Sunday Session: June 28, 2020

Sun Ra Arkestra

Here's this week's roundup of various music-related items of interest:

* On identifying ragas, and how the intoxicating and often frustrating challenge for a lay listener can become an obsession (FirstPost.com)
* B.B. King and Eric Clapton’s ‘Riding with the King’ album like working with ‘blues royalty’ for Nathan East (San Diego Union Tribune)
* Bettye LaVette on Why She’s Singing ‘Strange Fruit’ Now (Rolling Stone)
* ‘He Made the World Bigger’: Inside John Zorn’s Jazz-Metal Multiverse (Rolling Stone)
* Watch Paul McCartney Play Trumpet With Elvis Costello, Dave Grohl (UltimateClassicRock.com)
* Charles Lloyd: “The thing is I want to share the music. I’m still on a mission and it can’t happen – this is plague time…” (Jazzwise)
* Sun Ra Arkestra Announce First Album in 20 Years (Rolling Stone)
* Drummer Sherrie Maricle On The 3D Jazz Trio And Developing DIVA (DownBeat)
* How Jazz Is Coping with COVID-19 (Jazz Times)
* Henry Grimes and Giuseppi Logan: Parallel Lives (Jazz Times)
* Montreal unlikely to rename Metro station after Oscar Peterson, despite petition (CBC)
* The Jazz Gallery, Which Built a Vibrant Online Community, Opens the Door to a Livestream (WBGO)
* Kamasi Washington, Terrace Martin, Robert Glasper, and 9th Wonder Form Supergroup Dinner Party, Share New Song “Freeze Tag”: Listen (Pitchfork.com)
* Music For the Movement on Jazz United (WBGO)
* Where did that love go? (Jazz Journal)
* Gregory Porter and Don Was: Before & After (Jazz Times)
* The Stranger-Than-Fiction Secret History of Prog-Rock Icon Rick Wakeman (Vanity Fair)
* Good vibrations: how Bandcamp became the heroes of streaming (The Guardian)
* Societal Reckoning Over Racism Encompasses The Jazz Community (DownBeat)
* Henry Kaiser, Mike Baggetta and the New “Live” (GuitarModerne.com)
* Whit Dickey :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview (AquariumDrunkard.com)
* We Insist: A Century Of Black Music Against State Violence (NPR)
* The history of the West Coast Get Down, LA’s jazz giants (DazedDigital.com)
* The Story Behind the Greatest Bob Dylan Parody of All Time (GQ)
* The Turtles run with the ‘Sgt. Pepper’ concept on their brilliant 1968 LP, ‘Battle of the Bands’ (DangerousMinds.net)

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: We Insist! - Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite

This week, let's take a look back at an extended jazz composition of historical importance that, unfortunately, remains topical 60 years after its premiere.

We Insist: Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite is the title of a 1960 album by drummer Max Roach, featuring a five-part work composed by Roach with singer and lyricist Oscar Brown Jr.

Considered a significant work of protest during the Civil Rights era, the "Freedom Now Suite" reflects two important trends of its time: the continuing quest for equal rights under the law for Black people in the United States, and the then-new African independence movement that saw nations that once were colonies of European powers become self-governing.

Brown and Roach had began working together in 1959 on an extended composition that they hoped to perform for the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1963, but the times were moving too fast to wait. Sparked by developments in the civil rights movement, notably the sit-ins at a lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, Roach went ahead and used the ideas he and Brown had generated up to that point to create the "Freedom Now Suite," which was recorded on August 31 and September 6 of 1960 and released by Candid Records before the year ended.

While We Insist... unsurprisingly was considered controversial at the time and received a mixed reception from critics, it marked Roach as being among the first musicians to use jazz to address social issues. Over time, it has come to be considered a jazz classic, frequently included on critics' and historians' lists of essential and/or groundbreaking albums.

Today, you can see and hear two performances of music from "The Freedom Now Suite," separated by 50 years in time. At the top of this post, there's a video of a concert featuring the complete work that took place in 2014 at the New School in NYC. This concert was led by Roach's longtime trumpeter and New School faculty member Cecil Bridgewater, and featured musicians including bassist Reggie Workman, tenor saxophonist Billy Harper, drummer Andrew Cyrille, trombonist Clifton Anderson, singer Brianna Thomas, and percussionist Neal Clarke.

