Sunday Session: August 30, 2020

Gregory Porter

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

* The Day Louis Armstrong Lost His Color: A Short Story (Jazz Times)
* A Tale Of Two Ecosystems: On Bandcamp, Spotify And The Wide-Open Future (NPR)
* Give & Take with Musician Sonny Rollins (Tricycle.org)
* Charli Persip, Virtuoso Drummer Who Cut a Swath Through Modern Jazz, Is Dead at 91 (WBGO)
* Steely Dan Engineer Finds Lost ‘Second Arrangement’ Tapes (UltimateClassicRock.com)
* 100 Reasons We Love Charlie Parker For His 100th Birthday (Discogs.com)
* The Best Batch Yet? Captain Beefheart's Doc At The Radar Station Revisited (TheQuietus.com)
* Vinyl sales rock on in spite of Covid-19 (QZ.com)
* Ambrose Akinmusire’s Pure Pursuit Of Sound (DownBeat)
* Billy Childs Reveals the Influences on His Album Acceptance (Jazz Times)
* ‘64% musicians considering leaving the music profession’ – survey (London Jazz News)
* Charlie Parker, the Birth of Bebop, and America’s Greatest Recording Session (Jazz Times)
* The Very Serious Art of Writing Music for Very Funny Cartoons (InsideHook.com)
* Dan Penn talks back (Offbeat)
* 50 Years Later, Jimi Hendrix's Electric Lady Studios Is Still An Artistic Haven (NPR)
* Oneness of JuJu’s Afrocentric and Avant-Garde Jazz (Bandcamp.com)
* Despite Streaming, US Recorded Music Revenues Still Down 50% From 1999 Peaks (DigitalMusicNews.com)
* Terri Lyne Carrington Runs On Determination (DownBeat)
* Bird Lives! A Charlie Parker Centennial, With Strings Attached (NPR)
* Gregory Porter sings of love, but unspeakable grief and the scars of racism lie just beneath (Los Angeles Times)
* Roots in the Archive: Test Pressings Help Keep Robert Johnson’s Songs Alive (NoDepression.com)* The 25 greatest basslines of all time (MusicRadar.com)
* How Charlie Parker Defined the Sound and Substance of Bebop Jazz (The New Yorker)

Sunday Session: February 16, 2020

Roberta Flack

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

* Philadelphia jazz great John Coltrane’s house ‘at risk,’ preservationists say (Philadelphia Inquirer)
* Johnny Cash’s Gospel (The New Yorker)
* Photos: Winter Jazzfest 2020 (Jazz Times)
* Jeff Parker’s Shifting Mentality (DownBeat)
* Revisiting the ‘Stank Groove’ of Jimi Hendrix (DownBeat)
* The Virtuoso: Roberta Flack's career demands a new way of thinking about the word 'genius.' (NPR)
* How Will the Fire At Apollo Masters Affect the Local Music Industry? (Portland Mercury)
* New music label says it can use AI to find the next big artist (Engadget.com)
* 1,000 True Fans? Try 100 (A16Z.com)
* Vinyl Record Industry Fears 'Vinylgeddon' After Fire Burns Down Apollo Masters Plant (Billboard)
* Eddie Kendricks’ ‘People’ Was No Accident (DownBeat)
* Joanne Brackeen: Still Proudly Unorthodox (Jazz Times)
* Lyle Mays 1953 – 2020 (Jazz Times)
* Keyboard Remembers Lyle Mays (Keyboard)
* What Makes A Hit Pop Song (NPR)
* Oscar Peterson's Africa Suite has never been performed in its entirety — until now (CBC)
* Are Musicians Better Than They Were 30 Years Ago? (San Francisco Classical Voice)
* Steve Feigenbaum Talks About Cuneiform Records, His Four-Plus Decades Selling Fringe Music, 
And Why He Thinks The Vinyl Revival Is Mostly Hype (Substack.com)
* Brain Wave Binaural beats and the poetics of brainhacking (RealLifeMag.com)
* Meet the Baltimore Jazz Collective and more faces of Charm City’s swing renaissance (Baltimore Sun)
* The story of Moondog: blind poet, Viking vagabond, genius composer (HappyMag.TV)
* ‘The Whole System Collapsed’: Inside the Music Industry’s Ongoing Distribution Crisis (Rolling Stone)
* Time Is on Dave Grusin’s Side (Jazz Times)
* Dopolarians: Free-Jazz Collaborators With a Southern Sound (Memphis Flyer)
* Carol Kaye: The Boss of the Bass Guitar (PleaseKillMe.com)
* In Memoriam: Claudio Roditi (1946–2020) (DownBeat)
* The Continuing Impact of the Detroit Jazz Collective Tribe (Bandcamp.com)
* On 'Standards Vol. 1,' Rafiq Bhatia Questions The Act Of Reinterpretation (NPR)

