution of the Piano in Jazz
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“... the chief source of what jazz piano became was Earl Hines. ...Armstrong's opening cadenza on West End Blues seems to have been to a...
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The Chico Hamilton Quintet: Jazz Meets Broadway Shows
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.In his insert notes to TheComplete Pacific Jazz Recordings of the Chico Hamilton Quintet [MD6-175], author Bob Gordon writes:“The popularity of...
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André Previn - The Jazz Years in California
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rightsI recently came across a copy of the 1996 Ballads CD that André Previn made for Angel Records and from which the above photograph by Joanne O’Brien is...
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Boogie Woogie - The First Day to R.I.P. - 1939-1949
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“For all its supposed "primitiveness," boogie-woogie has never been mastered by a schooled, technically finished pianist. The music was largely...
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Julian and Nat: The Adderley Brothers
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“A great popularizer, and a leader in the soul-jazz style of the '6os, Cannon was a much-loved figure who helped keep jazz before an audience...
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Remembering Sheldon Meyer – Jazz Editor
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.For all the reasons explained below, Sheldon Meyer was one of the most important persons in the Jazz World of the second half of the 20th...
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Minton’s: Then and Now
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.While reviewing a previous newspaper clipping in my files on the reopening of Minton’s Playhouse, the New York City birthplace of Bebop in the...
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Julian "Cannonball" Adderley - Jump for Joy
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“Long a critically undervalued figure, Cannonball Adderley's status as a master communicator in jazz has increased since his sadly early death....
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Jazz from Pittsburgh
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.The following discourse on Jazz musicians congregating in and emanating from a particular city is one that could have be written about any...
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Cannonball Adderley - "The View From Within" by Orrin Keepnews
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Next to his brother Nat, I don’t think anyone had a closer musical relationship to Julian “Cannonball” Adderley than Orrin Keepnews for all the...
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