When I first discovered Stride piano, now about forty years ago, Willie “The Lion” Smith was a paradox - at once ubiquitous and inaccessible.��� I bought a copy of his two-disc “Memoirs” in a now vanished Greenwich Village record store, and his autobiography was on the shelves of my local...

“You’ll never guess who.” It’s much too early for Santa, and it’s not Emily Brown from “Miss Brown to You,” but someone real — the wonderful singer Dawn Lambeth, making another rare visit to this coast.��� Dawn and her husband Marc Caparone (a brilliant���trumpeter) make their home in���California...

At work, I am surrounded by people who have made their job their life.��� Devotion to one’s work is noble, but some of my friends have made themselves ill from stress.��� So the gospel for today is the Latin motto.��� To me, seizing the day isn’t about abandoning one’s responsibilities for...

Bent Persson, the amazing trumpeter / cornetist, has a new band.��� It includes Frans Sjostrom, the genius of the bass saxophone, the inimitable Morten Gunnar Larsen on piano, reedman Lars Frank, Kristoffer Kompen on trombone, and the versatile Jacob Ullberger on banjo and guitar.��� (Lars and...

Captured at the PeeWee Stomp, March 1, 2009: Heidi Rosenau generously shows us all how to do it on the dance floor with a variety of partners.��� (The gentleman who nearly abducts her at the end has some legal and moral right to do so: that’s husband Joe McGlynn.) And the delightful music?���...

This marvelous documentary in miniature — a precious tribute to the cornetist Bobby Hackett — surfaced recently on YouTube, courtesy of “The Murphy Family.” I saw Hackett play less than a dozen times in the last five years of his life, twice at close range.��� I was too awed and too shy to attempt...

Had I a jazz time machine, the front row of Town Hall at this moment would be on the list of my musical Paradises. From the left, courtesy of Gjon Mili and Ernie Anderson: Cozy Cole, perhaps James P. Johnson, Miff Mole, Benny Morton, Bobby Hackett, possibly Bill Coleman, Max Kaminsky, Muggsy...

Adventures in jazz discography follow. Because my friend Agustin Perez (proprietor of the wonderful blog “Mule Walk & Jazz Talk,” often devoted to stride piano) asked me for some information, I’ve been thinking a great deal about Fats Waller’s uneven Carnegie Hall concert of 1942.��� And my...