Month: June 2024

From the Record Shelves #252 – Trees – A colorized photo and manipulated sound—I should hate this, but I don’t. This is an early LP reissue from 1959. I don’t know much about which methods they used to try to enhance the sound quality, but in this case, I think that they managed (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #251 – Tico Tico – Today I picked up a record at random, and it became this one. Xavier Cugat (1900–1990), the Spanish-American bandleader, sure had an orchestra suited to play numbers like this. The vocalist that has to sing a lot of words is (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Studio #28 – My Blue Heaven – Here’s a tune to make people happy. It’s a good one to start or finish a concert with. Walter Donaldson composed it in 1927, and George Whiting wrote the lyrics. It can be arranged or, as in this version, just (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #250 – Ory’s Creole Trombone – Kid Ory recorded his composition as early as 1922 in Los Angeles and again in Chicago in 1927 with an exuberant Louis Armstrong. But this version, again from the West Coast, recorded in Hollywood in 1945 (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #249 – The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise – This is more a demonstration of skills than jazz, but when it is as good as this, I can take it in a small portion. Especially since I know that those musicians can do a lot more than that, which the fine Swaggie LP (…) read more and listenread more and listen

From the Record Shelves #248 – Out of Nowhere – Some time ago, I felt the tide of history when we went for a walk with our friend Phillippe Baudoin, a professor of jazz, in his neighborhood, which is Pigalle in Paris. He showed us some places in this illustrious pleasure district (…) read more and listenread more and listen