Count me in... Archives - Jazz Journal

Count Me In… 05/25

Nigel Jarrett — Mon, 12 May 2025 09:05:51 +0000

In 2024, having spluttered speechlessly at the non-jazz headline acts of major jazz festivals for several years, I came across Montreux and its 58th manifestation. Its promoters boasted it would “span all genres”. All genres of what? With a line-up that included Alice Cooper, P J Harvey, Kraftwerk, Soft Cell, Duran Duran, Sting and Massive […]

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Count Me In… 12/24

Nigel Jarrett — Sat, 21 Dec 2024 12:26:47 +0000

When Robert Johnson decided to “dust his broom” in 1936, he had embarked on what today might be described as stalking. Like a lot of other male-orientated blues lyrics, his indicate how he’d been mistreated by a woman and was determined to phone her, write to her, or otherwise contact the “no good doney” wherever […]

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Count Me In… 05/24

Nigel Jarrett — Sat, 11 May 2024 14:34:28 +0000

Jazz might be the sound of surprise but it can also be the surprise find, popping up serendipitously in unexpected places

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Count Me In… 10/23

Nigel Jarrett — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 18:25:28 +0000

Jazz might be an impecunious minority pursuit but at least it's cool, and possibly morally and aesthetically superior to rock and pop

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Count me in… 05/23

Nigel Jarrett — Mon, 08 May 2023 09:55:05 +0000

Although the jazz discography is full of varied interpretation, there remain performances that would benefit from simple shifts in arrangement

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Count me in… 01/23

Nigel Jarrett — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 15:36:47 +0000

Stuff is constantly changing but it's hard to tell how significant anything is until a vast amount of time has passed

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Count me in… 09/22

Nigel Jarrett — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 07:32:41 +0000

Dropping the 'quartet' and adding a definite article can be painfully hip, but some bands deliver the novelty the pop nomenclature promises

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Count me in… 01/22

Nigel Jarrett — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 13:36:03 +0000

Transfer today’s appetite for cultural, but especially racial, inclusivity to the early days of jazz and one wonders if the all-white bands at that time were all-white because they wanted no truck with black (then coloured) musicians or felt there were enough all-black bands anyway. In a society where cultural differences are mirrored in separate […]

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Count me in… 09/21

Nigel Jarrett — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 10:25:31 +0000

I had John McLaughlin and YouTube to thank at the end of 2020 – the first “annus horribilis” of the pandemic – for drawing my attention to the Jazz Foundation of America’s Covid-19 Fund. Since I wrote about jazz on YouTube in a print issue of Jazz Journal, back in some Gutenberg Mesozoic, the numbers […]

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Count me in… 02/21

Nigel Jarrett — Sun, 14 Feb 2021 14:21:45 +0000

There are historical parallels between jazz and photography – both were nascent (primitive, if you like) in the second half of the 19th century. That famous photograph of Buddy Bolden, with his six-piece band, is believed to have been taken in 1890. The photo, partly out of focus, is redolent of things coming into being, […]

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