If planners get their way, Chicago will have the nation’s first major gospel music museum, on the site once occupied by Pilgrim Baptist Church, known as the birthplace of gospel.
The National Museum of Gospel Music will unveil its plans for the $37.2 million Bronzeville institution, targeting a 2020 opening, at a news conference Friday afternoon on the nearby campus of Illinois Institute of Technology.
“This is the kind of project that’s like apple pie and ice cream. It just fits,” said Don Jackson, founder of the Stellar Gospel Music Awards and former chairman of the DuSable Museum of African American History, who is leading the project.
The project has the support of City Hall in spirit, at least. “Chicago is the birthplace of gospel music and the perfect home for the new National Museum of Gospel Music,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement. “The museum will pay further tribute to the home-grown genre that’s given life to legends like Thomas Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson, Albertina Walker, Jessy Dixon, Shirley Caesar, and so many more.”
As the man behind Stellar, the leading gospel awards, Jackson said other cities have come to him to talk about gospel museums there. But he withheld support: “I always thought if there was going to be a gospel museum, it should be in the City of Chicago,” he said.
When he was invited by Pilgrim Baptist Church leaders two years ago to tour the 3301 S. Indiana Ave. site where their church had burned down in 2006, leaving only exterior walls standing, the wheels began to click for Jackson, he said: “I walked through the ruins, and it got me thinking about all the history on that spot.”
First a Jewish synagogue designed by Adler and Sullivan, the church became Pilgrim Baptist during the Great Migration, and blues musician Thomas A. Dorsey, the music director beginning in the early 1930s, developed the style of music now known as gospel. Mahalia Jackson, Aretha Franklin and the Staple Singers are among the musicians who performed there.
“We know it will bring international tourists,” Jackson said, emphasizing not only broad interest in African-American culture but the site’s location close to Lake Shore Drive and the booming South Loop. “For Chicago to only have the DuSable Museum, in terms of an African-American institution, it is really underserved.”
As a sort of model, he cited Nashville’s National Museum of African American Music, scheduled for a 2019 opening. The Gospel Museum is incorporated as a not-for-profit, Jackson said, and has a design already for a 40,000-square-foot building that would include exhibitions, an auditorium and a research library.
Noted architect Dirk Lohan adapted a design making use of the existing church walls that he had already done for the site as a Chicago Architecture Foundation project, Jackson said, adding that Lohan has joined the planning team. Lohan could not be immediately reached for comment.
The museum has already begun work on securing funding, Jackson said, but a key will be to see what, if anything, the city might be willing to contribute through sources such as landmark preservation funds “so we can present an outline to our funders of what exactly is the city commitment.”
“The fundraising campaign will be going all the way to September 2020,” the target opening, he said. Of the $37.2 million in projected costs, $32 million is for the building and the remainder for an endowment. Operating costs are projected at about $4 million a year, to be raised from admission and other user fees.
sajohnson@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @StevenKJohnson
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Sunny Murray performing in the Netherlands in 1991. He moved to Paris in 1968 and spent most of the rest of his life in Europe. Frans Schellekens/Redferns
Sunny Murray, an influential drummer who was among the first to define a personal style in the free-jazz idiom, died on Dec. 7 in Paris. He was 81.
His half brother, Conny Murray, said the cause was multiple organ failure.
Mr. Murray was still finding his footing on New York’s jazz scene in 1960 when he met the pianist Cecil Taylor, a rising star of the avant-garde. The two played together at a jam session, and they clicked.
“I don’t know what I did, but he looked over his shoulder and said, ‘Do that again. You’ve got the will, so the spirits will do it.’ I’ll never forget that,” Mr. Murray told the writer A. B. Spellman for his 1966 book “Four Lives in the Bebop Business.”
Mr. Murray and Mr. Taylor soon forged a partnership that, though short-lived, was a watershed in jazz history. They made only a few recordings together, but “Nefertiti, the Beautiful One Has Come” — a double LP captured during a trio performance in Copenhagen in 1962 — would become a seminal document.
Mr. Murray was establishing himself as the first drummer willing to match Mr. Taylor’s free-flowing method — namely by abandoning a time-keeping role, and treating the drum set as a palette of textures more than a percussion instrument. By creating friction between the tones of his drums and cymbals, he sought to create new dimensions and hues, rather than pulse.
“I was able to interpret the difference between the sharp, quick sound and the slow, deep sound of percussion and manipulate it, get a third sound out of things,” he told the journalist Dan Warburton in 2000. “I wanted to get more from the beat than just the beat.”
Touring with Mr. Taylor in 1962, Mr. Murray met Albert Ayler, a young American tenor saxophonist living in Europe. Impressed by his broad, ululating sound and his ambivalence toward linear melodies, Mr. Murray quickly befriended Mr. Ayler, offering to split his room and wages with him for the rest of the tour if Mr. Taylor would let him join the band.
Mr. Murray’s partnership with Mr. Ayler was better documented than the one with Mr. Taylor. On “Spiritual Unity,” a classic album recorded in 1964, Mr. Ayler’s sound bursts forth, erupting in notes and smears and abrasions. Mr. Murray lathers him in cymbals and pattering snare drum, giving the music an elevated, almost celestial air. The task of keeping a pulse, even an irregular one, falls almost entirely to the bassist, Gary Peacock.
The next year, Mr. Murray recorded his first album as a bandleader, “Sonny’s Time Now,” the first of only three recordings to be released on Jihad, a label run by Amiri Baraka (who was then known as LeRoi Jones).
In 1966, Mr. Murray received DownBeat magazine’s “New Star” award in the drum category. Irritated that the award lacked a cash prize, he did something that manifested the frustration felt by many on the free-jazz scene: He took the award to the DownBeat offices and burned it on the floor.
“I decided to revolt,” he told Mr. Warburton.
James Marcellus Arthur Murray Jr. was born in Idabel, Okla., on Sept. 21, 1936, the son of James Murray, a preacher and gardener, and the former Myrtle Lee Rice, a domestic worker. He grew up in Philadelphia.
As a teenager, Mr. Murray became involved in gangs and spent a brief term in prison. When he got out, he survived a nearly fatal stabbing and an accident at a steel factory that sliced off parts of three fingers. He decided to leave Philadelphia soon after, moving to New York in 1956.
Mr. Murray worked for a few years in the band of the hard-bop tenor saxophonist Rocky Boyd, and sometimes sat in with Jackie McLean and James Moody, both prominent saxophonists. Even in those relatively mainstream scenarios, he insisted on playing with an untethered approach that drew disdain from most of the musicians around him. It was not until he met Mr. Taylor that he found an ally.
After establishing a reputation alongside Mr. Taylor and Mr. Ayler, he recorded a string of albums as a leader, including “Sunny Murray,” a 1966 release on ESP-Disk, and, following a move to Paris in 1968, “Sunshine” and “Homage to Africa,” both recorded in 1969 for the European BYG label.
Mr. Murray returned to New York in the 1970s but soon moved back to Europe, where he lived for the rest of his life. He was seldom seen onstage in the United States after that, though he continued to perform and record regularly.
In an addition to his half brother, his survivors include his partner, Isabelle Soumilliard; three sons, James Jr., Haniff and Oforie; a daughter, Pia; and two grandchildren.
Years after their partnership ended, Mr. Taylor retained a special fondness for Mr. Murray. “He can play those drums,” he told the journalist Howard Mandel for his 2007 book, “Miles, Ornette, Cecil: Jazz Beyond Jazz,” comparing Mr. Murray favorably to three of his more famous forebears on the instrument: Tony Williams, Max Roach and Art Blakey.
“Tony, yes. Max, yes. And Blakey. But Sunny!”
Correction: December 14, 2017
An earlier version of this obituary misstated the date of Mr. Murray’s death. He died on Dec. 7, not Dec. 8.

