Jazz & Blues Lounge

Looking around for lists has been an interesting experience.  It seems that people truly love lists and there are an endless number of people willing to write them.  At the same time, I began to wonder.  I began to wonder if there was someone out there to definitively declare what they felt was the “Greatest Jazz Album of All Time.”
Of course, such a thing would be nearly impossible to declare.  I could not even tell you for certain which jazz album in my own collection would be my vote for Greatest Jazz Album of All Time.  “Kind of Blue” would …read more

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You have to love the news and the people who do weather.  You would have thought that the snow storm that blew through the Chicago area was going to somehow kill every living being here.  You would have thought that so much snow would fall that every building in the city would collapse, burying millions beneath the rubble.
Of course, the East Coast news people go exactly the opposite way.  It only becomes news to them when it actually hits New York.  Chicago COULD have been wiped out by a freak snow fall and they wouldn’t notice or acknowledge it until …read more

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Writing yesterday about Ramsey Lewis and his morning show on WNUA here in Chicago got me thinking about the two major types of jazz that most people probably know.  Of course, like most genres of music, the various types of jazz just show what a wide and diverse and exciting genre it is.
Of course, Chip and other purists will be quick to point out there are a lot more than two types of jazz.  I know that.  There’s Latin jazz and other forms of jazz from around the world.  New Orleans jazz is just a little different than Chicago jazz …read more

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There are times it is just hard to come in here and write.  I love writing this blog and I love writing about jazz, but after you  have spent the entire afternoon pushing around a vacuum cleaner and then a broom and then a mop and you have cleaned everything including a toilet…well… There are just times when the last thing on your mind is writing about jazz or blues.  I may be wanting to sing the blues as my shoulders scream at me from all of the work, but I don’t really have the blues on my mind.
Still, I hate …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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