Music
Kermit Ruffins, Swing This! (Basin Street Records)
Swing this? Well, bam!, like that celebrity chef from the Crescent City likes to say, let’s kick it up a notch, which is exactly what Kermit Ruffins has done here. […]
Charles Lloyd, Voices in the Night (ECM)/Charles Lloyd, Just Before Sunrise (32 Jazz)
Not many musicians are as willing to stretch their aesthetic boundaries as Charles Lloyd. Coming up in Memphis R&B, Lloyd also absorbed the angular exploration of the ’60s post-bop avant […]
Cassandra Wilson, Traveling Miles (Blue Note)
Just as he dominated every decade since World War II, Miles Davis has imposed himself on the 1990s with what seems to be a never-ending stream of reissues and tributes. […]
Various Artists, Men Are Like Street Cars…Women Blues Singers 1928-1969 (MCA)
Women and the blues make “an odd coupling,” says Mary Katherine Aldin, a well-established researcher who is the guiding force behind this historically comprehensive, musically compelling 2-CD collection. It’s the […]
Louis Jordan, The Anthology 1938-1953 (MCA/Decca)
It’s not just the creation of the small-scale jump band or the development of jazz nuance married to a shuffle beat, not even the unprecedented use of electric guitar, blues […]
Tim Hagans, Animation Imagination (Blue Note), Russell Gunn, Ethnomusicology Volume 1 (Atlantic)
“There’s no point in making the same kind of record that Roy Hargrove, Nicholas Payton or Wallace Roney makes,” says trumpeter Tim Hagans. But electronic rhythm machines, reprogrammed backing tracks, […]
SP Just Frost, Live in CPH (Cope)
To a certain extent, it’s true: New Orleans food doesn’t taste quite the same outside New Orleans, and New Orleans music doesn’t have quite the same sound when removed from […]
Various Artists, More New Orleans Party Classics (Rhino)
It’s not often a various-artists compilation spanning diverse genres and lime periods has real staying power, but 1991’s New Orleans Party Classics has endured beyond expectation. Spanning the second half […]
Mahalia Jackson, In My Home Over There (Peacock Gospel Classics)
It’s easy enough to forget about the root of all roots music. As Cyril Neville reminds us on his Uptown Allstars CD, “Here in New Orleans, home to the greatest […]
Various Artists, Medicine Show Live at Grant St. Dancehall (Acadian Art Council)
Here’s a pure slice of the vibrant southwest Louisiana cultural scene that has given rise to, among others, the Grammy-winning Cajun Renaissance group, Beau Soleil. Recorded mainly at a live […]