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A rendering of the Rollins, a new rental building on the Lower East Side, on the site where the jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins once rented an apartment. It is part of Essex Crossing, a $1 billion mixed-use project, and will begin leasing apartments in January. Moso Studio
In the late 1950s, the jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins rented a garden-level apartment on the Lower East Side with his wife. He spent his days practicing on the Williamsburg Bridge, honing his craft while he took a hiatus from recording and performing.
“That was a fond place for me,” Mr. Rollins, who is now 87 and lives in Woodstock, N.Y., said in a telephone interview. “It really has a place in my heart.”
That tenement building is gone now. It was demolished in 2015, decades after nearly all of the neighborhood had been bulldozed in the late 1960s in a failed urban renewal effort that reduced much of the area to parking lots and displaced around 2,000 people. But now the entire area is being redeveloped as Essex Crossing, a $1 billion mixed-use project. And on the site where Mr. Rollins once lived, a 15-story rental building that is part of Essex Crossing will begin leasing market-rate apartments in early January. The building’s name will be The Rollins.

 
Mr. Rollins, who is now 87, in 2010. There is a grassroots effort to name the Williamsburg Bridge, where he spent his days practicing, in his honor. Chad Batka for The New York Times
“I don’t know what to say. I’m overwhelmed,” Mr. Rollins said of the tribute. This comes at a time when a grassroots effort to name the Williamsburg Bridge in his honor has been gaining steam. In October, a bill was introduced to the New York City Council to rename the bridge. Developers learned of Mr. Rollins’s connection to the neighborhood from the campaign.
The Rollins, at 145 Clinton Street, includes 107 market-rate apartments, a mix of studios, one-, two- and three-bedrooms. An additional 104 affordable units were leased earlier this year through a lottery that attracted nearly 94,000 applicants. Those tenants will begin moving in next month.
The building, designed by Beyer Blinder Belle, will also house a Target and a Trader Joe’s, both to open in 2018. Another 15,000 square feet of retail in the building has not yet been leased.
Essex Crossing includes nine sites spread over six acres, mostly along the south side of Delancey Street, from Essex Street to the Williamsburg Bridge. The project, developed by Delancey Street Associates, an umbrella group of three developers chosen by the city in 2013, will ultimately deliver around 1,000 units of housing, half of them permanently affordable. Essex Crossing will also include retail, offices, space for a public school, the Essex Street Market and a 15,000-square-foot park designed by West 8 that will open next year, adjacent to the Rollins.
“We see this as being a real destination for people,” said Donald Capoccia, a principal of BFC Partners, a developer in Delancey Street Associates.
The Rollins will have a children’s playroom, a pet spa, a gym and a rooftop terrace with grills. A mural will be painted along the western facade, on a stucco canvas that stretches 220 feet long, by an artist to be selected in January.
Rents for market-rate apartments will start at $3,150 for a studio; $4,450 for a one-bedroom; $5,800 for a two-bedroom; and $8,450 for a three-bedroom. The rents will be among the highest in the neighborhood at a time when the rental market has slowed, particularly at the top. In the third quarter of 2017, the median asking rent for a one-bedroom in the Lower East Side was $2,589 a month, with only 34 of the available one-bedrooms (about 10 percent of the inventory) asking a higher rent than what the Rollins will be charging, according to data provided by StreetEasy.
But the development team points to a list of inquiries with 1,000 names long as evidence of interest in the property, despite a soft market.
“This product is going to speak to a more established and more mature audience,” said Matthew Villetto, a senior vice president at Douglas Elliman Development Marketing, which is leasing the property. “It’s going to speak to people who want a more elevated living experience.”

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Jazz legend Willie Pickens, 86, died during a soundcheck before he was scheduled to perform Tuesday night. | Facebook
Willie Pickens, a pianist who was a commanding presence on Chicago’s jazz scene for over half a century, has died.
“Dad left this earth today in New York at Lincoln Center, about to practice before soundcheck,” Bethany Pickens, who is also a musician, wrote early Wednesday on Instagram. “Now, he’s with my mom.”
Mr. Pickens, 86, had been scheduled to play Tuesday and Wednesday in New York at a “Jazz at Lincoln Center” show at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel praised Mr. Pickens as a “towering figure in our city’s cultural landscape, lighting the keyboard on fire with splashy chords and lightning runs over a career that spanned half a century.”
Jazz legend Ramsey Lewis called him “one of the great ones.”
“I’ve always admired Willie Pickens because he had 100 percent command of the instrument, but he was very humble,” Lewis said. “He would never say, ‘Yeah, I got it.’ He always said , ‘Oh, I’ve got so much to learn.’ ”
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He mentored other musicians, like the night pianist Judy Roberts had trouble hitting the right chords in “Killer Joe” at the Jazz Showcase. Roberts said that when she spotted Mr. Pickens in the audience, “I yelled out, ‘Willie, help me play this!’ Willie got up, and he ran over, and he was hitting my leg on the beats. I finally lined up my chords.”
Mr. Pickens, who lived in Hyde Park, began his music career as a teacher at Lindblom High School and later taught at Wendell Phillips High School, both on the city’s South Side.
Roberts’ husband, saxophonist Greg Fishman, said Mr. Pickens was an extremely versatile jazzman: “He did bebop, post-bop and modern jazz.”

Willie Pickens at the piano. | Facebook
In a 1994 interview, he told the Chicago Sun-Times he had to overcome his short, stubby fingers to succeed.
“I don’t have big paws like Oscar [Peterson] or a nice, big stretch like Benny Green’s,” Mr. Pickens said. “I have to create illusions, make it sound like I’m doing something I’m not.
“I’m not able to play real stride” — the left-hand-driven style popularized in the early 1900s, he said. “I have to do rhythmic stuff with my left hand to suggest the feeling of momentum. It’s all a matter of compensation.”
But he was so skilled, the length of his digits didn’t matter, said Lewis: “Sometimes, he would seem to have 20 fingers.”
In his long career, Mr. Pickens accompanied stars including Gene Ammons, Dexter Gordon, Elvin Jones and Sonny Stitt. He also played the Chicago Jazz Festival and the Ravinia Festival.
At Ravinia, the music education programs he offered for students “changed many students’ lives,” a spokesman said.
Jason Moran, the artistic director for jazz at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., said: “Willie would attend performances to offer his enthusiasm and critique. It meant so much to us pianists who would perform in Chicago. He was a man full of heart, generosity — and a seriously ferocious pianist.”
According to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where Mr. Pickens was a visiting artist, he “began his career on Eddie Harris’ 1961 hit record ‘Exodus.’ ”
 
 
1/11
Willie Pickens LIVE at Jazz Showcase
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Growing up in Milwaukee, he was surrounded by music. His mother was an amateur pianist, and his stepdad played alto sax. He listened to recordings by Nat King Cole and Art Tatum. He went to high school with alto saxophonist Frank Morgan.

