Jazz & Blues Lounge

Earlier this year you may remember me raving about Cassie Taylor, the daughter of the great blues musician Otis Taylor. Cassie is a fantastic musician in her own right, of course, and I mean no slight by mentioning her father. I saw her at the Chicago Blues Festival last month and I was captivated. Not only is she gorgeous, she is also very talented. She also was trying to get onto the Blues Foundation as one of the youngest members.
Unfortunately, I have not heard from her since that time. I did hope to …read more

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OK, ok, ok, I admit, this is my most recent obsession. I raved about Cassie Taylor last week along with my raves about her father and his band. The fact is, all of that is true. I simply cannot stress enough how much you should run out and see Otis Taylor performing live and do it soon.
Of course, at this point, I might be drifting into stalker territory. I can’t help it. I would love to tell you that I contacted Cassie via her MySpace page and she has agreed to be interviewed …read more

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I know, I know, I am probably talking too much about the Sad Salamanders for some of you.  Well, what can I say, when I become a bit obsessed about something, I can’t shut up about it.  If I had my own jazz radio station, their album “Cigarettes and Fishnets” would be on steady rotation.
Check out their MySpace page:  www.myspace.com/sadsalamander.  They have lots of cool stuff there including their video for “My Parents Were Swingers.”  They also have an outstanding mention about this particular blog and a link, which I great appreciate. 
I also recently checked in to see if the …read more

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I was rooting around on MySpace, becuase I do that as you know, and I came across a site and immediately checked it out. I was totally digging the music and everything and immediately thought about directing the people who come to this site to it. Then I had to pause. Did I already direct people to this site? Had I mentioned this one before? Hmmmm…
Being the lazy SOB that I am, I am not bothering to root through my own blog and find out. I figure, if I posted this before, it was a long time ago and, well, …read more

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It’s that time again.  Yes, I am too lazy to do any actual research about musicians.  I am quite overdo to write another article about one of the classical jazz musicians I love so much.  This entire blog is just aching for an official Miles Davis history lesson.  The problem is, that is a little like trying to tackle Mt. Everest for a guy who is not only a jazz fan but a huge Miles fan.  It would be fun, but there would also be so much to talk about it scares the beejezus out of me.
So, instead, I did …read more

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I am so in love with MySpace.  It is just about as big as the internet itself.  Each time I go in there and do a search for Chicago Jazz, I expect not to find anything new.  Every time I go, I end up finding something new.
There is a guy that is a bit of a Chicago treasure in the jazz world.  He is also a morning radio personality on the jazz station here.  You may have heard of him.  His name is Ramsey Lewis. 
He was born in the Chicago in May of 1935 and is one of the most-respected …read more

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I love to bring you all kinds of jazz and jazz musicians here.  Of course, the truly wonderful thing about jazz is that it is so diverse, there are bound to be sounds and musicians to appeal to any and all music lovers.  Of course, trying to cover the entire scene is nearly impossible.  I am but one man and there are so many jazz musicians.
There are also a lot of jazz musicans that I am just not familiar with.  As I have mentioned many times, I tend to be a classic jazz kind of guy.  My jazz CD collection …read more

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So, it was a night for looking up musicians in the modern day on MySpace again.  I have to admit, I have started to enjoy doing this.  Not all of the music I hear I like, but the ones that strike me as particularly good, I like to show off to you guys.  Plus, it makes a pretty easy posting
I did a simple search on MySpace for Jazz Musicians.  One of the guys who cam up is a gentleman by the name of David Murray.  http://www.myspace.com/davidmurraymusic is the page.
This guy has been around for a while and apparently has …read more

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Hi everyone.  Been a long weekend and I am not really feeling too well today.
Still, you deserved some kind of posting, so I picked a random MySpace page that featured some jazz music I dug.  So, introduce yourself to a man named Nathan Holaway from Ceveland, OH.  He’s got a ton of music available for you to listen to on his page too, which is cool.
Click here and check it out.

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This is going to be a quick one today.  I was sitting at my day job listening to this online jazz radio station.  I had another one of those moments when I heard music that made me stop what I was doing, check out who the artist was, write it down and then look it up later.
The artist is Sean Jones.  He’s from Pittsburgh.  He has a MySpace page you can get to right here.  There’s a bunch of cool tunes you can check out there for free.  You know me, I dig the trumpet players.
He also has a website …read more

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