Readers of jazz web logs know that one of the most consistently informative and satisfying blogs is Steve Cerra’s Jazz Profiles. Steve specializes in pieces about important 
musicians from all eras and styles. He complements them with sidebar features and bolsters them with inventive videos combining music with graphics that tell a story. His current feature is about John Coltrane’s recordings for the Prestige label. He chose to make my essay in the massive Prestige Coltrane box set the primary text of the piece.
The accompanying sidebar is an interview from several months ago in which Steve’s skillful questions got me to talking about people and events from my past. He even persuaded me to name “favorites,” something I thought I had sworn long ago to avoid.
But the Coltrane essay is the main event, and Steve includes an illustrated video whose sound track is Trane’s lovely ballad performance of “Time After Time.” To see and hear Steve Cerra’s Coltrane Jazz Profile, go here.
The nonagenarian pianist presented de Barros with every biographer’s hope, unrestricted access to his subject’s personal papers and nearly unrestricted access to her private thoughts. He made the most of it, turning exhaustive research and hundreds of hours of interviews into a true story with the sweep of a novel. From the early discovery of McPartland’s musical gift through her wartime service, her ecstatic and stormy marriage to Jimmy McPartland, her growth as a pianist, her deep affair with Joe Morello, and the radio show that made her a national figure, she has had a fascinating life. It makes a splendid read.
Mulligan’s Concert Jazz Band had three fewer musicians than most big jazz outfits. Its size permitted precision, flexibility and subtlety, yet the band had the power of sprung steel. In this concert from a half century ago, the CJB is as fresh as yesterday. Arrangements by Mulligan, Bob Brookmeyer, Al Cohn and Johnny Mandel set standards to which big band writers still aspire. Bassist Buddy Clark and drummer Mel Lewis inspired Mulligan, Brookmeyer, Conte Candoli, Gene Quill and Zoot Sims to some of the best soloing of their careers. This beautifully produced issue of the complete concert is a basic repertoire item.
I was unaware of your essay on Coltrane, and found it not only perceptive, but admirably eloquent in describing some of those things about the jazz experience that are so difficult to express in words—i.e., how the listener processes, and utilizes, the emotional insight & turmoil (positive or negative) that the artist is sharing.
Cerra’s interview with you is also most interesting.