Tom Reney

Today marks the centennial of Charlie Parker's birth. Born August 29, 1920, in Kansas City, Kansas, and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, Parker died at the 5th Avenue home of Pannonica de Koenigswarter, the so-called Jazz Baroness, on March 12, 1955 at the age of 34. Now 65 years later, the saxophonist known as Bird (or Yardbird) remains one of the most heralded and mythical figures of 20th century music. Among Bird's many admirers, Lennie Tristano was especially respectful of his character and astute in his assessments of the saxophonist's music.

I've just listened all the way through Bob Dylan's "Murder Most Foul" for the first time. I'll move on to the rest of his new album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, this weekend. A musician friend says it's "heavy and spooky," and he's got me eager to hear, "Goodbye Jimmy Reed." I've always taken Dylan in moderate measure, given him plenty of time. For 60 years, he's been our chief chronicler, and in his long ballad for JFK, the music and mood are stately, elegiac, and emphatic, which feels right both for his subject and for the state of the nation today.

Ellis Marsalis, Jr., pianist and patriarch of the world's most famous jazz family, died on April 1 at 85. He'd been hospitalized with Coronavirus symptoms. New Orleans currently has the most concentrated Covid-19 death rate in the nation.

The documentary, Miles Davis: The Birth of the Cool, will be shown in the American Masters series on PBS on February 25.  The film includes a scene in which Archie Shepp recalls an encounter he had with the trumpeter at the Village Vanguard on Thanksgiving weekend in 1965. The scene is brief and only scratches the surface of what proved to be a disruptive event in which Shepp defied Miles by storming the bandstand and sitting in with his group.

"Tell 'em what happened! Tell ‘em what happened!” Duke Ellington exhorts Johnny "Jeep" Hodges in this 1957 performance of “Jeep’s Blues,” at a dance concert in Carrolton, Pennsylvania.

Malcolm John Rebennack, Jr., who was better known as Dr. John the Night Tripper, died on Thursday, June 6, at age 77. Among his many musical associations, he was a featured member of the RCO All-Stars, a group that drummer Levon Helm formed after the break-up of The Band. Great but short-lived, RCO made one album and a memorable appearance on Saturday Night Live in 1977. There the principles— Dr. John, Levon Helm, and Paul Butterfield— were introduced by host Broderick Crawford.

As befitting the legacy of Duke Ellington, who led his renowned orchestra for nearly 50 years and criss-crossed the globe as an unofficial musical ambassador, there are Duke Ellington Society chapters in Toronto, Stockholm, London, and Paris, in addition to New York, Los Angeles, and Ellington’s birthplace, Washington, D.C. I’ve been a member and have attended several of TDES’s gatherings at St.

A few weeks ago (March 8, 2019), the New York Times ran a piece entitled, “Is This the Greatest Photo in Jazz History?” I was immediately struck by the silly conceit of declaring anything the greatest (except, that is, for the ice cream made from dairy cows at a local farm that I’ve assiduously avoided since February 5, 2017), but of course I read on. Robert Parent’s photo depicts Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and Roy Haynes, playing at the Open Door in Greenwich Village on September 13, 1953.

Today is Muddy Waters's 106th birthday anniversary. Born McKinley Morganfield on April 4, 1913, Muddy was raised on the Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi, before moving to Chicago in 1943.

Among Charlie Parker's many admirers, Lennie Tristano was especially respectful of Bird's character and astute in his assessments of the saxophonist's music.  The blind pianist recognized Parker as the single most important innovator of modern jazz, and rejected the commonly held view that bebop was formulated in a workshop-like atmosphere at Minton’s and Monroe’s and other after-hours venues.

Nat King Cole was born on March 17, 1919. For his centennial, I'm posting a couple of recordings by the great singer-pianist, and a rare photo of Nat with Dick LaPalm. LaPalm was an advance man and factotum for Nat between 1950 and '65, and then a tireless advocate for his legacy and a friend and counsel to the Cole family until his death in 2013. Nat and Dick are seen in the photo walking along Michigan Avenue in LaPalm's hometown of Chicago. He's a giveaway in profile, but even from behind, there can be no doubt that this is Mr. Cole.

Three of the four gentlemen in this photo were guiding lights in my Worcester youth. Howie Jefferson (far left) was a great tenor player who could have been a contender on the national scene but chose to stay close to home and ply his trade at weddings and bar mitzvahs and GB gigs galore.

Ed Bickert, the renowned Canadian-born guitarist who was a prominent figure on the Toronto jazz scene, died on February 28 at 86. I learned of Bickert through his great work with Paul Desmond on Pure Desmond (1975) and with Ruby Braff on the trumpeter's Sackville sessions in Toronto (1979), and took additional notice when Dave McKenna played on his 1989 release, Third Floor Richard.

