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From Blue Note to Buffalo
Dodo Greene’s My Hour of Need Dodo Greene sang throughout her childhood in Buffalo, NY. She appeared several times on the Buster Brown Shoes Amateur Hour radio show and was a member of an ensemble known as Miss Margaret Scott’s Personality Steppers.… more ›
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A James Bond Synth Odyssey
Hideki Matsutake’s 007 Digital Moon The endearing popularity of James Bond has resulted in a lot of strange, obscure ephemera. 1979’s 007 Digital Moon has to be among the strangest and most obscure. The album, a collection of spacy disco-synth… more ›
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A Duke Among the Avant-garde
Charles Mingus, Max Roach, and Duke Ellington are in a studio together. That sounds like the set-up for a particularly intense one-set drama a la Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom or One Night in Miami. more ›
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Conversations With The Silhouettes
For fans of lounge music, cocktail jazz fusion, exotica, and pop that occupies a dreamy space between psychedelia and easy listening, Conversations With The Silhouettes is an absolute gem waiting to be rediscovered. more ›
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On a Sinister Note: Film Noir Jazz
A 5-disc set exploring the jazz soundtracks of seven crime dramas from the 1950s A shadow cast against a plume of steam billowing from a manhole in the middle of a potholed, rain-slick street. Neon light imprisoned in puddles of… more ›
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The Chances of Anything Coming from Mars
One year for Christmas, my parents got me a bizarre amalgamation of rock opera and radio play, starring Richard Burton: Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds. more ›
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Francoise Hardy: Midnight Blues
Francoise Hardy may have been the most stereotypically French of the Yē-Yē girls: Aloof, sophisticated and beautifully melancholy. Nevertheless, her sound was one that was largely made in England. more ›
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Clora Bryant: Gal with a Horn
Clora Bryant only recorded one album, but you can hear her trumpet alongside some of the greatest to ever take the stage: Billie Holiday, Josephine Baker, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, and her mentor, Dizzy Gillespie. more ›
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How Nat Became King
Hittin’ the Ramp documents the early jazz trio days of Nat King Cole, and After Midnight looks back upon them more ›
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Soul Discharge: The Gateway Drug to Noise
Soul Discharge was one of the first Japanese “noise” records to find distribution in the United States, and it served as the gateway for a lot of people who, like me, saw it one day and wondered what the hell it… more ›
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Technicolor Paradise
There’s who you’ve heard. There’s who you’ve heard of. And then there’s the rest. Small, local, and one-off bands who maybe cut a 45, maybe survived for a while as the house band in the cocktail bar of some Midwestern… more ›