After the jump, you can see the suite performed by Roach and his band, including singer Abbey Lincoln, for a TV program recorded in 1964 in Belgium. They are, in order, "Driva Man", "Freedom Day", "Tears for Johannesburg" and "Triptych: Prayer, Protest, Peace", and "All Africa."

For more information about the album We Insist... and the "Freedom Now Suite," check out this 2001 article from Jazz Times magazine and the liner notes from the original issue of the album.

You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

Here's StLJN's latest wrap-up of assorted links and short news items of local interest:

* St. Louis magazine has published their annual "A List" of local attractions, organizations, people, and events, and the names of at least a couple of the winners will be familiar to StLJN readers.

The Red and Black Brass Band was mentioned for "Best Use of Brass," while Blue Strawberry was named "Best New Storytelling Venue." You can see a list of all the winners here.

* The current fund-raising efforts of radio station WSIE are the subject of a feature story from the Riverfront Times' Daniel Hill. Thanks in large part to budget cuts by the state of Illinois, WSIE must raise a total of $100,000 by the end of this month or the station may go off the air permanently.

* Job’s Trials: A Jazz Song Cycle, the latest recording from bassist and St. Louis native Dan Loomis, was reviewed by the UK magazine Jazz Journal.

* Singer and multi-instrumentalist Tonina (pictured) talked about what she's been doing during lockdown and discussed a couple of upcoming livestream performances in an interview with the Post-Dispatch's Kevin Johnson.

* Jazz in St. Louis has gotten some attention from NYC's Jazz at Lincoln Center recently, as last week JALC published a Spotify playlist of St. Louis jazz (accompanied by a short and rather sketchy history of our local scene) as part of a series called "City Soundscapes."

That was followed this week by a St. Louis-themed installment of "On the Road with Riley," an online video series featuring trumpeter Riley Mulkerhar that purports to take "viewers on a virtual road trip...to see how various #jazz scenes around the U.S. are coping with the ongoing COVID-19 crisis." The video features a brief chat with pianist Adam Maness and a streamed performance of "St. Louis Blues" by Mulherkar, Maness, bassist Bob DeBoo, and drummer Kaleb Kirby.

* Dr. Dorothy Steward, the mother of businessman, philanthropist and Jazz St. Louis board member David Steward and one of the namesakes of JSL's headquarters, the Harold and Dorothy Steward Center for Jazz, has died at age 92.

Sunday Session: June 21, 2020

Pee Wee Ellis

Here's this week's roundup of various music-related items of interest:

* British Jazz Pianist Keith Tippett Dies at 72 (DownBeat)
* Keith Tippett (1947 -2020) (FreeJazzBlog.org)
* Saved from Irrelevance: Sinatra’s Comeback Led to the Pop LP and the Concept Album (MagellanTV.com)
* Pandemic-Era Insights From Chick Corea, Christian McBride, Brandee Younger And More (DownBeat)
* NAMM Announces Plans To Hold 2021 Trade Show (DownBeat)
* ‘Live From Here With Chris Thile’ Canceled Because of COVID-19 Pandemic (Rolling Stone)
* Pee Wee Ellis: ‘America was built on slavery and exploitation – but change is coming’ (The Independent)
* UK government criticised for “unworkable” advice on reopening music venues (NME.com)
* Could Music Companies Help Black Artists By Adjusting Old Record Deals? (Rolling Stone)
* The Ascent of JLCO’s Marcus Printup (DownBeat)
* Criss Cross Jazz Is Back to Business (Jazz Times)
* On John Coltrane’s “Alabama” (The Paris Review)
* Matthew Shipp’s Steady Diet Of Improv And Hard News (DownBeat)
* Samora Pinderhughes is Hopeful About Our 'Black Spring,' But Wary About the Road Ahead (WBGO)
* For Vijay Iyer, A Livestream From The Village Vanguard is Another Opportunity to Speak Out (WBGO)
* Carmine Street Guitars: tuning up with New York’s finest plank-spankers (The Guardian)
* Now, About The Bad Name I Gave My Band (NPR)
* Experiment without Inhibition: A Celebration of Anthony Braxton (River Cities Reader)
* How The Jazzworld Is Indelibly Tied To The Travel Industry (DownBeat)
* The roots album that never got made (AfricasACountry.com)
* ‘Da 5 Bloods’ Composer Terence Blanchard on That Opening Scene and His Relationship with Spike Lee (Collider.com)
* Aaron Parks Brings Talk Talk, Brian Eno, and More to His Free-Roaming Jazz Songs (Bandcamp.com)
* Play It Forward: Lakecia Benjamin Sings Through Her Saxophone (NPR)
* Opinion: Black Protest Is Music. Learning The Melody Isn't Enough (NPR)
* Suites, shoots and leaves: Spanish opera house reopens with concert for plants (The Guardian)
* Live Nation Wants Artists to Take Pay Cuts and Cancelation Burdens for Shows in 2021 (Rolling Stone)
* Mr. Elegant: Jimmy Cobb Reconsidered (Jazz Times)
* The Fate of James Brown's Fortune Turns Thanks to a Most Unusual Court Decision (Hollywood Reporter)
* A Guide to Soul Jazz, Which Used Black Music History to Speak to the Present and to Build the Future (Bandcamp.com)
* The Subtlety Of Norah Jones (DownBeat)
* Thelonious Monk’s unlikely Palo Alto High show becomes thrilling live album (San Francisco Chronicle)
* The Juneteenth Jazz Jamboree (WFIU)
* A Look Back at TV’s Stars of Jazz (Jazz Times)
* High Culture Brought Low (Vulture.com)
* 10 Books Highlighting the History of Racial Injustice and Resistance in Jazz (WBGO)
* Quincy Jones Launches Initiative to Bring Jazz, Blues and Gospel Awareness Into Schools (Variety)

