Hello everyone—
Whenever a free-lance or staff writer asks about writing a Retro Review, I tell them that they are welcome to write about any classic jazz album recorded 20 or more years ago, provided that they can find something new to say. In a nutshell, that’s the reason why you won’t find Retro Reviews of “Blues and the Abstract Truth”, “The Atomic Mister Basie” and “Sunday at the Village Vanguard”. Up until this month, “Kind of Blue” was in that “untouchable” category, but I listened to it recently and mused about the actual reasons for that album’s phenomenal commercial and artistic success. You can read my thoughts in this month’s Retro Review.
We have a guest writer this month. Michael Verity, who wrote for us several years back, contributed reviews of new CDs by Jim McNeely and McClenty Hunter. (We are looking for a permanent part-time writer to contribute reviews to the site. If you or someone you know would like to apply, please find the post on our Facebook page, and then contact me at [email protected]). In other CD Reviews, I write about Gentlemen Songsters, Kurt Elling, Allan Harris and John Proulx, as well as Originals, the composer-performers Lynne Arriale, Leslie Pintchik, Renee Rosnes and Martin Wind. In the Book Review section, I offer my thoughts on Judy Carmichael’s new memoir, “Swinger” and the DVD Review spotlights a documentary on the New York CIty jazz loft documented by W. Eugene Smith.
It may finally be time for Jazz History Online to move from GoDaddy. We talked about doing this move a couple of years ago when GoDaddy threatened to stop support for the template/site builder that I use. Now, support from them is virtually nonexistent, and the current versions of Google Chrome and Firefox won’t read the template correctly. I have to use an outdated browser just to post articles on this site, so I can see that GoDaddy is not a long-term solution. If you have recommendations for a new web home for this 550 page site, please contact me through our Facebook page (link below).
We now have over 2400 Facebook fans! Are you one of them? If not, please go to https://www.facebook.com/JazzHistoryOnline/ and join the party! To be sure you get our Facebook messages, hover over the “liked” button on our Facebook page, and click the top two selections (“Get Notifications” and “Following”). If you’d like a monthly e-mail update of new articles (no, we won’t sell your addresses to anyone else), or would like to communicate with me, please write to [email protected]
Best,
Thomas Cunniffe