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Shorty Rogers As Interviewed By Steve Voce
© - Steven A. Cerra - copyright protected; all rights reserved."sprezzaturaShorty Rogers's music exemplifies what the Italian courtier Castiglione called sprezzatura — the ability to do difficult...
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Shorty Rogers - Chances Are ... It Swings
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.At the time of its issuance in 1959, I took the personnel on Shorty Rogers’ RCA album Chances Are It Swings [RD-27149 MONO; LSP-1978 Stereo]...
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Bam Bam Bam !!!
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.While reflecting on this piece after it had finished researching and compiling it, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles was amazed to note...
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Dudley Moore on Why Erroll Garner Is "Easy to Love"
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“Passion . . . that's what he had . . . passion. And that's what all great artists have. A sprinkling of the demonic, a yearning for the...
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Henry "Red" Allen
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.I met Henry “Red” Allen before I ever heard him play a note on trumpet. The venue was the luncheon buffet at The Viking Hotel in Newport, Rhode...
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Art Tatum - Genius in Prospect and Retrospect
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“Genius is an overworked word in this era of thunderous hyperbolic press agency. Still, when one considers Arthur Tatum, there is no other...
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Balliett on Bix - "The Other Cheek"
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, who died in 1931 at the age of twenty-eight, has been the subject of so much glorified writing that it is...
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Shelly Manne - The Kenton Years, Parts 1-6 Complete
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.With Shelly Manne joining the Kenton organization, Stan had found the final link that would enable him to expand the band's concept, to truly...
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CHICO HAMILTON QUINTET 1955-1960 by Gordon Jack
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved. Gordon Jack is a frequent contributor to the Jazz Journaland a very generous friend...
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Allyn Ferguson
© -Steven Cerra. Copyright protected; all rights reserved."The cerebral content of music gradually emerges to change its whole function. The minuet was the movement of symphonies; it was taken right...
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Pat Martino: First Impressions
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“The guitar has its own mystique. The most ancient of instruments, it is the most pervasive in contemporary music. Those who mastered its...
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A Conversation About Jazz with Mike Abene
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.This is the sixth in series of Jazz interviews that have appeared on the blog and I consider each of them to be a hallmark of my work on...
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Tom's Soul - Tom Harrell's Body and Soul
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Trumpet and Flugelhorn player Tom Harrell has been performing with pianist Dado Moroni for almost thirty years when, after leaving Phil...
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Miles Davis and John Coltrane - One More Time
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.On of my favorite ways to listen to Jazz is to load my CD player with the five albums that the classic Miles Davis Quintet recorded for...
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Cool Concepts Cars and Cool Jazz – “Two of a Mind”
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.I’m sure that everyone from movie action heroes to deep, philosophical thinkers have used the phrase – “there are no coincidences” and whether...
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Jimmy Gourley - A Portrait of An American Jazz Guitarist in Paris
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.The critic and author, Mike Zwerin, who for many years wrote a column on Jazz for The International Herald Tribune, often asserted that...
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"Looking East: Hank Mobley in Europe, 1968 - 1970" by Simon Spillett
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.This is a second in a series of postings about Hank Mobley, the tenor saxophonist, composer-arranger and bandleader-sideman who lived from...
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