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Seven more views of "St. Louis Blues"

This week, it's part two of our look at "St. Louis Blues," featuring some contemporary versions of W.C. Handy's most famous composition. (You can read a brief history of the tune and see seven vintage versions performed by jazz greats in part one here.)

The first video actually combines aspects of both vintage and contemporary, since it features New Orleans' Preservation Hall Jazz Band performing a traditional arrangement of "St. Louis Blues," but was recorded in July 1996 at a festival gig in Mountain View, CA.

After the jump, it's veteran pianist Eddie Higgins, who was a mainstay of the Chicago scene and recorded with a number of jazz stars in the 1950s and 60s before setting up shop in Florida in the 1970s. He's seen here with his trio, performing his signature arrangement of Handy's composition in an undated clip that's probably from the early 2000s.

Next up is trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, accompanied by pianist Marcus Roberts, offering a brief interpretation of "St. Louis Blues" on a 1995 episode of the BET kids series Story Porch.

That's followed by guitarist Bill Frisell doing a solo version recorded in 2013 for the magazine Fretboard Journal, and then a big band arrangement from the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, recorded in 2008 at the Hague Jazz Festival in the Netherlands. (The VJO performance is in two parts, the second of which should play automatically after the first ends.)

The final two clips both have a direct connection to St. Louis as well as a thematic one. The penultimate video features guitarist Charlie Hunter, recorded solo in 2011 at the old studios of St. Louis community radio station KDHX.

Last but not least, it's pianist and St. Louis native Stephanie Trick and her husband and fellow pianist Paolo Alderighi performing a four-handed, one-piano version of "St. Louis Blues" in January 2016 at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor, MI.

You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

Here's StLJN's latest wrap-up of assorted links and short news items of local interest:

* The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and STLtoday.com last Friday published their annual "Go List" for 2020, and in the "Music & Clubs" section, the winner for "Favorite Place to Hear Jazz" is BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups, followed by Jazz St. Louis and The Dark Room. The Dark Room also is the newspaper's staff pick this year for "Best Jazz Brunch."

In "The Arts" section, the 2020 winner for "Favorite St. Louis Cabaret Performer" is singer Erin Bode, with Ken Page finishing in second place and Ken Haller in third. The Gaslight Theater is designated "Favorite Place to See Cabaret," followed by the Boom Boom Room and Jazz St. Louis.

* A previously unheard live album by Miles Davis, The Lost Septet, is out now on CD and digital from Sleepy Night Records. Recorded for a radio broadcast in November 1971 at the Wiener Konzerthaus in Vienna, Austria, the double album features Davis on trumpet with Gary Bartz (soprano & alto sax), Keith Jarrett (electric piano, organ), Michael Henderson (electric bass), Ndugu Leon Chancler (drums), Don Alias (percussion), and James "Mtume" Foreman (percussion).

* Saxophonist Larry Johnson (pictured) was the guest on last week's episode of Shock City School of Music's "Coffee Conversations" podcast.

