Jazz & Blues Lounge

Another weekend is here. While I am planning on standing in lines and cramming into a movie theater to see The Dark Knight, you may have other plans or desire to see some live music. Thankfully, summer in Chicago is a great time for that. There is a jazz festival this weekend. Buddy Guy is having a CD release party at his club “Buddy Guy’s Legends.” It’s all here and a special thanks goes out, as always, to radio station WDCB for the information you find here.
This weekend is predicted to be a real scorcher …read more

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Well, the 25th Annual Chicago Blues Festival kicked off officially today. I did not get a chance to go downtown and see the concerts today because I have this, you know, job thing to take care of. However, thanks to radio station WXRT I was able to listen to performers from the Blues Festival. XRT is a great radio station and they still play a lot of blues music.
Tonight they had a show celebrating the start of the Blues Festival and it was at Buddy Guy’s Legends. Buddy Guy was performing, but the one guy who …read more

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I am going to confess, right up front, to being a bit of a fan of the documentarian Ken Burns.  He’s the guy who does those multiple-night, hours-long documentaries about things like the Civil War and World War II.  These are the kind of documentaries that show up on PBS and play for nights and then go up for sale for hundreds of dollars.
Before he decided to tackle WWII, in fact, many years before, he decided to create a documentary about Jazz.  He caught a bit of flack for it at the time.  Why?  Some accused him of spending too …read more

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Terence Blanchard is a very talented man.  While I am a huge fan of the classic jazz scene, it is nice to know that there are some hugely talented people who still hold true to those classic sounds.  Wynton Marsalis is one.  A man named Terence Blanchard is another.
Terence was born in 1962 in New Orleans.  He is a man who plays the trumpet and, man, can he play.  When it comes to modern horn players, there are a select few I would consider lumping in with the classic horn players like Dizzy and Miles.  Terence would be one of …read more

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I had planned on trying to update you some what new jazz albums were coming out this week.  I found it nearly impossible to find that information.  Apparently I am also not on any music labels mailing list for new albums either.  Oh well, that may be my fault since I haven’t actually contacted any either.
So, I thought I would make a recommendation of a classic jazz album.  It kind of goes along with my little life story thing too.  It is the jazz album that changed my opinion of jazz.  It is the albume that made made me sit …read more

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