Sunday Session: April 22, 2018

Kamasi Washington

Here's a roundup of various music-related items of interest that have shown up in one of StLJN's various inboxes or feeds over the past week:

* Why the Hell Can’t Hollywood Make a Decent Music Festival Movie? (Los Angeles)
* A record shop life (TheBlueMoment.com)
* Cape Town Festival Honors Hugh Masekela (DownBeat)
* The Unlikely Pairing of Louis Armstrong With Ella Fitzgerald Is (Still) Pure Bliss (Mother Jones)
* Laurindo Almeida: Forgotten Genius of Guitar Arrangement (Acoustic Guitar)
* Bill Charlap: “I’m Not a Composer” (Jazz Times)
* Beyond 'Blurred Lines': How Forensic Musicology Is Altering Pop's Future (Rolling Stone)
* The State of the Music Cities Union (Medium.com)
* This Must Be David Byrne (GQ)
* Kendrick Lamar's 'DAMN.' Wins Historic Pulitzer Prize In Music (NPR)
* Pulitzer Prize Administrator Explains How Kendrick Lamar Won (Billboard)
* This Year’s Other Two Pulitzer Finalists on Losing to Kendrick Lamar (Slate)
* What the classical-music world can learn from Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize (Washington Post)
* Should Artists Get a Cut When Their Songs Land On Branded Playlists on Spotify? (Billboard)
* Kamasi Washington on how South Central shaped his experiential new record (DazedDigital.com)
* My Amazing Day…and Night, with Jimi Hendrix (GovindaGallery.com)
* Los Tigres Del Norte Perform At Folsom Prison 50 Years After Johnny Cash (NPR)
* 10 of the Best Music Podcasts (Variety)
* Tiger Lily Records: The wild story of the tax scam label run by the notorious Morris Levy (Part II) (DangerousMinds.net)
* "Jazz & Social Justice": A Playlist by Angela Davis (SFJAZZ.org)
* Vinyl: Ornette Coleman’s Revolution (DownBeat)
* Global Recorded Music Revenues Grew By $1.4 Billion in 2017 (Music Industry Blog)
* Outlaws of the Airwaves: The Rise of Pirate Radio Station WBAD (KCRW)
* What Is HD Vinyl and Is It Legit? (Gizmodo)
* The great Record Store Day debate and why we like vinyl so much, anyway (Alternative Press)
* The Beatles: In Defense of Revolution 9 (Den of Geek)

Sunday Session: April 8, 2018

Cecil Taylor

Here's a roundup of various music-related items of interest that have shown up in one of StLJN's various inboxes or feeds over the past week:

* Spotify Is Killing Song Titles (Medium.com)
* Branford Marsalis talks jazz, classical and playing with Miles Davis, Grateful Dead, Public Enemy (San Diego Union Tribune)
* Did Simon & Garfunkel Write The Jewish ‘Sgt. Pepper?’ (The Forward)
* Arcade Fire: 'People have lost the ability to even know what a joke is. It’s very Orwellian (The Guardian)
* You Can’t Find What You Don’t Look For: Spotify, Google, Pandora Can’t Find Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry–but what about Martha Stewart (MuscTechPolicy.com)
* The Festival Legend: George Wein – 64 Years Of Producing Festivals From Newport To New Orleans And Far Beyond (Pollstar.com)
* At Roulette, Admirers Gather To Honor John Abercrombie (DownBeat)
* The Lofty Optimism of Spotify and the Influence of the Streaming Revolution (The New Yorker)
* Instrumental Listens to 30,000 New Songs a Day to Find the Next Hit. So Why Do We Need A&R People, Again? (DigitalMusicNews.com)
* The sample legacy of Sly And The Family Stone (TheVinylFactory.com)
* The Day Herbie Hancock Met the Electric Piano (OZY.com)
* Q&A with Norma Winstone: The Consummate Voice (DownBeat)
* Stream a 144-Hour Discography of Classic Jazz Recordings from Blue Note Records: Miles Davis, Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman & More (OpenCulture.com)
* How a Calypso Anthem Became the Surreal Centerpiece of Beetlejuice (Pitchfork)
* Inside Jimi Hendrix’s blood-spattered record collection (NME)
* Venture Beyond a Walking Bass Line with the All-American Walter Page, in Deep Dive (WBGO)
* Can Biomusic Offer Kids With Autism a New Way to Communicate? (Smithsonian)
* Love, London, and an enormous Moog: how Simon & Garfunkel made Bookends (The Telegraph)
* How much will artists get paid from the major labels’ Spotify profits? (MusicBusinessWorldwide.com)
* Avant-Garde Pianist Cecil Taylor Dies at 89 (DownBeat)
* Cecil Taylor Dies at 89 - Piano titan pioneered the jazz avant-garde with an utterly unique sound, technique and approach to improvisation (Jazz Times)
* Cecil Taylor (1929 - 2018) (The Free Jazz Collective)
* Cecil Taylor, Jazz Icon Of The Avant-Garde, Dies At 89 (NPR)
* Cecil Taylor, Pianist Who Defied Jazz Orthodoxy, Is Dead at 89 (New York Times)
* How The #VinylRevival Is Paradoxically Threatening Record Shop Survival (TheQuietus.com)
* What’s Up Tiger Lily?: The wild story of the tax scam record label run by the notorious Morris Levy (DangerousMinds.net)

