Sunday Session: December 20, 2020

Stanley Cowell

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

* “Up From the Streets: New Orleans: The City of Music” Documentary Debuts Today (Offbeat)
* A Marvelous Marble Machine for Making Music (Kottke.org)
* Art Tatum on V-Disc (Jazz Times)
* Sir Barry Gibb: 'Christmas songs haven't been appropriate for 50 years' (BBC)
* Watch Legendary Saxophonist Azar Lawrence Share His Favorite LPs (UDiscoverMusic.com)
* 50 Years Later, 'Feliz Navidad' Still Delivers On Its Bilingual Message (NPR)
* "My goal is to reach people on an emotional level" — The Kenny Barron interview (Ottawa Citizen)
* Danny Jonokuchi & The Revisionists Win Inaugural Count Basie Contest (DownBeat)
* An Examination of Black Coffee by Peggy Lee (Jazz Times)
* Brilliant Acting Makes ‘Ma Rainey’ A Transcendent Film (DownBeat)
* Chicago blues harmonica player Sugar Blue: Running one step ahead of the coronavirus around the world (Chicago Tribune)
* How Branford Marsalis recreated the perfectly imperfect style of 1920s blues for ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ (GoldDerby.com)
* In Memoriam: Jazz Night in America Remembers 10 Musicians Who Altered Shape Of Jazz (NPR)
* 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom' composer Branford Marsalis says blues legend Rainey commanded attention (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
* The Mutual Musicians Foundation is fighting the gentrification of Jazz in Kansas City (ScalawagMagazine.org)
* Big Data will analyse the mystery of Beethoven's metronome (Phys.org)
* Stanley Cowell, Pianist, Composer and Educator with a Kaleidoscopic View of Jazz, Is Dead at 79 (WBGO)
* Nels Cline Double-Sizes The Singers (DownBeat)
* Jeff Clayton 1955–2020 (Jazz Times)
* Black Mystery School Pianists (New Music Box)
* Jeff Clayton, Versatile Saxophonist and Flutist, and Devoted Jazz Educator, Has Died at 66 (WBGO)
* A Christmas Waltz with Duke Ellington (Jazz Times)
* For midsized music venues, ‘thoughts & prayers’ won’t be enough (Buffalo News)
* Stanley Cowell, Pianist, Composer and Educator with a Kaleidoscopic View of Jazz, Is Dead at 79 (WBGO)

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Summer 2014 jazz film festival

It's summertime, when the livin' is allegedly easy, and yr. humble editor needs a brief respite from the usual blogging routine. So today, in keeping with a venerable tradition that we just made up a couple of years ago, we're bringing back StLJN's online summer festival of jazz-related films, featuring a whole day's worth of documentaries about some all-time greats of jazz. .

First up is On The Road with Duke Ellington, filmed in 1967 by documentarian Robert Drew and updated in 1974 after Ellington's death, which offers an inside look at the Duke traveling and working with his orchestra.

After the jump, you'll find Dave Brubeck: In His Own Sweet Way, a 2010 BBC documentary about Brubeck's life and work.

The life of another famous jazz pianist, Oscar Peterson, is the subject of the next film, Music in the Key of Oscar, which was made in 2004.

The fourth movie, The World According to John Coltrane, is a 1990 documentary about the groundbreaking saxophonist, bandleader and composer, directed by Robert Palmer and Toby Byron.

In the fifth slot, it's Triumph of the Underdog, a 1998 documentary about bassist Charles Mingus, produced in cooperation with his widow Sue Mingus and bearing the same name as Mingus' well-known autobiographical book.

The festivities conclude with Queens of Jazz: The Joy and Pain of the Jazz Divas, produced in 2013 by the BBC as "a celebration of some of the greatest female jazz singers of the 20th century," including Sarah Vaughan, Nina Simone, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and more.

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