Jazz from WNMC

Chucho Valdes reaffirms his status as one of jazz piano's great virtuosos with this new project, writes John Fordham. Chucho Valdes, Cuba's most famous jazzmusician, has rebalanced the repertoire of his Afro-Cuban Messengers on Border-Free, mixing its American-jazz agenda (the group's name deliberately references both Valdes' roots and the late Art Blakey's classic soul-bop Jazz Messengers group) with more extended Latin-American input, and some Native American and Andalusian connections, too.

At the Iridium on Wednesday, the pianist George Cables seemed intent on reinvigorating some lesser-known tunes in his repertory. The pianist George Cables ended his first set at the Iridium on Wednesday night with “My Muse,” a compact tune with the kind of crisp, sunny melody that might have made it a staple in the age of jukeboxes and roller rinks. Over a percolating rock beat, he played the theme jauntily, saving all his flash for a cascading solo that started fast and never flagged. If the song carried a burden of sentiment, he wasn’t about to let it show.

In the late '30s, Herman never rivaled band-leading clarinetists Benny Goodman andArtie Shaw. But then came that late blooming. In 1944, not long before the swing era collapsed, Herman put together a stupendous band known as his First Herd. It was popping with talent, starting with hotdog bassist Chubby Jackson, whose added fifth string made him sound sped-up. The brass included young trumpeter Sonny Berman with his antic bebop solos, as well as the lyrical but shouting trombonist Bill Harris.Igor Stravinsky wrote his "Ebony Concerto" for them. Herman famously said later, "We had no more right to play it than the man in the moon had."

It’s near perfect irony that the highly crafted cocktail came of age during the time when our country tried its hardest to get people not to drink. During the era of Prohibition, spanning the years 1920 through 1933, cocktails came into the height of fashion in the underground speakeasies and at private parties, when strong flavors were imparted to cover the harsh tinge of bootleggers’ bathtub booze. And, of course, these very kind of parties were the centerpiece of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. With a new film treatment of the iconic jazz age novel just out from director Baz Luhrmann, Gatsby and cocktails are once again in the public consciousness.

In Gatsby Cocktails: Classic Cocktails from The Jazz Age (Ryland Peters & Small, $9.95) we find sixty-some pages of beautiful illustrations, succinct history lessons, terrific quotes from The Great Gatsby, as well as a solid list of timeless recipes for truly delightful drinks.

In 1961 and 1965, singer-songwriter and pianist Blossom Dearie returned to Paris on tour. She had first lived there from 1952 to '57—when she sang, played and recorded with the vocal group Les Blue Stars.

Louis Armstrong singing spiritual-jazz anthem "The Creator Has a Masterplan" (and sounding great) is one of the more bizarre experiences on this neat compendium of black consciousness from the vaults of Bob Thiele's Flying Dutchman label.

By Diaa Bekheet F. Scott Fitzgerald named the 1920s “The Jazz Age,” and he was hardly the only writer to take inspiration from the music. 

Poets, in particular, have been drawn to jazz, looking to capture its sound and feel in their phrases.  Poets like Langston Hughes “incorporated the syncopated rhythms and repetitive phrases of blues and jazz music into their writing”, according the Jazz Poetry Anthology. Here’s a mashup someone’s done of Langston Hughes reading his poem “Weary Blues”together with some mournful jazz and some vintage clips of Cab Calloway.