* The Red and Black Brass Band was the subject of a short feature story on the Nine Network program Living St. Louis.

* Singer and keyboardist Katarra Parson was featured on last week's episode of the KTRS radio program "In The Know with Ray Hartmann."

* The Arts and Education Council of Greater St. Louis has announced their St. Louis Arts Awards for 2021, and among the honorees will be “Such Sweet Thunder,” a joint presentation from Jazz St. Louis, Shakespeare Festival St. Louis, Nine Network, and the Big Muddy Dance Company that won the annual award for "Arts Collaboration." The awards will be presented at the council's annual event on January 25, 2021 at the Chase Park Plaza Hotel.

* The Kranzberg Arts Foundation once again is surveying potential audience members to find out what measures will make people comfortable returning to their venues, which include the Grandel Theater, The Dark Room, and more. You can complete the survey at https://www.kranzbergartsfoundation.org/covid-19/coronavirus-survey/.

Sunday Session: June 14, 2020

Sonny Rollins

Here's this week's roundup of various music-related items of interest:

* Jazz centenarians who should be celebrated ... even amid a pandemic (Chicago Tribune)
* Chronology: Wynton Kelly Trio at the Left Bank with Three Star Tenor Saxophonists (Jazz Times)
* Tineke Postma: Living in the Maternal World (Jazz Times)
* Bonnie Pointer of The Pointer Sisters Dies at 69 (Billboard)
* In Jazz-Movie Endings, Some Story Elements Just Keep Bouncing Back (WVXU)
* Prestige Records: An Alternative Top 20 Albums (AllAboutJazz.com)
* How Streaming Platforms Are Helping Musicians Navigate The Pandemic (DownBeat.com)
* Woody Herman's Trip To Mars (WFIU)
* John Medeski Demonstrates Startling Adaptability (DownBeat)
* America's Independent Music Venues Could Close Soon Due To Coronavirus (NPR)
* Murder, mystery and a hit record: the unbelievable story of Ike White (The Guardian)
* Bob “Brother Ah” Northern 1934–2020 (Jazz Times)
* NIVA Estimates That 90 Percent Of Its Member Venues Could Close (DownBeat)
* A New Phase For the Phrase "Live at The Village Vanguard," As the Club Joins the Streaming Era (WBGO)
* Shelly Manne, Remembering A Jazz Drumming Giant (UDiscoverMusic.com)
* Measuring the heart (TheBlueMoment.com)
* Festivals Search For Upside To Shutdown (DownBeat)
* John McLaughlin’s ‘Lockdown Blues’ Raises Funds For Jazz Foundation Of America (DownBeat)
* Sonny Rollins on the Pandemic, Protests, and Music (The New Yorker)
* Top 8 Guitar Tech Myths Debunked (Ultimate Guitar)
* Reviving Detroit’s Historic Blue Bird Inn (BeltMag.com)
* BMG pledges to review historical record contracts ‘mindful of the music industry’s shameful treatment of black artists’ (MusicBusinessWorldwide.com)
* If Country Music Wants to Reckon With Its Racism, Look Deeper Than the Bad Names (Vulture.com)
* The Immediate Family Epitomizes the Essence of a Super Group Set-Up (American Songwriter)

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Seven views of "St. Louis Blues"

With the return of live jazz in St. Louis still uncertain, today's post continues this feature's recent emphasis on archival and historical material by taking a look at some different interpretations of "St. Louis Blues," undoubtedly the most famous song ever to feature the name of our city in the title, and one of the most recorded compositions in jazz history.

"St. Louis Blues" was composed by W. C. Handy, who was born in Alabama and spent most of his musical career based in Memphis and then New York. It was while living in Memphis in 1892 that Handy came to St. Louis for a visits, looking for work as a musician, and presumably formed his impression of the city thay would inspire his most popular compositiosn.

First published in September 1914, "St. Louis Blues" was one of the first blues to succeed as a pop song, and marks an important point in the transition of blues music from being strictly a folk idiom to becoming a commercial one as well.

It was a hit record in 1925 for Bessie Smith, and again in 1929 for Louis Armstrong, and subsequently has been recorded hundreds of times by artists from all around the world, in arrangements ranging from solo piano and guitar to big bands and orchestras. 

Today's post includes seven vintage performances of "St. Louis Blues," starting up above with W.C. Handy playing his most famous work in 1949 on Ed Sullivan's long-running CBS variety show, then known as Toast of the Town.