Willie Pickens at the keyboard. | Facebook
As a teenager, he met jazz trumpeter Jabbo Smith, who would become a school janitor. “He told us about chords and harmony and stuff, but it was a long time before we knew who he was,” he told the Sun-Times.
Mr. Pickens moved to Chicago in 1958.
In the 1960s, he recorded four albums with tenor sax great Harris. He also recorded with the Jazz Machine.
Mr. Pickens suffered a heart attack in 1987 but recovered and continued to perform.
In 1999, then-Mayor Richard M. Daley invited him to travel to China with him and other musicians on a trade and cultural mission.
Mr. Pickens’ wife Irma, whom he married in 1959, died before him.
Services are pending, said the Rev. Ashley Whitaker of Hyde Park Union Church, where Mr. Pickens was a longtime member.
Mr. Pickens’ humility was his hallmark, according to Whitaker, who said, “To meet him, to talk to him, you would have no idea he was this giant of jazz music in our city, country and the world.”

Willie Pickens with daughter Bethany Pickens (center) and his late wife Irma.| Instagram

Jazz pianist Willie Pickens performing in 2004 with the Hank Jones Trio at Symphony Center with Clark Terry. | Sun-Times files
 
 
WDCB Live Broadcast Featuring Willie and Bethany Pickens, Piano
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Prior to then he’d gained a reputation and fans without leaving town very often. He earned admiration as a frequent collaborator with well-known jazz stars passing through Chicago, often gigging at Joe Segal’s Jazz Showcase.
Pickens’ style is hard to pin down, but typically flowed readily, richly, as if from a reservoir of knowledge and inspired imagination. He seems to have been influenced by or akin to such jazz innovators as McCoy Tyner, Thelonious Monk and perhaps Herbie Nichols. Although his hands were not large, notes, phrases and chords all rolled out from them with firmness and fullness. He was melodically and rhythmically exciting, and harmonically investigatory. I never heard him play with less than total involvement. Like here:
 
 
Willie Pickens, “Giant Steps”
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Pickens is heard on saxophonist Eddie Harris’ 1961 hit version of the theme from “Exodus”; he recorded with Marian McPartland as well as with Elvin Jones, and A Jazz Christmas (on Southport), which led to his 2016 Kennedy Center “Jazz Piano Christmas” concert. According to Howard Reich in the Chicago Tribune, Pickens had a spiritual side, reflected in his oversight of an annual Christmas benefit concert at Hyde Park Union Church. He initiated the jazz program at south side Kenwood Academy High School in the ’60s, taught for years at Northern Illinois University for several years, founded the Ravinia Jazz Mentor program in north suburban Highland Park in 1995 and intended to continue work in Ravinia’s Reach Teach Play Education program when he returned from New York. He had appeared at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, and at Jazz Institute of Chicago events including its summer Straightahead Jazz Camp.
Chicago has a long legacy of important, creative and popular pianists — think Jelly Roll Morton, Earl Hines, Nat “King” Cole, Ahmad Jamal, Herbie Hancock — and Willie Pickens has a place in that line. His daughter Bethany Pickens is also a pianist, and teaches at Kenwood Academy High School. The two played Christmas song, jazzily, at the Kennedy Center in 2016, on two pianos. That was something like standard operating procedure; here’s their 2015 performance at Chicago’s Piano Forte, originally broadcast live by radio station WDCB.
 
 
WDCB Live Broadcast Featuring Willie and Bethany Pickens, Piano
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Willie Pickens will be missed, and remembered.
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Courtesy of Micheal and Robert Meeropol
“Strange Fruit” conjures the evil specter of lynching in America, but its lyrics avoid any explicit language of racial violence. Rather, the unspeakable horror of this American phenomenon is presented through dark metaphor. Interestingly, the song was written and composed by the son of Russian Jewish immigrants from the Bronx named Abel Meeropol. Of course, Billie Holiday’s raw delivery, which draws out the haunting poetry of each syllable, made the song famous. But Abel Meeropol is a fascinating character in his own right, whose deep sensitivity to injustice and human suffering enabled him to write the song about race in America that TIME magazine called “the song of the century.”
 
Strange Fruit” conjures the evil specter of lynching in America, but its lyrics avoid any explicit language of racial violence. Rather, the unspeakable horror of this American phenomenon is presented through dark metaphor. Interestingly, the song was written and composed by the son of Russian Jewish immigrants from the Bronx named Abel Meeropol. Of course, Billie Holiday’s raw delivery, which draws out the haunting poetry of each syllable, made the song famous. But Abel Meeropol is a fascinating character in his own right, whose deep sensitivity to injustice and human suffering enabled him to write the song about race in America that TIME magazine called “the song of the century.”

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This month’s transfers of 5,000 78rpm sides for the Great 78 Project are now posted.
Many are Latin American music from the David Chomowicz and Esther Ready Collection.
Others are square dance music, with and without the calls, from the Larry Edelman Collection. (Thank you David Chomowicz, Esther Ready, and Larry Edelman for the donations.)
We are still working on some of the display issues with this month’s materials, so some changes are yet to come.

From the Larry Edelman Collection.
Click to listen.
Unfortunately we have only found dates for about 1/2 of this month’s batch using our automatic techniques of looking through 78disography.com, 45worlds, discogs, DAHR, and full text searching of Cashbox Magazine.  There are currently over 2,000 songs with missing dates.
If you like internet sleuthing, or leveraging our scanned discographies or your discographies and would like to join in on finding dates and reviews, please jump in. We have a slack channel of those doing this.
Congratulations to B George’s group, George Blood’s group, and the collections group at the Internet Archive for another large batch of largely disappeared 78’s.
 

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A tape cleaner at George Blood’s facility George Blood LP
Zoë Beery: That’s George Blood. He’s been doing preservation and transfer work for almost three decades, and his small staff of engineers and librarians spend their days bringing remnants of the twentieth century into the twenty-first. Places like museums, libraries, and private companies and collectors send their obsolete media to George, and his studio turns it into digital files. Like this transfer of a reel-to-reel travel film.
Film: There are no automobiles on the island but you can go anywhere by horse and buggy…
Zoë Beery: Right now, they’re in the middle of one of the biggest jobs they’ve ever done: The Great 78 Project. It’s a partnership with New York’s Archive of Contemporary Music and the Internet Archive, which you may know by its URL, archive.org. And a lot of the material they’re working with is in really bad shape.
George Blood: Cracks, broken discs, chips around the edges, things that have been played too many times badly, scratches either because a needle ran across or the materials weren’t handled properly.
Zoë Beery: These are the sorts of things you have to deal with when you’ve been tasked with archiving over 200,000 78s, which are the thick, heavy records that came before the more popular LP album format, which is what you would buy in a record store now.
78s are named for their playback speed – 78 revolutions per minute, instead of an LP’s 33 and a third. And instead of vinyl, which is plastic, they’re made out of shellac, which is bug resin.