Jelly Roll Morton immortalized the most mythical of New Orleans jazz pioneers in his composition, "I Thought i Heard Buddy Bolden Say." He recorded it twice in 1939, first for RCA Bluebird with a band that included New Orleanians Sidney Bechet, Albert Nicholas, Wellman Braud, and Zutty Singleton. Four months later, on December 16, 1939, he recorded the tune as "Buddy Bolden's Blues" on a solo session for General Records. It was later released in an album by Commodore.  

Notwithstanding the bold and daring recordings made by Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, Abbey Lincoln, Charles Mingus, and other musicians who found common cause with the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950’s and early ‘60’s, jazz was absent from the musical proceedings at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  Mahalia Jackson, Joan Baez, Odetta, Bob Dylan, Josh White, Bernice Reagan (later a founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock), and Peter, Paul & Mary were accorded the musical honors.  However, no less a figure than the event's headliner, Dr.

Here's a moving film tribute to Allison Miner, a beautiful spirit who made a major difference to the preservation and perpetuation of the musical culture of New Orleans between her arrival in the Crescent City in 1967 and her death in 1995 at age 46. Allison was instrumental in establishing the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, albeit with a sexist-driven subordinate role and title that she discusses in Amy Nesbitt's film.

Joseph Jarman, who died on Wednesday, January 9, at 81, was an icon of free jazz and best known for his long association with the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and raised in Chicago, Jarman played woodwinds (saxophones, flutes, and clarinet) and was a founding member of both the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and the AEC.

My brother David, who lives in Paris, took this photograph during a trip he made to Sardinia after Christmas. His email subject line read “Azure,” which immediately brought to mind Duke Ellington’s song of that name. Ellington described Azure as “a little dulcet piece which portrays a blue mood.” Blue was Ellington's favorite color. When his autobiography, Music Is My Mistress, was published in 1973, its dust jacket was brown. That had been his least favorite since 1935, for he was wearing a brown suit on the day his mother died.

My passion for New Orleans music ramped up to infatuation on July 3, 1973, when I heard Professor Longhair for the first time in Central Park.  The experience still stands as the single greatest unanticipated musical discovery of my life.  I knew nothing about Fess at the time and it’s unlikely I’d heard him on record.  The bulk of the pianist’s recordings had been made two decades earlier and by the early 60’s he’d fallen into obscurity, spending the next decade working odd jobs and gambling.  But his single, “Go to the Mardi Gras,” remained a seasonal favorite in the Crescent City, and in

The famed vocalist Nancy Wilson died on Thursday at her home near Los Angeles. She was 81. The Chillicothe, Ohio, native was an elegant beauty whom I first knew of through her early 1960s television appearances as both a singer and actress. I remember feeling somewhat mesmerized by her, and as I've reviewed clips of her on YouTube in recent years, I've concluded that it was her stillness and self-possession that initially drew me in; compared with the outsized figures I was accustomed to seeing on TV, she seemed perfectly calm and composed.

Count Basie called Joe Williams his "Number One son." The great singer first worked with Basie's Octet in 1950, and when he re-joined Basie in 1955 the success he'd long sought-- he was 37 by then-- was suddenly his with Count Basie Swings, Joe Williams Sings. The Verve Records album was bookended by distinctly different songs that shared similar titles, "Every Day (I Have the Blues)," and "Ev'ry Day," and everything in between its covers was hard-swinging, deeply expressive, brilliantly arranged and perfectly played.

For Worcester-born acolytes like me and Chet Williamson, the devoted author of Falling Rains of Life, a new on-line biography of Jaki Byard, it was inevitable that as teenaged converts to jazz in the late 1960s, John A. Byard, Jr. would become an intriguing figure for us, and in time even heroic.

Today is the great bluesman Jimmy Johnson's 90th birthday. I last saw him just over a year ago in Chicago, where he was the musical highlight of the trip, and at 88, still equally compelling as a singer and guitarist. Johnson's repertoire includes classics by B.B. King and T-Bone Walker, but the primary influences on his tough, minor key-driven blues were his West Side Chicago peers Magic Sam, Buddy Guy, and the recently deceased Otis Rush.

The grandest joy I've experienced since the Red Sox won the World Series last month was opening a mailer this week from Arbors Records and discovering a new Dave McKenna album. Dave McKenna in Madison was recorded in 1991, and it sounds as good as anything I've ever heard by the pianist, which is to say it's consistent with the brilliance of everything I ever heard him play.