Last week, Ken Deifik sent along two super documentaries on Miles Davis. Interestingly, both are called Round Miles. [Publicity still above of Miles Davis in the late 1940s] Here's director Charles Carlini's documentary in which he interviews Quincy Troupe, author of Miles: The Autobiography... https://youtube.com/watch?v=6WsRe8EOlo8 And here's director Christopher Wilkiinson's documentary of jazz musicians [...]

As jazz musicians go, Dexter Gordon was among the coolest. He walked cool, he talked cool and he played cool. Cool came naturally to him. Perhaps that side of him came from growing up in Los Angeles in the 1930s. Or perhaps it came from meeting all of the cool musicians his physician father treated, [...]

The late Burt Bacharach's music for songs worked neatly as jazz instrumental covers, especially by jazz artists who were compelled to recorded albums of contemporary hits in the 1960s and '70s. Like Henry Mancini's music, Burt's melodies were clean and catchy and weren't tied directly to specific artists, which is what made so many rock [...]

Harvie S cranks it out. The bassist is either gigging, traveling to a gig or releasing albums as a leader or sideman. I love his energy, his passion for jazz and his music. His latest album, New York Memories, is a beautiful duet recording with his wife, pianist Yukimi Maeda. It's the kind of album [...]

Most Americans know Shirley Bassey only from her three brassy James Bond film themes—Goldfinger, Diamonds Are Forever and Moonraker. In the U.K., Dame Shirley was enormously popular from the late 1950s on. She delivered on stage the way Judy Garland did, belted songs out the way Barbra Streisand did and was as coy and as [...]

In 1970, tenor saxophonist Don Byas returned from Europe to perform at New York's Village Vanguard. He had been living abroad since 1946. A Dutch documentary called Homecoming was made of Byas's one-time return visit. In the documentary, the artist who Byas refers to as his close friend is pianist Jaki Byard. The band he [...]