Sonny Rollins: Mark of Greatness
Making two trips to the White House within a calendar year, to receive two of the nation's most prestigious awards bestowed upon artists, is more than fairly momentous. Those are significant feathers in the ol' cap--surely reasons to crow or, at the very least, feel pretty satisfied about oneself. So it had to be a hell of a year for Sonny Rollins--had to be. But, with the ever level-headed, realistic and humble Rollins, one wouldn't really notice it. He doesn't classify 2011 as that special. Rollins sees it as a year when he continued to develop his music and--at times--reached satisfactory levels. That's not bad for the reigning king of jazz improvisation, who is notoriously hard on himself...

February 2012
Dear Mr. P.C.: I'm pretty new as a jazz listener, but there's already something I don't get. People say jazz is supposed to be all about surprise. But I keep hearing this same formula: They play the melody, then the melody instrument takes a solo, then the piano solos, then the bass solos, and then sometimes the drums solo. If it's supposed to be so spontaneous, why do they keep doing it the same order, over and over? -- Where is the Surprise...

Kenny Burrell: Every Note Swings
Kenny Burrell has appeared on so many essential jazz recordings that jazz history and his story seem irretrievably intertwined. m: Billie Holiday's valedictory rumination Lady Sings the Blues (Verve, 1956)? m: Jimmy Smith's epochal funk throwdown Back at the Chicken Shack (Blue Note, 1960)? m: Tony Bennett's Carnegie Hall debut? Kenny Burrell played guitar for them all. Even m: Jimi Hendrix once famously remarked, "Kenny Burrell--that's the sound I'm looking for...

Cultural Politics and the Jazz Discourse, or Mama Said Knock You Out
Jazz, an art form given birth in the United States by descendents of the formerly enslaved, has a complicated relationship with race. Although race, as a popular idea, has no basis in biology, many people mentally adhere to the idea of dividing groups of people based on "race" as opposed to understanding how groups of people evolve (or regress) via culture, so very real social dynamics and results exist based on the belief in race...

Bob Brookmeyer: Jack of All Trades, Master of Valves
m: Bob Brookmeyer, a Renaissance man among jazz musicians who died December 15, 2011, four days before his eighty-second birthday, will be remembered as many things: composer, arranger, musician, educator, outspoken arbiter who brooked no nonsense and wasn't shy about letting others know when he believed they were not giving the music he loved the best they had to offer. What I remember best about Brookmeyer was the lithe, ever-swinging valve trombone that complemented such luminaries as m: Stan Getz, m: Gerry Mulligan, m: Zoot Sims, m: Jimmy Giuffre, m: Clark Terry and others during the 1950s and 1960s, epitomizing his Kansas City heritage in a series of memorable albums that sound as fresh today as they did more than half a century ago...