Clik here to view.
Jazz & JFK by Steven Harris - Part 3
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Steven D. Harris is the author of The Kenton Kronicles: A Biography of Modern America’s Man of Music, Stan Kenton. New and Used Hardcover and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Jazz & JFK by Steven Harris - Part 4
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Steven D. Harris is the author of The Kenton Kronicles: A Biography of Modern America’s Man of Music, Stan Kenton. New and Used Hardcover and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Jazz & JFK by Steven Harris - Part 5
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“Stan Levey's foray into the big time also included playing for John F. Kennedy. Stan came into the Kennedy scene early in the young senator's...
View ArticleClik here to view.
"Experiencing Big Band Jazz" by Jeffrey Sultanof
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“Hi Jeffrey: Just wondering, you mention George Simon's Big Band Jazz in your Introduction, but you do not include it in the Suggested Reading...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Harry James: Parts 1-6 Complete
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Some think he is “the best of all,” others accuse him of having gone too blatantly commercial. Like in many things in life, the truth about...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Glenn Miller Years - Parts 1-7 Complete
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“... no artist should ever be evaluated other than by his intention. And Glenn Miller had no intention of leading a jazz band, despite the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Class Reunion - The Bobby Shew Quintet
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.BOBBY SHEW was born in Albuquerque. NM in 1941. Bobby Shew started playing trumpet when he was a kid, and after leaving the service in 1964. he...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Introducing Jimmy Greene
© -Steven Cerra. Copyright protected; all rights reserved.My introduction to the tenor sax work of Jimmy Greene might not have occurred at all except for the fact that a friend who shares my high...
View ArticleClik here to view.
"STAN AND GERRY" - Occasional Collaborators" by Gordon Jack
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved. As many of you know, Gordon Jack is a frequent contributor to the Jazz Journaland a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Lennie Tristano - "C Minor Complex"
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.As J. Bradford Robinson explains in the following excerpt from The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz [Barry Kernfeld, ed.]:“Tristano's music...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bill Charlap - "Elevating the Great American Songbook" by Terry Teachout
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.The following appeared in the December 18, 2017 edition of the Wall Street Journal. From the standpoint of swinging Jazz pianists who also...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Gretsch Drum Night At Birdland
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Anyone who has been a casual visitor to these pages know that I have a bias toward Jazz drumming, what I think of as the heartbeat of...
View Article--- Article Removed ---
*** *** *** RSSing Note: Article removed by member request. *** ***
View ArticleClik here to view.
Roger Kellaway and Finding New Wonders
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Alto saxophonist, Phil Woods calls him Jazz’s Boswell. Phil ought to know as he has been around long enough to have been involved in over half...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Jazz Big Band Composer-Arrangers: What They Do and How They Do It
© -Steven Cerra. Copyright protected; all rights reserved.Have you ever wondered why a Jazz big band works the way it does, let alone, how it works at all?Why the instrumentation is the way it is -...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Pencil Pushers [aka The Arrangers or "Writers"]
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.The following is one of my favorite Gene Lees essays. Perhaps the clever title has something to do with making it so, but I’ve always found it...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hugo Friedhofer - A Compositional and Orchestral Genius
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved."But if you feel about music as I do, you are always working at the outer periphery of your abilities. And that makes you insecure."Look,"...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Roger Kellaway - STRIDE!
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Bill Crow - bassist, author and all-round good guy, has a rule-to-live-by, one which he stresses over-and-over again, and it is that -...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ray Brown: A Walking Sound
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“The warmth toward, the admiration for, this magnificent and pioneering musician were almost palpable. It amounted to reverence. And it was not...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Montgomery Brothers and George Shearing: An Intriguing Musical Collaboration
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.One of the aspects of Jazz that I have always been intrigued with is its many styles.If, as Louis Armstrong states – “Jazz is who you are” –...
View Article