After the jump, you can see singer Bessie Smith's version, as featured in the film St. Louis Blues, which was released in 1929 to capitalize on the popularity of her 1925 recording.

Next up, pianist Earl Hines puts his personal spin on the tune in a version recorded in 1965 in France, followed by the inimitable Ella Fitzgerald scatting and swinging her way through a performance recorded in July 1979 at the North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands.

Pianist Dave Brubeck also famously had his own take on "St. Louis Blues," as seen in the next clip, recorded in 1964 in Belgium with the most famous lineup of his quartet, including saxophonist Paul Desmond, bassist Eugene Wright, and drummer Joe Morello.

The penultimate video features singer Nat King Cole performing Handy's composition in a November 1957 episode of The Nat King Cole Show, while the last clip showcases an arrangement of the tune featured for many years on the radio broadcasts of the Stanley Cup champion St. Louis Blues hockey club.

It was first recorded in 1944 by swing bandleader and trombonist Glenn Miller, and is seen here in a performance by the present-day Glenn Miller Orchestra directed by Wil Salden and recorded in 2012.


Next week in this space, we'll look at videos featuring some more contemporary versions of "St. Louis Blues." You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

Here's StLJN's latest wrap-up of assorted links and short news items of local interest:

* Jazz St. Louis has received a grant of $17,500 in the latest round of funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. They're one of 1,144 not-for-profit organizations, located in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and each of the five U.S. territories, that will get a total of more than $84 million in new awards.

* The St. Louis Cabaret Conference announced that they'll be holding their annual event in July online via Zoom this year. While the format and pricing have changed, the conference still will feature the same lineup of instructors previously announced, including Faith Prince, Jeff Harnar, Natalie Douglas and Christine Andreas.

* The Kranzberg Arts Foundation and the St. Louis Music Initiative this week announced that the inaugural St. Louis Music Week and the three-day Music at the Intersection festival in Grand Center that had been scheduled for this September will be postponed until September 2021.

Sunday Session: June 7, 2020

Idris Ackamoor

Here's this week's roundup of various music-related items of interest:

* Buddy Bolden’s Blues (64Parishes.org)
* Killing Of George Floyd Prompts Response From Music Industry, Performers (DownBeat)
* Remembering “Uganda” Roberts (Offbeat)
* Robert Northern, who, as ‘Brother Ah,’ became a synthesizer of sounds, dies at 86 (Washington Post)
* Thundercat Looks For Connection During A Bewildering Moment (DownBeat)
* The Chance Music Of New Orleans’ Kidd Jordan (DownBeat)
* Lennie Niehaus, Jazz Player and Composer for Clint Eastwood Films, Dies at 90 (Variety)
* Idris Ackamoor: An Afro-Futurist Odyssey (AllAboutJazz.com)
* Sandy Jordan Research on Clifford Jordan (AtticToys.com)
* The Law Police Used To Discriminate Against Musicians Of Color (NPR)
* On Taking Lip [Service] (WQXR)
* Of George Floyd and John Coltrane (Jazz Times)
* Add some township jive! How London's jazz scene set itself apart (The Guardian)
* Pandemic Entrepreneurship for Jazz Musicians (Jazz Times)
* What Socially Distanced Live Performance Might Look Like (Vulture.com)
* Venues, Festivals Search For Hope Amid A Slowly Opening Economy (DownBeat)
* A TCM Series and a New Book Celebrate the Expansive Pleasures of Jazz in the Movies (WBGO)
* Jim Snidero Explores South Korea (Jazz Times)
* Lennie Niehaus 1929–2020 (Jazz Times)
* This Is How Much More Money Artists Earn From Bandcamp Compared to Streaming Services (Pitchfork.com)
* How Jazz Helped Fuel the 1960s Civil Rights Movement (OpenCulture.com)
* Think You've Been Productive in Quarantine? Try Checking in with Tim Berne and David Torn (WBGO)
* Arturo O’Farrill’s ‘Four Questions’ Brings Together Art, Activism (DownBeat)
* Swing Time: Ahmed Abdullah (Relix.com)
* How Can Artists Respond to Injustice? Thoughts from Seven Musicians (New Music Box)
* The Radically Inclusive Music of Ornette Coleman (The New Republic)
* The Ballad of Tommy LiPuma (AllAboutJazz.com)
* The New Sounds Of Protest And Hope (NPR)

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: The BAG legacy, part 6

Today, it's the sixth and final post of a series spotlighting music made by former members of St. Louis' Black Artists Group. You can see part one of the series, including some basic background information about BAG, here; part two here; part three here; part four here, and part five here.

