Album Reviews

Pianist Jeff Barnhart and guitarist Spats Langham, both of whom sing in their own charming way, love playing together. They enjoy coming up with obscure

No, the music on The Unheard Artie Shaw does not contain new recordings by the great clarinetist. Instead, the set released by the Hep label

Jerry Krahn’s New Orleans Parlor String Band has released a six-song promo CD that I very much enjoyed. With this disc, Jerry is reviving a

Peggy Lee (1920-2002) was at one of her highpoints of her career in 1955. Her prime singing years were during 1942-68 and in 1955 (the

In anticipation of reviewing Here We Go! I found myself excitedly in line at the Pulaski Meat Market, a landmark institution anchoring a quiet corner

Bud Freeman (1906-91) was one of the greatest tenor-saxophonists of all time. When he emerged in the late 1920s, his only competition on tenor was

With the success of Louis Armstrong’s recordings for Okeh, several other labels in 1929 signed promising trumpeter-vocalists in the hope of equaling Armstrong’s success. Victor

Trombonist and record producer Delfeayo Marsalis has produced his first live album. The group here group includes father Ellis Marsalis on piano, Reginald Veal, bass,

Wouldn’t It Be Loverly is a new and noteworthy CD by chanteuse Lisa Lindsley. She performs on two continents, usually around the San Francisco Bay

Clarinetist Dave Bennett performs on his new CD, Blood Moon, with a small combo. He has a mix of original compositions co-written with record producer

Always very industrious, Irving Mills was not only Duke Ellington’s manager (also managing Cab Calloway, Fletcher Henderson and the Mills Blue Rhythm Band), a music

The World’s Greatest Jazz Band (an obviously outlandish name for a group but one that got immediate attention) was an all-star Dixieland ensemble that was

The trad jazz movement in the United Kingdom was a bit of a phenomenon. From the mid-1950s until the rise of the Beatles in 1964,

The ragtime era is generally thought of as being roughly 1899-1915, and certainly ending with the death of Scott Joplin in 1917. Other than “Maple

Trumpeter Joe Smith formed the Spicy Pickles in Denver, Colorado in 2013 as a sextet that played swing and New Orleans jazz for dancers. The

2003 was the centennial of cornetist Bix Beiderbecke’s birth. Celebrating Bix! is a very well-conceived tribute to Beiderbecke that Arbors released that year. Organized by

A hard-charging trumpeter whose screams, roars, and growls on uptempo pieces and whose sentimentality during ballads made him instantly recognizable, Wild Bill Davison was such

Arguably the top jazz vocal group before the rise of Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross in the late 1950s (with the 1930s Mills Brothers being the