Packing 78s for shipment The Internet Archive
A 78 can’t hold a lot of sound – only between three and five minutes per side. But three million of those sides were recorded all over the world between 1898 and the mid-1950s, which means that 78s as a format hold a lot of information about what people cared about in the first half of the twentieth century. And in many cases, the physical records are the only version of these sounds that exist.
Things like lessons for telegraph operators in Morse code, stories in many different languages, field recordings, and self-help records. And because they’re on an old format, it’s all at risk of disappearing.
George Blood: As we get farther and farther from the time when any given format was dominant, the ability to reproduce those – the existence of the machines, of working machines, people to service and keep those machines working, spare parts – all that is falling by the wayside.
Zoë Beery: George’s studio is not the only one in the country that’s able to do this work. But he landed the Great 78 Project because he invented something that saves time archiving 78s, which were manufactured in unpredictable ways.
George Blood: 78s aren’t standardized for speed, equalization, or stylus size. Each of the labels is trying something a little different. So all of these factors are interacting…
Zoë Beery: …and making it really hard to know what size needle to use, which is an important choice, because using the wrong one damages a record. And if that record has been played back multiple times with the wrong needle over many years, an archivist has to deal with that damage when they choose their needle. So should they capture the record exactly as it is, damage and all, or try to balance that with a slightly more enjoyable listening experience?
George Blood: The normal way of doing stylus selection is to put a stylus, listen to a disc, take it out, put another one in, listen to it, and it takes a lot of time.
Zoë Beery: Too much time to get through something like the Great 78 Project without totally losing it. So, the archivist faces a tough decision: What is the one version of this sound that should be preserved forever? George’s answer was to figure out a way not to have to choose.
George Blood: So we have here on the turntable four styli – four cartridges and four tone arms that are recording simultaneously. We put a different stylus in each tone arm, and then we keep them all.
 
 
Mass 78rpm Disc Digitization
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Adrianne Jeffries: So he built a machine that has four needles on a record at once?
Zoë Beery: Yeah. It looks like a weird robot. They’re just sort of gliding there perfectly smoothly, all doing exactly the same thing. They’re all recording simultaneously on the same record. When that’s done, when the needles are done doing their thing, one of George’s archivists uploads all of the files onto the Internet Archive website so that people who are looking at it, whether they’re just listening, or they’re a researcher, or another archivist, can choose the file transfer that works best for whatever they’re using it for.

George Blood’s four-armed turntable The Internet Archive
Adrianne Jeffries: OK wait, so you said earlier that there are over 200,000 of these records that he’s trying to preserve. Where did he get so many records?
Zoë Beery: So, the original set of records that started this project off came from the Internet Archive itself. Since they’re known for hosting so much old stuff, the guy who founded it, Brewster Kahle, has just slowly accumulated 78s over the years, from museums, libraries, collectors, anybody who has it and is like, “Oh, they like old stuff. Maybe I’ll give it to him!” And because there was this problem with how long it takes to properly transfer a 78, he was just letting them sit in cold storage in San Francisco because it was going to be a nightmare to do it. Until he met George, who had this turntable that fixed the problem. And now he just ships a pallet of 78s to Philadelphia about once a month.
After a little over a year of doing transfers, the project has gotten a pretty good cross-section of the kinds of things that were recorded onto 78s. There’s nearly every genre of music that existed at the time, from some of the first Argentine tangos ever distributed, to Hawaiian music played by Hawaiian performers but marketed to white audiences.
And while the music is nice to listen to, much of it has been digitized before, and the archive only includes it for the sake of completeness. It’s not really what makes the Great 78 Project worthwhile.
 
George Blood: One collector had passed away and we got the collection from the family. As they were going through the collection, they found a lacquer disc, an instantaneous recorded disc.
Zoë Beery: That collector was Jan Walikis. He was a lifelong 78 enthusiast who hosted a polka show on a college radio station for almost 25 years. And this is a recording of Jan, as a kid, accompanying his mother on the accordion. Jan died in 2012, and his widow donated his 78 collection to the Archive of Contemporary Music. But, she didn’t know that it contained a recording of her husband as a child.
George Blood: We digitized this and then sent the original back to the family, repatriating this cultural artifact, not just a bit of his history but a way for the family to connect with this beloved, departed person, and these are the kinds of things that you happen upon as part of this mass digitization project.

‘Sonny Walikis and his Squeeze Box’ on 78 The Internet Archive
Zoë Beery: Jan’s accordion solo isn’t something that someone at a garage sale would want, and neither would 78 collectors. They spend their lives hunting for astronomically expensive or very rare platters, usually blues or classical. They wouldn’t want this either: a sound effects record from before movies had sound effects. Or this, a novelty song whose entire joke hinges on movies having sound being a new thing. Or this, a charming reminder of some of the cultural values that were commercially viable while 78s were being produced. And that’s one of the less objectionable examples.
Without an archiving project that makes no judgment on the value of the contents that it’s saving, this evidence of what people liked to listen to, or how they liked to express their misogyny or racism or homophobia, would end up in a trash bin. So would things like this.
This terrible joke is from a 1918 comedy skit called “Abie at the Ball Game.” It’s a three-minute monologue about struggling to understand baseball. It stars Abie Kabibble, the main character in a comic strip called Abie the Agent, which ran in newspapers across the US in the first few decades of the twentieth century. At the time, Abie was one of the only Jews in pop culture who was not an anti-Semitic caricature. And for Jews who wanted to assimilate into American society, he was proof that they could succeed.
The Abie disc is one of about three dozen entries so far in the Great 78 Project that are by or for Jews. One of George’s engineers, Liz Rosenberg, transferred the collection.
Liz Rosenberg: There was just a bunch of Yiddish and Jewish records all together. There was a song about Purim and I was like, “Really?” And then it was followed by a bunch of joking, comedy records about learning Yiddish, like how to ask for more food at the table sort of things…
Zoë Beery: This 1948 recording is from a series called Basic Yiddish, which features an American comedian named Sam Levenson delivering lessons in conversational Yiddish. Although, they wouldn’t really be useful for someone who’s actually trying to learn the language.
But instruction isn’t really the purpose here. In the decade before they were released, Nazis had murdered nearly half of the world’s Yiddish speakers. And while there were plenty of American Jews who were fluent, they wanted to be more like Abie the Agent – assimilated. So Basic Yiddish isn’t for language learners – it’s for a culture recovering from genocide, that wants to connect with a piece of their history that had become a symbol of both tragedy and resilience.
George Blood: Why do we have to save these discs about teaching Yiddish? I mean, you can get textbooks for that, you can probably get CDs and do that online. Why do we want to preserve these? Because the material is presented is representative of how that community was reaching out to others in the community or the wider world to say, “this is who we are, we’re here.” And so it represents, for that community, a touch to their past, which I think we can all be empathetic to.
 
