February 2018

On the Cover

Features

Bear Cat Jass Band 1992

Remembering Dick Ames

Dick Ames fell in love with jazz when it was America’s popular music in the 1930s, went on to play cornet with a college dance

Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Banjo Lesson, 1893

Banjos in Traditional Jazz and Ragtime

During the original heyday of ragtime music in the very late 1800s and the very early 1900s, banjos were in common use in minstrel shows

Marlene VerPlanck by John Herr 8-2017

Marlene VerPlanck, 1933-2018

Marlene VerPlanck, one of the best-known interpreters of the American Popular Songbook died Sunday, January 14, 2018, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital after a brief illness.

Sacramento Jazz Jubilee

“A Crisis of the Old Order”

Writing in his The Age of Roosevelt three-volume series, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. referred to the Depression days of the early 1930s as

Columns

Mildred Bailey by ArtistGaryPrice.com
Jazz Birthday
Andy Senior

Mildred Bailey

Mildred Eleanor Rinker was born February 16, 1900 (according to researcher Albert Haim), in Tekoa, Washington. Her mother, Josephine, was a member of the Coeur

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Sisyphys (1548–49) by Titian
Static From My Attic
Andy Senior

Every Month, a New Boulder

Each month when I begin work on the following month’s issue of The Syncopated Times I often think of Sisyphus, king of Ephyra, condemned for

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Future Capital Grand March Clayton Kinsey
Blowing Off The Dust
Larry Melton

Sedalia’s Fifteen Minutes. . .

“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” This line, credited to Andy Warhol from a Stockholm exhibit catalog in 1968, has gone

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Red Nichols
Profiles In Jazz
Scott Yanow

Profiles in Jazz: Red Nichols

Red Nichols was one of the finest cornet players to emerge during the 1920s—yet, for various reasons, he was underrated throughout much of his career

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Slim Gaillard
Letters to the Editor
Syncopated Times

Letters to the Editor February 2018

Pensacola? Vout-O-Reenie! To the Editor: I’ve worked with the Public History Department at UWF in Pensacola and have helped the students do some research about

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Randi Cee
Christmas
Randi Cee

Anatomy of a House Concert

My brain delights in unraveling when it should be sleeping. Rarely are these sessions productive. Occasionally, the brain spin cycle leads to an epiphany. No

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Reviews

Jazz Travels

The Syncopated Bookshelf

Nights at the Turntable

Off the Beaten Tracks

Other News

The Final Chorus

Marlene VerPlanck by John Herr 7-2015

Marlene VerPlanck has died at 84

Marlene VerPlanck, 84, Jan. 14, of pancreatic cancer. Diagnosed in November she continued to perform up to the end. As a jazz vocalist, she began

Dick Ames with horn

Dick Ames Dead at 97

Richard Ames, 97, Dec. 28, near Fayetteville, NY. He played in the brass sections of bands during high school and college during the ’30s and

Table of Contents

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