Lew Shaw

Lew Shaw started writing about music as the publicist for the famous Berkshire Music Barn in the 1960s. He joined the West Coast Rag in 1989 and has been a guiding light to this paper through the two name changes since then as we grew to become The Syncopated Times.  47 of his profiles of today’s top musicians are collected in Jazz Beat: Notes on Classic Jazz. Volume two, Jazz Beat Encore: More Notes on Classic Jazz contains 43 more! Lew taps his extensive network of connections and friends throughout the traditional jazz world to bring us his Jazz Jottings column every month.

Jazz Jottings December 2023

Pianist Bob Ravenscroft has an impressive resume of having worked with countless musicians, both with his own combos and with the Christian ministry, Majesty. In

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The Saga of Navy Band 22

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor 82 years ago, December 7, 1941 became “a date that will live in infamy,” as President Franklin D. Roosevelt

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Jazz Jottings October 2023

Stephanie Trick has found that painting has given her a release from the “high” of performing, and the results have been most impressive. This paint-on-the-go

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Jazz Jottings November 2022

Back in the 1920s and ’30s, the place to go dancing in Western Massachusetts was Cook’s Butterfly Ballroom in my home town of Springfield, Massachusetts.

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Ted Lewis

Ted Lewis

Ted Lewis was born Theodore Leopold Friedman on June 6, 1890, in Circleville, Ohio. He learned piccolo as a member of the Circleville Boys’ Band

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Jazz Jottings May 2022

On reading Joe Bebco’s excellent “Festival Roundup,” the casual reader might ask “What’s the difference between a Jazz Festival and a Jazz Party?” To a

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Jazz Jottings March 2022

Of all the instrumentalists, I have to admit being partial to the virtuosos of the keyboard. I guess I was influenced by a teenage recollection

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