Zoë Beery: The Internet Archive’s 78 collection is about a quarter of the way digitized at this point. But the project just keeps growing, as people find out about it and donated their own collections. When it’s done, it will be the world’s largest collection of 78s. George is still going around to conferences to share his turntable, but he really likes to share it with the public, too, as he did last year at the Internet Archive’s 20th anniversary party.
George Blood: Families that brought small kids who are getting close to bedtime who will come up. And we’re playing music of things before their grandparents, and watching them dance and just be inspired by – yeah, somebody felt this musically, to write it, to perform it, and we put it on disc so that other people could experience this and I’ve got six-year-olds dancing to foxtrots that they’ve never been exposed to before.
Zoë Beery: There were record collectors there, too, and other technical dorks who geeked out over the turntable, but seeing those kids dance to records that aren’t too long for this world, that will probably shatter before those kids can own a 78 – that’s what keeps George going through the next hundred and fifty thousand 78s.
George Blood: For as much fun as we have with the music, as much as I enjoy working with the Internet Archive team and the people here, who doing great work, you met them – to get out and these people who I would never would have otherwise met, listening to these music, it’s where we realize it’s worth doing.
If you’d like to start exploring The Great 78 Project, their Twitter account tweets a new side every hour.
https://t.co/VTKreZDiwU Pieszczotka Polka, Edward Krolikowski I Jego Radjowa Orkiestra, A. Szuszczewicz, J. Messina: Polka
— thegreat78project (@great78project) December 6, 2017
Zoë Beery is a freelance journalist in New York. She previously wrote about America’s history of sterilizing prisoners.
 

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Sunny Murray, Free Jazz Drummer and Bandleader, Dead at 82
Sunny Murray, a pioneering free jazz drummer and bandleader of the free jazz movement, has reportedly passed away at the age of 82. Ayler Records, a Swedish labels with which Murray collaborated on some of his later recordings, confirmed the news today, as well as the French paper Libération. A representative from Eremite Records, another label on which Murray recorded, also confirmed the news to Spin.
Murray played and recorded with many giants of the avant-jazz genre, most regularly Cecil Taylor, who got Murray his start on the New York experimental jazz scene after moving to the city from his hometown of Philadelphia, and Albert Ayler, with whom Murray played on many of the saxophonist’s defining and more acerbic LPs. Murray also collaborated with John Coltrane, Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, Gil Evans, trumpeter Don Cherry and saxophonist Archie Shepp.
In the late ’60s, Murray began to record as a bandleader on various labels, bolstering his reputation as one of his scene’s most inventive and explosive drummers, flouting the conventions of time and form that had defined the genre prior to the 1960s. Murray later moved to Paris, which is where he lived up until the end of his life. In 2008, a French documentary about Murray’s life, Sunny’s Time Now, was released.
You can watch the film here, and read a comprehensive interview with Murray here. Check out some selections from his catalogue below.
 
 
Sunny Murray & Albert Ayler, Black Art, Sonny’s Time Now
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Sunny Murray – Sunshine & An Even Break
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Art Blakey, Max Roach, Elvin Jones & Sunny Murray – Copenhagen (1968)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Cecil Taylor – D Trad, That’s What
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Sunny Murray – Perles Noires vol. 1 &2 (Full Album)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Carl Chery helped Apple Music get exclusive rights to the premiere of Chance the Rapper’s album ‘Coloring Book.’ The musician, above, performs at Austin City Limits music festival in October. Photo: Amy Harris/Invision/AP
Apple Music’s biggest influencer, observers say, is Carl Chery, a former journalist at hip-hop magazine XXL, who helped Apple get exclusive rights to the premiere of Chance the Rapper’s recent album, “Coloring Book.” Among other things, he oversees The A-List: Hip-Hop, one of Apple Music’s most prominent playlists.
Playlist editors use a combination of instinct and data to create their tracklists. They want to highlight new talent and surprise fans, but also provide listeners with a guide to what’s hot. Curators closely track a playlist’s performance metrics: the number of times a song is played, skipped, completed, saved by users.
“If I love it, I want to give it a shot. But I don’t want to force-feed the listener,” says Mr. Chery. “I curate objectively.”
Deciding which music to include in a playlist, however, is getting more difficult. Major streaming services receive a deluge of new music every week and lack official channels for artists’ managers and record labels to lobby, prompting industry insiders—and outsiders—to find new ways to get their music favorable placement, observers say.
The biggest labels update streaming services regularly about upcoming albums by email. The top three—Universal, Sony and Warner—are investors in Spotify. Superstar artists, meanwhile, often tour companies’ offices and take one-on-one meetings with playlist curators.
“It’s kind of the Wild West,” says Mr. Jacobs, the music-industry lawyer.
Critics say this has led to playlists being overwhelmed by the promotional machinery of major labels. On Spotify, for example, labels can buy a so-called “home page takeover,” which blankets the service’s free, ad-supported version with promotional materials.
And some fear the system also creates a way for playlists to be bought or gamed through complex deals between artists and streaming services—a new version of “payola,” the illegal exchange of payments for airplay.
Under U.S. regulations, radio broadcasters must disclose payments or valuable quid-pro-quos for airtime. But those rules don’t apply to streaming services.
Spotify and Apple Music say that nothing resembling “payola” is occurring on their services. “There is absolutely no ‘payola’ happening on Apple Music or iTunes at all,” an Apple spokesperson says.
If playlists were industry-dominated, they’d be dull and easy to duplicate, Spotify’s Mr. Basa says. Payola is “unethical,” he adds. “Neutrality is in our business interests.”
Five of the Music Industry’s Most Influential Playlist Professionals

Tuma Basa Illustration: Robert Hunt
TUMA BASA
Age: 42
Title: Global head of hip-hop, Spotify
Influential because: Curates RapCaviar, considered the most powerful playlist today
As a young boy, Tuma Basa listened to his father’s reggae, Congolese rumba and R&B records, along with pop-rock radio. (Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me” was a favorite.) When he moved to Zimbabwe at age 13, from Iowa City, Iowa, his father’s boxes of records came along.
“He’s the reason I’m into music,” says Mr. Basa. “On my 10th birthday, he gave me The Eagles’ greatest hits album, and I knew it wasn’t for me—it was for him.”
In Zimbabwe, Mr. Basa dived headfirst into hip-hop, a genre that differentiated him from his parents. Soon, he was networking with record traders and traveling to Swaziland to dub and buy cassettes.
Two and a half years ago, Mr. Basa joined Spotify; his father now makes his own Spotify playlists of the music Mr. Basa grew up with.

Carl Chery Illustration: Robert Hunt
CARL CHERY
Age: 38
Title: Head of artist curation, Apple Music
Influential because: Works closely with hip-hop/R&B artists such as Chance the Rapper and Bryson Tiller
When he was a journalist, Carl Chery conducted one of rap’s most famous interviews. In 2007, he spoke to the rapper 50 Cent, who told him that he would stop making solo albums if his new record didn’t sell more than Kanye West’s album—fueling one of hip-hop’s most storied rivalries.
Years later, Mr. Chery worked on hip-hop magazine XXL’s annual Freshman Issue, a widely watched guide to rising rap talent.
Now, as a music curator, Mr. Chery says, he still feels like a journalist in many ways, unearthing new talent. He always starts from the gut; he will support an artist that catches his ear whether they have “a million followers [on social media] or two.” While he’s mindful of data, he doesn’t let it determine his playlists. “It’s a balancing act,” he says.

