Les Paul

Les Paul’s tongue

In 2004, photog Gene Martin asked the guitarist/inventor who’d just received the Jazz Journalists Association’s “A Team” award for activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz, to pose for a portrait. . .

Les Paul’s tongue Â©Gene Martin

[Read more…]

Manhattan jazz residencies (my new City Arts column)

The Vanguard Jazz OrchestraÂ at the Village Vanguard on Monday night since 1967Â
Â The Mingus Big Band, Orchestra and Dynasty ensemble in regular rotation on Mondays at the Jazz Standard
Guitarist Les Paul, at age 94 a genuine hipster, the Ben Franklin of American popular music, Monday nights at Iridium forever.

These are a few of our favorite things. Read about it in my new monthly column in City Arts NYC: New York’s Review of Culture, published by the folks who also bring you New York Press.

[Read more…]

I'm a Chicago-born (and after 32 years in NYC, recently repatriated) writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and nascent videographer -- a veteran freelance journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere, consulting on media, publishing and jazz-related issues. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association, a non-profit membership organization devoted to using all media to disseminate news and views about all kinds of jazz.
My books are Future Jazz (Oxford U Press, 1999) and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008). I was general editor of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Flame Tree 2005/Billboard Books 2006). Of course I'm working on something new. . . Read More…