Make sure to check out this thoughtful blog entry by Howard Mandel, sparked by Jazz Loft Project and spurred by Hall Overton: Out of the Shadows at NYPL two weeks ago.

Speaking of the Overton event, we’re close to securing permission to streaming a video of the event on our website.  It should happen next week.  Stay tuned.

- Sam Stephenson

We are proud JLP is one of five nominees for book of the year by the Jazz Journalist Association.  Their list provides estimable company.  It is meaningful to be nominated along with longtime JLP friend Robin D.G. Kelley as well.

The outstanding New Yorker writer Alex Ross mentioned the upcoming April 14 Overton event at NYPL in his influential blog.

Ross’s award-winning book, The Rest is Noise, tells the story of the 20th century through the classical music composed the during the century.  I read and notated the book line-by-line and learned a ton from it.  If Ross researched and wrote a second book about the instrumentalists who performed the music discussed in the first book, the companion books would form an immortal chronicle.  That’s not to say The Rest is Noise isn’t great in and of itself.  The most formidable books often leave you wanting more.

-Sam Stephenson

Here’s one in print on All About Jazz dot com.

Here’ s the other on radio from Occidental, CA.

Special note is made of the All About Jazz interview in which a discussion of JLP Research Associate Dan Partridge’s work over seven years is a highlighted.  Interviewer Victor Schermer did a nice, thoughtful job on this.

“On and Off the Walls” by Elisabeth Biondi.  New Yorker dot com.  April 2, 2010.

Here is a nice article on 821 Sixth Avenue mainstay Ron Free’s return to his hometown of Charleston, S.C. for a gig this coming June, courtesy of the Charleston City Paper, March 30, 2010.

-JLP Staff

We are pleased by Martin Johnson’s new review of the Jazz Loft project book on the terrific website, The Root.  First, Johnson mentions Jazz Loft alongside our friend Robin D.G. Kelley’s great new biography of Monk and Terry Teachout’s new Armstrong biography as well as a new jazz history opus by Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeaux.  That’s good company.  I haven’t read the latter two books but surely will.  They’ve received much acclaim.

I like Johnson’s linking of Smith’s work to that of Smith’s longtime friend, Robert Frank.  I know Frank would appreciate that association and Smith would, too, if he were still around.  I also like the subtle contrast Johnson draws between their work and a new book of jazz album cover photos which Johnson likens to work done by advertising agencies depicted in AMC’s outstanding series set in early 1960s Manhattan, Mad Men.  “Searing” is the word Johnson uses to describe Frank’s work – a word the opposite of cool.  Jazz album cover art is the epitome of cool.  Both are necessary for rounding out the story of this period.

Backstage at a festival in Saratoga Springs in 2002 I heard a famous, younger female vocalist ask Roy Haynes about the “good ole days” of jazz and he responded:  “It was horrendous.  You went to work at 9pm and you played 6 forty-five minute sets for a room half full of people who were maybe paying attention, but more often not, and you left the joint at 3am with a few dollars in your pocket and a greasy dinner in your stomach.  I wouldn’t want to return to those days.  You did this five or six nights a week.  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed playing the music, but it was a constant hustle it would have been better to avoid.”  Haynes is a beautiful contrarian by nature.  He likes to sear the conventional view.  But more often than not he’s right.  His point  jibes with our Jazz Loft research, too.  The scene was gritty and topsy-turvy.

Today you can go into Pottery Barn or Restoration Hardware in a standard suburban mall almost anywhere in America and you might hear a muted trumpet by Miles Davis or Chet Baker, and you might find a coffee table book of album cover photographs available for purchase.  What won’t be revealed in these books are the sad, agonizing moments in 1964 when a middle-tier, thirty-five year old musician hocked his saxophone and went to work for a fire extinguisher company (I couldn’t make that up if I tried).

-Sam Stephenson

p.s. Last year Johnson also wrote an excellent piece in New York magazine about the Town Hall shows, particularly Jason Moran’s IN MY MIND, engineered by Aaron Greenwald of Duke Performances.

We are proud to report that Communication Arts magazine, a major arbiter in the world of media arts, selected this website as its Webpick of the Day yesterday.  We owe this honor to The Splinter Group of Carrboro, N.C.  Splinter’s Steve Balcom and Lane Wurster and their colleagues absolutely killed this site (to borrow an utmost positive term from music parlance)  Plus it was fun to work with them.  Also, mention should be made of Jazz Loft Project Coordinator Lauren Hart who shepherded the site from here and Jazz Loft Project Research Associate and chief audio listener/cataloger Dan Partridge who provided audio content and input at every stage.  Many colleagues at the Center for Documentary Studies helped us turn corners at pivotal moments along the way, too.  Team efforts reaching a pinnacle.

- Sam Stephenson

This week’s issue of New York magazine has a new piece on the Jazz Loft Project by the eminent writer Fred Kaplan, whose latest book, 1959: the Year Everything Changed, was published to acclaim earlier this year.

- Sam Stephenson

Check out the latest interviews with Sam Stephenson, one from the Portland, OR bookstore, Powell’s, PowellsBooks.blog,and the other in the Independent Weekly.

Plus, you can listen to Leonard Lopate’s interview with Sam on WNYC on Tuesday December 8, here.

- Lauren Hart, JLP Coordinator