During my coverage of the aftermath of hurricane Camille in 1969, I talked with experts who predicted that some day New Orleans would not be so "lucky." Eventually, they said, unless massive preventive steps were taken, there would be a storm so big that the levees would not hold, the pumps would … [Read more...]

For anyone partial to Roy Hargrove, this would be a fine week to be in New York. He is appearing Wednesday through Sunday at The Jazz Gallery with his quartet (pianist Danny Grisett, bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Greg Hutchison). Each night, Hargrove will perform with a different fellow … [Read more...]

The Chicago Jazz Archive is maintaining a list of New Orleans musicians found safe. The list is short but growing. Deborah Gillaspie, the archive curator, asks that anyone with verified reports of survivors e-mail her. She emphasizes that the CJA is not searching for missing people, only reporting … [Read more...]

Seattle’s Earshot Jazz magazine has a nice article by Philip Coady on Lucky Thompson. It includes stories about Clark Terry’s visits to his old friend before Thompson died. Coady also describes Ellis and Branford Marsalis going to Thompson’s hospital room and drawing out a man who had been … [Read more...]

“Don’t buy gas if you don’t need it.” —George W. Bush … [Read more...]

Among the many New Orleanians I have been worrying about is Al Belletto, the leader of the Al Belletto Sextet and, in recent years, also of a booting big band. Calls to him and his companion Linda Rhodes in the city and to their vacation retreat in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, went nowhere; the 504 … [Read more...]

Rummaging through biographical facts, I was reminded that the great pianist Jimmy Rowles and Minnie Pearl, the comic doyenne of country music both died in early 1996. That recalled a story Rowles told over lunch one day a few weeks before his death. When he was Ella Fitzgerald’s accompanist, he … [Read more...]

In the right-hand column under Doug's Picks, you will find all new selections except for Food. We shall stay with crab cakes for now. I would appreciate suggestions from you folks about new culinary entries. The e-mail address is also on the right. … [Read more...]

From the web site of San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club of California comes a transcript containing what may be the most unexpected question ever asked the head of a country in a public forum. The club’s speaker last November was Václav Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic. At the end of … [Read more...]

Francis Davis, the jazz critic of The Village Voice, likes the new Sonny Rollins album, about which I have enthused a couple of times. On the other hand: The problem is the string-of-solos format: When Rollins goes first, everything else is anticlimactic, and when he goes last, as is more often the … [Read more...]

I wrote this piece before Katrina sent New Orleans into agony. I almost held it back until the city revives. But that is likely to be years. Because I believe in the indomitable spirit of a place that is a part of my heartbeat and because WDSU's news department is doing the kind of great work it … [Read more...]

The new Sonny Rollins CD is out, the one I raved about after I heard the advance a couple of months ago. Rollins is amazing on the title track and "Where or When." Stephen Scott's piano solos, dazzling and capricious, run Sonny a close second. Trombonist Clifton Anderson has a good night, and Bob … [Read more...]

The man who created these all-too-human ballets led a life outwardly uneventful, at least by the standards of the best-seller list. He fled the Soviet Union in 1924, settling first in Europe and then in New York City, where he started a dance school and a series of ballet companies. For the rest of … [Read more...]

As noted here earlier, to his credit Teachout temporarily refitted his Arts Journal About Last Night into a blog clearinghouse on Hurricane Katrina. In the process, he discovered something about this capacious and puzzling new medium. As Hurricane Katrina finally slowed down and Monday lurched to a … [Read more...]

From a Rifftides reader: Thanks for the postings and links on New Orleans. Teachout's site led me to great info. I'm from New Orleans and most of my family still lives there. Naturally I lost contact during the storm and the WDSU site had the early video and allowed me to see the area where … [Read more...]

The worst of Katrina has passed New Orleans. Now, flooding is the big concern. With dozens of news organizations and hundreds of bloggers covering the storm and the city's agony, there is little point in my attempting to add much from this distance. Monitoring tells me that my alma mater, WDSU-TV, … [Read more...]

With Katrina veering only slightly east, moving fast and staring New Orleans in the face, I'm worried about my friends there. We spent eight years in that amazing city and went through many hurricanes. We were there in 1969 for Camille, the one that's being compared with tonight's monster storm. I … [Read more...]

David Liebman, the perpetually searching saxophonist, has been playing festivals all over the world. He emphasizes that he is not complaining, but he is disturbed by the reaction of people attending those high-priced events. If anything concerning the question of communication is at all relevant, it … [Read more...]

Nearly three years ago, I reviewed in Jazz Times a CD that pianist Kenny Barron recorded with bassist Ray Drummond and drummer Ben Riley at Bradley's, the lamented Greenwich Village club. Barron takes "Solar" at a fast clip that does nothing to suppress his development of original melodic ideas or … [Read more...]