Allison Hagendorf Illustration: Robert Hunt
ALLISON HAGENDORF
Age: 37
Title: Global head of rock, Spotify
Influential because: The most important tastemaker for young rock bands looking to get traction online
Rock music may not be the driving force on Spotify that hip-hop is. But it’s alive and well on the live-music scene, says Allison Hagendorf. “That’s where rock ’n’ roll culture lives—at the venues,” she says.
A former music executive and television personality, Ms. Hagendorf previously helped shepherd albums by artists such as Coheed and Cambria as an A&R executive at Columbia Records. “I’ve always wanted to be the liaison between artists and their fans,” she says.
When it comes to new rock acts, she recommends Royal Blood, Tash Sultana, Ron Gallo and Greta Van Fleet, a young Michigan act she’s already seen five times in concert.
“It’s refreshing—and almost an anomaly—for young kids to be playing their own instruments and writing the songs themselves,” she says.
Getting rock fans to stream, she says, is “a work in progress.” “I’m on a mission to help evolve the genre.”

Mike Biggane Illustration: Robert Hunt
MIKE BIGGANE
Age: 39
Title: Head of pop, Spotify
Influential because: Oversees “Today’s Top Hits,” which has 18 million followers, among other playlists.
Like many people in the music business, Mike Biggane got his start playing in a band and trying to get signed. It didn’t work out.
But his fascination with pop’s hit-making machinery led him to a job at HitPredictor, a research firm that studies how songs perform on the radio. In late 2014, Mr. Biggane joined Spotify.
In radio, information about listeners takes weeks to gather. In streaming, it’s instantaneous, which helps curators like Mr. Biggane know when tracks are going viral or burning out.
“Hopefully I’m good at listening to the audience,” he says, “hearing what they like, and guiding them to more.”

Alex Luke Illustration: Robert Hunt
ALEX LUKE
Age: 49
Title: Global head of programming and content strategy, Amazon Music
Influential Because: Amazon Music is considered the sleeping giant of streaming services
Amazon’s two streaming-music services don’t get the media attention that Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal do, but they could bring the rapidly growing format to a broader audience of mainstream customers, industry watchers say.
A big reason is Amazon’s Alexa-enabled voice-assistance devices, which let users request, say, a playlist of ’80s pop tunes from their kitchen counter.
“We’re entering a new era with ‘voice,’ ” says Alex Luke, who manages content strategy and artist relations, and leads the programming and playlist teams at Amazon Music. “It changes the way customers are going to engage with music.”
For the past two decades, Mr. Luke has worked at the intersection of tech and pop: After a formative stint in the 1990s as an alternative-rock radio programmer, he held positions at Napster, Apple, EMI Music and a venture-capital firm, The Valley Fund, before joining Amazon earlier this year.
Five more leading playlist professionals to know:

• Rocío Guerrero (Latin and global music, Spotify), whose Baila Reggaeton playlist has over 6 million followers and helped the Spanish-language song “Despacito” hit No. 1
• Elliott Wilson (hip-hop, Tidal)
• Arjan Timmermans (pop, Apple Music)
• Tony Gervino (Tidal)
• Jerry Pullés (Latin, Apple Music) Corrections & Amplifications 
Elliott Wilson’s first name was incorrectly spelled Elliot in an earlier version of this article. (Nov. 15, 2017)

Write to Neil Shah at neil.shah@wsj.com

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Lacy himself gave me this one:

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WNYC radio host Leonard Lopate has interviewed guests ranging from Barack Obama to John Updike. Rob Kim/WireImage, via Getty Images
Leonard Lopate and Jonathan Schwartz, two of New York’s most popular and longest tenured radio hosts, were placed on leave by New York Public Radio on Wednesday as the company investigates allegations of inappropriate conduct.
Mr. Lopate, 77, has been a host on WNYC, which is owned by New York Public Radio, for more than 30 years, discussing the arts, politics, food and other topics each weekday. Mr. Schwartz, 79, hosts the station’s The Jonathan Channel as well as other programming on weekends.
WNYC disclosed that it had placed the men on leave just days after John Hockenberry, another well-known WNYC host, was accused by several women of sexual harassment, unwanted touching and bullying in an article published by New York magazine’s The Cut. Mr. Hockenberry was a founder of “The Takeaway” and its host for nearly a decade before retiring in August.
Laura Walker, chief executive of New York Public Radio since 1996, said in a statement that the station “takes these kinds of allegations very seriously and is reviewing these matters promptly.”
A spokeswoman for New York Public Radio, Jennifer Houlihan Roussel, declined to comment on the nature of the allegations against the hosts.
Mr. Lopate told The New York Times that he was “baffled” and “really quite shocked and upset” by the suspension, which he said came without warning at 11 a.m. Wednesday as he was preparing for the noon broadcast of his show.
“It makes no sense to me,” he said. “I am sure any honest investigation will completely clear me. That’s the only thing I’m concerned about — the damage to my reputation.”
WNYC “didn’t even give me a clue” about the nature of the allegations, Mr. Lopate said. He said he had been told to meet Wednesday morning with Dean Cappello, executive vice president and chief content officer at WNYC and New York Public Radio, who was joined by the head of human resources and a union representative.

 
Jonathan Schwartz, a fixture on New York radio for more than 50 years, is known as an authority on Frank Sinatra. James Estrin/The New York Times
Mr. Lopate said he had pressed for details but had been told only that “there were many” complaints, including from guests, and that a quick investigation would be conducted.
“I have never done anything inappropriate on any level — that’s not the way I conduct my job,” he said. “This may just be the current environment, but this is kind of overkill.”
Later, when asked whether he remembered any specific incidents that might have been problematic, he said he had once used the word “testicle” in a colleague’s presence while explaining that the avocado derived its name from the Aztec word for the body part — a fact that was the subject of an NPR piece in 2006. But he was incredulous that such a statement would have resulted in a complaint to superiors.
Mr. Lopate and Mr. Schwartz have been part of the fabric of New York cultural life for decades.
“The Leonard Lopate Show,” with its often leisurely interviews of politicians, authors, composers and chefs, has featured guests including Joseph R. Biden Jr., Catherine Deneuve, Ang Lee, Alice Munro, Barack Obama, Stephen Sondheim and John Updike.
Mr. Schwartz, a onetime cabaret singer who has published fiction and criticism in his time away from the microphone, first appeared on New York City radio in 1958, when he played a Frank Sinatra song on WBAI. He is known as an authority on Sinatra and the standards of jazz and pop. For four years, he served as the artistic director of Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series.
Another WNYC host, Mary Harris, will fill in for Mr. Lopate, and started with Wednesday’s broadcast. “That was the hardest hosting I’ve ever done,” she wrote on Twitter after the segment.
New York Public Radio has yet to determine a substitute for Mr. Schwartz, said the spokeswoman, Ms. Houlihan Roussel. (Mr. Schwartz did not immediately reply to a request for comment.)
In addition to WNYC, which uses NPR to syndicate many of its shows, New York Public Radio owns WQXR, NJPR and the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space in Lower Manhattan.
The allegations against Mr. Lopate and Mr. Schwartz followed claims of inappropriate behavior made against other powerful men in public radio, including Michael Oreskes, who led NPR’s news division; Garrison Keillor, the creator and retired host of “A Prairie Home Companion” for Minnesota Public Radio; and David Sweeney, NPR’s chief news editor.

