News & Updates — jazz

Give the bassist some! I always loved NHØP's bass playing on so many great jazz records that I felt the need to point out his birthday today and show some respect. From Denmark, he started playing bass at 13 and went pro pretty quickly. At 17 he was offered the bass role in the Count Basie band but was too young to legally travel to the US for work. He supported many visiting jazz artists at the Jazzhus Montmarte in Copenhagen, including playing with Sonny Rollins, Roland Kirk, Dexter Gordon, Bud Powell, Stan Getz, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp and others....

Happy birthday to that bitter bastard genius, the incomparable Miles Davis!! From bebop to cool jazz to modal to out-funk/fusion to pop, Miles played it all and never cared what the critics thought of him! My personal favorite era was his '70s hard-avant-funk, some of which sounds so brutal that it borders on proto-death metal!

On February 14, 1920, Mamie Smith recorded two songs for Okeh Records and history was made as she was the first black blues singer to make an appearance on record. The label was threatened with a boycott if they recorded a black singer but they did so anyway and the Smith-Okeh partnership went on to sell MILLIONS of records, bringing a huge jump in sales to what was called at the time "race records". She came from the Midwest and started touring at 10 with a vaudeville act before moving to NYC in 1913. She became a big star of...

"The Viking of 6th Avenue", Lewis Hardin was better known as "Moondog", composer, instrument-builder, philosopher and mystical NYC street character. He was from a Kansas farm and was blinded at 16 by dynamite. He attended music school for the blind and lived briefly in the South during the late '30s/early '40s before moving to NYC in '43. There he quickly befriended Charlie Parker, Toscanini, Benny Goodman, Leonard Bernstein and other musical luminaries. He was a busking musician and earned money selling his poems. He spent 25 years on the streets of NY, often along 6th ave, between 52nd & 55th...

Happy birthday to one of Chicago's greatest! Terry Callier was an amazing singer/songwriter and guitarist, his sound & style were equal parts folkie, soul and jazz. Callier grew up with Curtis Mayfield, Major Lance and Jerry Butler and sang in doo-wop groups and played piano. In '62 he signed to Chess and released his first record while still in high school. While in college he got heavily into John Coltrane and took his songs to the folk coffeehouses. He recorded the classic The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier for Prestige Records and had his songs covered by others from...