Sunday Session: December 10, 2017

Sunny Murray

Here's the roundup of various music-related items of interest that have appeared in StLJN's inbox over the past week:

* Who can fill the role of Tom Lehrer today? (The Economist)
* Pete Escovedo: Rhythms of Life (Jazz Times)
* Paul McCartney’s Lost Experimental Christmas Album That He Made For The Beatles Has Surfaced Online (Uproxx.com)
* Spotify Attorney Estimates the Service Infringed 300,000 Songs in Settlement Hearing (SPIN)
* Why Sun Ra Matters (Philadephia Jazz Project)
* The Problem with Muzak - Spotify’s bid to remodel an industry (The Baffler)
* The Chief of Entertainers - Trumpet virtuoso Dizzy Gillespie was a jazz prophet, a musical genius, and a scatterbrained whirlwind (TheAmericanScholar.org)
* Electrifying Photos of Cuba's Thriving Music Scene (Vice.com)
* Louis Armstrong’s home in Queens is now a museum (Curbed.com)
* Historic Austin Music Venue Is Being Sold on eBay (DigitalMusicNews.com)
* Lloyd Price's Personality: Long Live The Real King! (JazzWeekly.com)
* David Bowie Sang For Devo, and Mark Mothersbaugh Might Have the Tapes (BedfordAndBowery.com)
* How I Got 10,000 Spotify Plays For a Totally Fake Song (DigitalMusicNews.com)
* Last.fm Was the Only Music Social Network That Made Sense (Vice.com)
* Jazz Legend Sonny Rollins on Retiring His Sax, His Legacy, and the Secret to Life (Vulture.com)
* Quincy Jones is about to launch the 'Netflix of jazz' (Mashable.com)
* Next Wave Forever: John Cale at Seventy-Five (The New Yorker)
* New Jimi Hendrix LP Unearths 10 Previously Unheard Recordings (Rolling Stone)
* Inside the Shady World of the Musical Hologram (Vice.com)
* The Legacy of Buddy Rich (Jazz Times)
* This Kenyan drummer is fighting to make more space for women in percussion (TED.com)
* Eric Clapton Talks Addiction, Cream's Brilliance, the Future of the Guitar (Rolling Stone)
* RIP: Sunny Murray, pioneering free jazz drummer (TinyMixTapes.com)
* Drummer Sunny Murray Dies at 81 (Jazz Times)
* Enacting Change in the Performing Arts World Begins with Changing the Conservatory Culture (AmericansForTheArts.org)
* David Sedaris: Songs for My Father - A conversation with the best-selling author and humorist on his lifelong love of jazz (Jazz Times)

Sunday Session: January 1, 2017

Alphonse Mouzon

Here are some interesting music-related items that have landed in StLJN's inbox over the past week:

* The Year Jimi Hendrix Spent in Nashville (Nashville Scene)
* Jazz saxophonist Charles Lloyd on his lifelong intoxication with music (PBS)
* The music theory principle that unifies 2016’s radio hits (Vox.com)
* Crowdsourcing Meets Music for Symphonies of the Future (US News)
* How Kafundó Records is Preserving the Marginalized Cultures of Brazil in a Changing Political Climate (Bandcamp.com)
* Q&A with Terrace Martin: From Hip-Hop to Herbie Hancock (DownBeat)
* A Man at Home On the Road—Remembering Mose Allison (1927-2016) (New Music Box)
* In Gritty Sao Paulo, Samba Reinvents Itself With An Introspective Sound (NPR)
* Mourning Stars Through Streams, Screens And Communities (NPR)
* 5 Ways to Make Opera More Appealing to Young People (Paste)
* Music streaming hailed as industry's saviour as labels enjoy profit surge (The Guardian)
* George Clinton on funk, touring and staying relevant at 75 (The Guardian)
* R.I.P. Alphonse Mouzon, prolific jazz fusion drummer has died at 68 (ConsequenceOfSound.net)
* Before he won Oscars for his music, composer Howard Shore helped kick off SNL (Washington Post)
* What Happened to Rock Music? (The New Republic)