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Quincy Jones’s latest venture is Qwest TV, a service offering high-definition streams of jazz concerts and documentaries. Robyn Twomey/Redux
For much of jazz’s history, devotees discovered music over the radio airwaves and in library stacks, rooting out old LPs or videos to borrow and sample. Today, a lot of that exploration happens online — particularly on YouTube. Most major albums have found their way onto that streaming platform, as have concert bootlegs, studio sessions and old documentaries that were once impossible to track down.
Now a new video platform is seeking to raise the bar, offering a curated library of high-quality video content from across the jazz world. Quincy Jones, the jazz musician and impresario, is helping to start Qwest TV, an online library of concert videos and feature documentaries, most of them unavailable on YouTube or any other streaming site.
“You remember 10 percent of what you hear and 30 percent of what you see,” Mr. Jones said in an interview, noting that he viewed Qwest as a way to maintain jazz’s staying power in the digital age. “When you see it, it hits you twice as hard.”
When it goes live on Dec. 15, Qwest will feature 50 videos, most from 30 to 90 minutes long, including a documentary on Al Jarreau, the virtuoso vocalist who died last year; and concert films featuring the pianist Jason Moran and his trio, the jazz-rock fusion band Kneebody and the Malian vocalist Oumou Sangaré. Subscribers will also have access to “The Sound of New York,” a 10-part series originally serialized in Italy, that features half-hour portraits of musicians like Damion Reid, Mark Turner and Bilal.
Qwest will operate like a highly specialized version of Netflix: Members pay a small fee each month for access to the full video library. It also resembles more boutique streaming platforms like Mubi, the art-film streaming service, or Boiler Room, an organization that archives its own underground-music concerts on its website.
The idea for Qwest took hold in 2014, when Reza Ackbaraly, 39, a French TV producer, approached Mr. Jones at Jazz à Vienne, a French festival for which Mr. Ackbaraly works as a programmer.
“I was the biggest fan that he could ever look for,” Mr. Jones said. “He came to us and said, ‘Let’s start our own channel.’ I said, ‘Oh yeah. Let’s go.’”
Mr. Ackbaraly has taken the lead in designing and implementing Qwest, with help from just one other full-time staff member. But Mr. Jones’s imprint is all over it. The service features a section of videos titled “Quincy’s Picks,” and he has helped guide the editorial vision. An irrepressibly contemporary thinker at 84, Mr. Jones has worked with Mr. Ackbaraly to ensure the video offerings accurately represent the breadth and vitality of jazz’s current moment — with content coming from the music’s contemporary mainstream and its avant-garde — as well as the annals of history.
The idea seems to be catching on. A Kickstarter campaign earlier this year raised around $160,000, nearly twice the target amount. Subscriptions are available for a little under $9 per month for standard access, or close to $12 per month for high-definition streaming. Yearly subscriptions come at a slight discount. Users can access Qwest on mobile devices and computers, or watch the videos on a TV set by using syncing software.
“It’s a niche market, for sure, but the beautiful thing about this music is that it’s international,” Mr. Ackbaraly said. “When you’re thinking of people like Chucho Valdés or Herbie Hancock or Kamasi Washington, they don’t fill a stadium with 30,000 people, but they will fill something from 500 people to 7,000 people in every major city, all over the world.”
Mr. Jones is also passionate about forging partnerships with universities and school systems across America. “We suffer a lot from not having a minister of culture,” Mr. Jones said of the United States, adding that he hoped making Qwest’s films widely available to students could help in “bringing the youth up-to-date” on the history and present-day life of jazz.
Most of Qwest’s content comes from European television, where public funding for these kinds of programs is often greater and interest in jazz is more commonplace than in the United States, though most of the content focuses on jazz musicians based in America. Mr. Ackbaraly acquired international distribution licenses for the films and videos, making Qwest the exclusive United States distributor. The service does not yet have any of the widely acclaimed, American-made jazz documentaries that have hit theaters in recent years — movies like “I Called Him Morgan” and “What Happened, Miss Simone?” — many of which have entered into exclusive deals with Netflix.
After the service goes live on Dec. 15, a new video will be posted each day for the rest of the month, with more added on a monthly basis starting in January. Each clip will be accompanied by an editorial description, written by a journalist or historian. And each month a different guest curator will help select a sampling of new videos.
“I know that I won’t convert the world to jazz,” Mr. Ackbaraly said. “I’m more like a gastronomic restaurant. If I have 20 tables filled every night, I’m fine. If I serve high quality programs in HD, with good curation, and have a good, close relationship to my audience, I’ll be fine.”

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/travel/hotels-record-players-vinyl.html

Eschewing High-Tech Hotel Amenities in Favor of Old-School Record Players

By SHIVANI VORANOV. 21, 2017
 

When Schafer Newman stayed at the Goodland, in Goleta, Calif., last year, it wasn’t the hotel’s proximity to the beach or downtown Santa Barbara that impressed him the most. Nor was it the extensive cocktail and spirits list at the property’s watering hole, the Good Bar. While these features were welcome, Mr. Newman, 28, from San Diego, said that he was blown away by the record player in his room, accompanied by a selection of rock ‘n’ roll records, including “Let It Bleed” by the Rolling Stones. “I had never used a record player, much less really seen one before, and I thought it was the coolest touch,” he said.
Mr. Newman isn’t the only guest at the Goodland to think so. According to Drew Parker, the hotel’s director of sales and marketing, the record players in each of the 158 rooms are a big hit — as is the hotel lobby’s Vnyl Record Shop, stocked with another 250 vinyls which guests are welcome to borrow during their stay.
“Almost everyone who stays here comments on how much they love the players,” he said. “For our younger clients, they’re a new discovery and for our older ones, they’re a throwback to the past.”
While many properties today emphasize their technology-related innovations, at some hotels, old-school record players, with impressive vinyl collections to go with them, are taking center stage.
The Goodland (nightly rates from $179) is only one example of this trend.
The Shorebreak Hotel, in Huntington Beach, Calif. (nightly rates from $219), introduced a record player in its new library area earlier this year. A local artist, Dave Reynolds, designed and recreated the midcentury console-style player, and the hotel now has a collection of 50 records, a mix of surf and classic rock and spanning from the 1950s to today. Guests are encouraged to check out these vinyls and listen to them in the library; the hotel staff also rotates different ones on the player during wine hour, held daily at 5 p.m.
 

