Archives

Some of my favorite recordings from Miles' acoustic years: Bag's Groove, My Funny Valentine, Generique, Milestones, Solea, Teo, Masqualero, etc.

Four new releases this year unearthed some of Art Pepper's final live recordings. Seems like a good excuse to re-post this piece.

A re-post, just in time for my own personal Sabbath (I have separate playlists for my Jewish and Wiccan friends)… Sunday morning – a time of worship. And for me, that worship involves a cup [...]

I don’t think I can shed any new light on the legacy of John Coltrane. But I can answer the question, how did a white, middle-class kid from Akron – a 12-year veteran of parochial schooling – get [...]

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting overwhelmed by all the dire news and violent images I’ve been digesting lately. Maybe it’s time to shut everything off, disconnect the cable, buy someone’s [...]

I’ve got a real weakness for West Coast jazz – that cool, seductive sound that didn’t exactly get a big thumbs up from Miles Davis in his autobiography Miles: “What bothered me more than anything [...]

Check it – RCR is now optimized for iPad and iPhone use. We’re also the only site I’m aware of that’s optimized for rotary phones. Just dial Garfield 1-2323 and I’ll have [...]

We’ve covered guitarist Robert Quine pretty well in this blog, especially here and here. But I had to throw this post together after my sister came across a long-lost article in the bottom of a [...]

I’m a bit of a “completist,” but only with a few select artists. For example, I don’t need all 1,000 songs that Lightnin’ Hopkins recorded throughout his career. Just give me a little bit of this [...]

Sunday morning – a time of worship. And for me, that worship involves a cup of joe, the Sunday Times, and a playlist of soul-soothing music. (Hey, I did 12 years of hard time at parochial [...]

So this guy sends me a couple of comments… How could you overlook this tune? Why didn’t you include this artist? And I tell him, write your own damn post. Well, he did… and [...]

I grew up listening to a lot of jazz. Not the edgy stuff. My dad mostly liked straight-ahead piano players like Oscar Peterson, Erroll Garner and Earl “Fatha” Hines. He also had those “can’t [...]