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Lambert Hendricks Ross – Everybody’s LHR
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.It never ceased to amaze me then - and it continues to amaze me now - how many people, who know very little, if nothing, about Jazz are...
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Theodore "Fats" Navarro: 1923-1950 - A Career Retrospective
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“Fats was a spectacular musician because, in a time when cats arrived on the scene with nothing, he came on with everything: he could...
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Jimmy Rowles: Sprinkling Jazz
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“Long acknowledged as the favorite accompanist of every singer for whom he played, Rowles is an artist of consummate harmonic...
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Dave McKenna [1930-2008] - The Ted Panken Interview
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“Dave McKenna was simply one of the legends of the jazz piano. He, of course, would probably have disagreed. "I don't know if I qualify as a...
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Milt Hinton and The "New York Rhythm Section"
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.The following anecdote is drawn from Milt’s collection of stories and photographs as contained in Playing the Changes, which also contains a CD...
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Ella and Henry - Fitzgerald and Pleasants,That Is!
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved."I never knew how good our songs were," Ira Gershwin once said to George T. Simon, "until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing them."“And then...
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Jeru's Journey by Sanford Josephson - Four Appreciations
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Jazz author Sanford Josephson “stopped by” the editorial offices of JazzProfiles recently and left off four reviews of his recent book Jeru’s...
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An Interview with Alan Broadbent 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 very generous friend to these pages in his allowance...
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Billy Eckstine: The Evolution of The First Bebop Big Band
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“BILLY ECKSTINE, ..., had a modern, swinging band during the mid-forties. He had been singing with Earl Hines for a number of years when one of...
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Didier Lockwood: Jazz and the Violin
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Not everyone likes Jazz played on a violin. For some fans, the music seems out of place when performed on this instrument. Those who...
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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...
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University of North Texas Recently Released Big Band Jazz CDs
.© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved. Recently, thanks to the generosity Ben Scholz of Scholz Productions, I have been the beneficiary of surfeit of riches in the form of five...
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Laurie Dapice - A New Face in Vocal Jazz
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved."A Buried Treasure"- Rodney Yearby Sr; Journalist Utica Phoenix News."A Beautiful Voice; One of the Best in the World"- Todd Barkan; Keystone...
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Martial Solal Solo Piano: Unreleased 1966 Los Angeles Sessions
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“Martial Solal has always gone his own way, along a straight and rising path which compels respect: some forty years without ever deviating...
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"Sen's Fortress" - The Laurence Fish Quintet
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.In the video game, Dark Souls, Sen's Fortress is dark castle filled with monstrous reptilian guards, boulder throwing giants and numerous traps...
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Mark Murphy: Midnight Mood
© -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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"The Bebop Laboratory" - in Ross Russell - BIRD LIVES!
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Since Ross Russell's Bird Lives! The High Life and Hard Times of Charlie (Yardbird) Parker was first published in 1973, there have been a...
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Monty Alexander and The Jazz Critics: "Here Comes The Sun"
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.The recent arrival of his Here Comes The Sun CDon an audio enhanced MPS disc [0212406 MSW] reminded me of what a swinga Monty Alexander is and...
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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...
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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...
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