Today's post pulls together some interviews-on-video related to BAG, starting up above with the first of three parts of "BAG and Beyond: Old and New Friends," which was recorded on September 14, 2008 at George Sams' Metropolitan Gallery here in St. Louis under the auspices of his Nu-Art Series, and features a conversation/group interview with former BAG members and associates.

The group includes Sams and fellow trumpeter Rasul Siddik, saxophonists Oliver Lake and Hamiet Bluiett, drummer Charles "Bobo" Shaw, visual artists Oliver Jackson and Giuseppe Pirone, and poets and writers Michael Castro, Eugene Redmond, Quincy Troupe, and Shirley LeFlore.

After the jump, you can see the second and third parts of that program, followed by another group interview, "Shared Exploration: Music and the Visual Arts," recorded last September at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. The panel for this included Lake, Jackson, multi-instrumentalist and U. City native Marty Ehrlich, and Harry Cooper, the National Gallery's senior curator and head of modern art, and was moderated by poet and critic A.B. Spellman.

That's followed by an extended solo interview with Hamiet Bluiett, recorded in October 2016 at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem and conducted by saxophonist Bruce Williams, one of several musicians who helped continue the World Saxophone Quartet after the death of founding member (and former BAG member) Julius Hemphill.

Last, but not least, it's the (so far as we can tell) latest trailer for "Black Artists' Group of St. Louis: The Documentary," the release status of which seems to be "pending" at this time.

That release date is something StLJN will be looking into soon, but in the meantime, you can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

Here's StLJN's latest wrap-up of assorted links and short news items of local interest:

* The Arts United STL online benefit staged this past Sunday, May 31 by 16 St. Louis arts organizations to raise funds for the Regional Arts Commission (RAC) Artist Relief Fund exceeded its goal of $250,000, raising a total of $350,000.

The money will go to emergency grants to working artists whose livelihoods have been affected by the COVID-19 crisis. The Arts United STL benefit performance can be viewed in its entirety on YouTube. Applications for funding are being accepted through June 12, and you still can donate to the relief fund here.

* The Funky Butt Brass Band's latest album Onward was reviewed by New Orleans music magazine Offbeat.


* In what will be one the first live jazz gigs in St. Louis since the COVID-19 shutdown, trumpeter Jim Manley and keyboardist Chris Swan will perform for brunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. this coming Sunday, June 7 at Evangeline's. StLJN continues to monitor the situation with regard to local live performances, in hopes of being able to update and restart the StLJN Jazz Calendar in the near future.

* The new book MilesStyles: The Fashion of Miles Davis was reviewed by the UK's Jazz Journal.

* As yet another reminder of the long history of police violence against black people in the USA, ClassicFM.com looks back at when Miles Davis was assaulted by NYC cops one night outside the famed jazz club Birdland more than 60 years ago.

Recently on Heliocentric Worlds

It's a new month, and so it's time once again to check in on StLJN's sibling site Heliocentric Worlds, where each day there's posted a new online music video, drawing on genres including jazz, blues, funk, soul, classic rock, prog rock, experimental, and more.

The five most-watched videos added to the site last month were:

Gentle Giant - "On Reflection"
Karl Denson's Tiny Universe - "Front Money"
Jethro Tull - "Living In The Past"
Gary Bartz NTU Troop - "Dr. Follow's Dance"
Richie Cole - Live At The Village Vanguard

Other recent posts have featured videos with performances by Phineas Newborn Jr., The Ides Of March, Devo, Papa John Creach, Larry Carlton, Clark Terry Big Band, Leo Kottke, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, The Kinks, Kraftwerk, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, King Crimson, Jaco Pastorius Band, Big Joe Turner, Grand Funk Railroad, Keith Jarrett Trio, Globe Unity Orchestra, Taylor Ho Bynum & Mark Dresser, Moon Hooch, Larry Harlow, The Rolling Stones, Woody Herman, Don Cherry, Carlos Ward Quartet, Eddie Palmieri, and the Teddy Edwards Sextet. 

If you've somehow missed out on all this until now, you can see these videos, plus thousands more from the carefully curated archives, by going to https://heliocentricworlds.blogspot.com/.