In the music business, it is easy to focus on the negative: problematic gigs, cancellations, difficulty getting paid and of course the ever-present “Musical Politics.”
When a life insurance salesman asked Roger Wolfe Kahn what he might do if his music career failed, the teenager flippantly replied, “I could always
In early April, The Jazz Journalists Association announced its 2022 class of 28 Jazz Heroes, among the honorees was Syncopated Times publisher Andy Senior. The
Had Roger Wolfe Kahn not gone against his parent’s wishes, it’s more than likely he would have launched his music career at the age of
Flick through the first half of any jazz biography and the tales which fly past your eyes are almost invariably those of hardship—riding the rails,
Preface to the 2022 Republication of this Interview1 For those who are not familiar with how player piano rolls are made, a quick explanation is
I met him on a Sacramento city bus. I was thirteen. Often after school, I would ride the city bus into downtown to explore the
Last month, my husband Jeff and I traveled to Jekyll Island, Georgia, to attend a five-day Road Scholar course. The name of the course was
Each of them pushed the UP button, because they didn’t know if the others were going up. The doors opened. They entered. The doors closed.
Graham Washington Jackson Sr. was an African American musician best known as the favorite musician of President Franklin Roosevelt. Jackson performed for six presidents and
The pandemic was absolutely devastating for jazz music and jazz musicians. Men and women who had dedicated their lives to mastering their craft had every
When I was about to set off for New Orleans on the first ever venture by the Ken Colyer Trust in the early nineties, one
Issues of Syncopated Times in the past year have had a number of marvelous articles about Max Morath. Though I’ve known him for more than
J.C. Heard (1918 – 1988) left a large legacy to the jazz world. He’s on many important records, he played in amazing bands, he spread
Russell “Big Chief” Moore was a jazz trombonist who was born on an Indian reservation in Arizona and who went on to play with Oscar
Dolly Adams was a popular performer in her own time. Born Odalie Marie Douroux in 1904, the New Orleans bandleader and pianist joined a musical
My contemporaries and I at Chiswick County Grammar School for Boys heard our first jazz records in one of a row of four World War
I first wanted to call this post “The Death of Historical Consciousness,” but that title, although accurate, seemed too ponderous to be chewed and swallowed.
Hal Smith: In 1965 I obtained the Good Time Jazz LP Kid Ory’s Creole Jazz Band—1954. Besides Ory’s righteous tailgate trombone and the fantastic rhythm
What do Beethoven, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Haydn, Dvořák, and Grieg have in common? You’ll find their music in vintage jazz recordings by the John Kirby
The term “missing link,” was once used to describe a hypothetical being which, if found, would exhibit traits common to otherwise dissimilar ancestors and descendants.
Mosaic Records was founded, nearly forty years ago, with the mission of reissuing great jazz recordings in a way that best showcases a particular artist
The trumpeter Bunk Johnson has received plenty of press, including several features and a full profile—written last year by Scott Yanow—in this magazine. This coverage
Scott Joplin had two brothers who were musicians—Robert B. and Will. Scott’s one-time student and then colleague Arthur Marshall wrote the following about Robert and