Sunday Session: July 24, 2016

Irma Thomas

Some interesting music-related items that have landed in StLJN's inbox over the past week:

* A Visit to the Pops Home (Stereophile)
* Chas Chandler: The man who discovered Jimi Hendrix (BBC)
* …But I Hate Modern Music (New Music Box)
* Solving the Mystery of 'Heartbreak Hotel' (Rolling Stone)
* How a little mathematics can help create some beautiful music (TheConversation.com)
* How Do Music Preferences Differ Place To Place? Pandora Shares State By State Data (HypeBot.com)
* Just Three Albums Have Sold Over 1 Million Units This Year (DigitalMusicNews.com)
* The Surprising Musical Preferences of an Amazon Tribe (The Atlantic)
* How Composer Howard Shore Brought the Sounds of Tangier to William S. Burroughs' ‘Naked Lunch’ (Vice.com)
* Hersch, Sanchez, Porter Delve Deep at Portugal’s Funchal Jazz Festival (DownBeat)
* Pokemon Go Invades Pro Audio (Pro Sound News)
* Interview: Fred Hersch (Stereophile)
* Billboard's First Hitmakers Roundtable: 7 of Music's Top Creatives and Influencers on the State of Pop, 10-Second Attention Spans and the Song of the Summer (Billboard)
* One of the nation’s most successful musicians dies (Antigua Observer)
* New Orleans 'Soul Queen' Irma Thomas: ' I can't choose a song that doesn't make sense to me' (KPCC)
* Where have the great composers gone? (The Guardian UK)
* Jazz Museum in New Orleans gains a new director (New Orleans Advocate)
* The Mad Scientists Of Vinyl Record Design (Fast Company)
* More Bird With Strings (Jazzwax.com)
* Composing in the Entrepreneurial Era (Van magazine)
* Richard Corsello, Sonny Rollins' Go-To Engineer - How he transformed subpar source recordings into Rollins' triumphant "Road Shows" series (Jazz Times)
* Q&A with Guillermo Klein: The Sound of Symmetry (DownBeat)
* Composers seek new definition of greatness in a digital age (The Guardian UK)
* New Orleans jazz drummer Jason Marsalis and his family move to France (New Orleans Advocate)
* Coming to Grips with Dead & Bro: John Mayer and the Improbable Live Rebirth of the Grateful Dead (Pitchfork)
* An Exhibition of Japanese Portable Record Players (Spoon & Tamogo)
* North Beach History: When Bebop Filled The Night (Hoodline.com)
* Enter Brian Wilson’s Creative Process While Making The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds 50 Years Ago: A Fly-on-the Wall View (OpenCulture.com)
* Looking for the great composers? They’re all around us (San Francisco Chronicle)

Sunday Session: March 29, 2015

Wayne Shorter

For your Sunday reading, some interesting music-related items that have hit StLJN's inbox over the past week:

* Critic's notebook: Bebop hallucination from Wayne Shorter (Detroit Free Press)
* Lithofayne Pridgon: Jimi Hendrix’s original ‘foxy lady’ (The Guardian UK)
* Buena Vista Social Club: the legends look back (The Guardian UK)
* Audio For Virtual Reality Takes Off (Pro Sound News)
* What Makes an Electric Guitar Sound Like an Electric Guitar (The Atlantic)
* Phil Manzanera on Jay Z, Kanye West and the riff that changed his life (The Independent UK)
* The Electronic Composer in the Modern Age (Hyperallergic.com)
* Have We Reached the End of Jazz Itself? (The Nation)
* The five eras of listening - How music went from art form to ambient noise in the last 150 years (and five ways to listen better today) (Medium.com)
* The Sweet Memphis Sound Of 'Beale Street' (WBUR)
* Antonio Sánchez to Release Two New Albums This Spring; Drummer/composer will also tour (Jazz Times)
* Did these guys ruin music as we knew it? (Medium.com)
* Alan Lomax's Massive Archive Goes Online (NPR)
* Astral Sojourn - The untold story of how Van Morrison fled record-industry thugs, hid out in Boston, and wrote one of rock’s greatest albums. (Boston magazine)
* ‘Dylan, Cash and the Nashville Cats,’ an Unlikely Alliance of Rock and Country (New York Times)
* Three Jazz Pianists, A Generation After Apartheid (NPR)
* Photos: Celebration of Strata-East at Barbican Theatre in London (Jazz Times)