In Boston, the Verb Hotel (nightly rates from $125) has provided record players in its 93 rooms since last year. When guests first enter the property, they are greeted by a library of more than 500 albums, including jazz, blues and classic rock, such as the Clash and AC/DC. They can check out these vinyls to take to their rooms; almost all guests borrow at least a few, said Annie Brown, an assistant general manager.
The Asbury Hotel, in Asbury Park, N.J. (nightly rates from $125), has a collection of more than 3,000 records (including rock, pop and country), which are displayed in a wall unit in the lobby. There’s also a record player in the lobby, and guests are welcome to choose a record to play. The most popular selections? Anything by Bruce Springsteen, said David Bowd, the hotel’s owner.
Broadway musicals are the theme of the dozen records in each of the 14 specialty suites at the Chatwal, in New York (specialty suite nightly rates start at $1,950). The players are red, and the records are from popular Broadway shows like “Wicked,” “West Side Story” and “Fiddler on the Roof.”
International hotels are also showcasing their vinyl collections.
The Berkeley, in London (suite nightly rates from £650, about $870), has a library of records from famous British musicians such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and David Bowie. Guests staying in a suite who want to listen to any of these records can request the hotel’s concierge to deliver a record player — which resembles a black vintage suitcase — to their rooms for the duration of their stay.
And in Ireland, the Dean Dublin (nightly rates from £170), has record players in most of its rooms, along with a selection of vinyls picked out by the local record store Tower Records Dublin. The choices emphasize Irish artists like U2 and James Vincent McMorrow.
Sean Park, a Chicago resident and product manager for a restaurant company, stays frequently at the Verb and said that listening to albums on his room’s player brings back fond childhood memories. “I blast ‘Thriller’ by Michael Jackson just like I did when I was in junior high and relive the fun of those days all over again,” he said.
 

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About The Film
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satan_in_High_Heels

Watch The Film
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2gnuqj
 
Director Aubrey Mayhew was an interesting character in addition to directing this film he was a Record producer and collector of John F Kennedy memorabilia.
Read his obit here
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/may/24/aubrey-mayhew-obituary
 
 
At one time he owned the Charlie Parker Label
http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.J082500
 
Record company and label founded by Doris Parker (Charlie Parker’s widow) and Aubrey Mayhew in New York in 1961. Its original purpose was to make available previously unissued recordings by Parker, and two albums of such material were made. Three further albums, of recordings originally issued by Le Jazz Cool, were also released. In addition the company reissued the sides made by Red Norvo for Comet and made available for the first time commercially air
 
 
Now owned by Koch
http://articles.latimes.com/2005/apr/08/entertainment/et-quick8.1
 
Charlie Parker catalog acquired
April 08, 2005|From Associated Press
 
Music by Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Stan Getz and others will be reissued by Koch Records Nashville, which has acquired the Charlie Parker Records catalog.
Charlie Parker Records, named for the influential jazz saxophonist, operated from the late 1950s to the mid-’60s. The catalog was owned by music producer Aubrey Mayhew. Terms of the deal, which includes music publishing company Charlie Parker Music, weren’t disclosed.
Nick Hunter, general manager of Koch Records Nashville, said there are about 55 albums in the catalog and some unreleased material. The roster includes works by Cecil Payne, the Orioles, Miles Davis, Barney Kessel and Pete Jolly. “Very little of this stuff has ever been out on CD before,” he said.
 

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Guitar great Mundell Lowe is shown at his San Diego home in 2015. He died there on Saturday, Dec. 2, 2017, at the age of 95. (John Gastaldo/U-T)
Mundell Lowe, the guitar master whose many musical partners included Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Charlie Parker, Benny Goodman and the Everly Brothers, died Saturday morning at his San Diego home. He was 95 and had been receiving hospice care since Monday.
In the past decade, Lowe had bounced back from angina, bladder cancer, kidney disease and stage IV lung cancer. He fractured his hip about six weeks ago.
“He was like the Energizer bunny, but he was fading the past two weeks,” said Claudia Previn Stasny, Lowe’s step-daughter.
“Mundell was one of the most important guitarists in jazz history. He was musically ahead of his time and was one of the most generous artists in supporting females in jazz,” said top flutist Holly Hofmann, his friend and collaborator for the past three decades. They last played music together over Thanksgiving weekend.
Lowe was characteristically spry in April at his 95th birthday concert at the San Diego jazz club Dizzy’s. Rather than just play a few songs, as had been anticipated, he performed for nearly an hour with a band that included fellow guitarists Jaime Valle, Bob Boss and Ron Eschete.
“Mundy recorded with Charlie Parker and just about anyone else you can name. I knew of his reputation many years before I met him. We all did,” said esteemed pianist Mike Wofford, a longtime friend of Lowe’s.
“He was, along with Barney Kessel, one of the most sophisticated guitarists in jazz. Mundy was more interested in harmonic creativity than just traditional jazz soloing. He was also a wonderful arranger who did a lot of writing for big bands. And he did movie and TV scoring in Los Angeles.”
Lowe’s film and TV music credits included “Hawaii Five-O,” “Starsky and Hutch,” “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)” and “Billy Jack.” His recording credits ranged from such jazz greats as Charles Mingus, Buddy Rich and Carmen McRae, with whom he made seven albums, to R&B vocal dynamo Ruth Brown, Barry Manilow and Johnny Ray, whose 1951 hit, “Cry,” featured Lowe.
His spare yet eloquent guitar-playing style enhanced any musical setting. His impeccable phrasing and carefully considered choice of notes inspired other musicians around the world.
“Mundell was one of a small handful of guitarists whose performances mesmerized me into signing up to go to the Guitar Institute of Technology in Los Angeles during a weekend symposium the school put on to recruit students in 1978,” said former San Diegan Jennifer Batten, who later rose to prominence as Michael Jackson’s lead guitarist.
“I will forever have a snapshot of Mundell in my mind’s eye from that evening.”
 
“I didn’t imagine myself growing up to be a farmer,” jazz guitar great Mundell Lowe said in 2015, recalling his rural upbringing in Mississippi. (John Gastaldo/U-T)
James Mundell Lowe was born April 21, 1922, in the Mississippi farming town of Shady Grove. He took up guitar at 6, began playing professionally at 13, and became a full-time musician after serving in the U.S. Army during World War II.
“Living on a farm when you’re a kid, I discovered there were no teachers around, so you had to kind of create things yourself,” Lowe recalled in a 2016 Union-Tribune interview. “I didn’t imagine myself growing up to be a farmer. Because my mentality wasn’t there; once I was introduced to the guitar, that’s where my interest was.”
He had an epiphany after hearing recordings of jazz guitar godfather Charlie Christian playing with the clarinet-playing swing king Benny Goodman.
Lowe would go on to work with Goodman as well. It was an experience the soft-spoken guitarist later described in comments punctuated with chuckles and a raised eyebrow.
“I use this line sometimes when I’m onstage and want to tell a joke,” Lowe said in his 2016 interview. “I say: “Yeah, I worked with Benny five times — he fired me three times, and I quit twice!
“That is the truth! He was a rough guy to work with. But he was a wonderful musician. So you kind of put up with the bad to get the good.”
From 1948 to 1965, Lowe was the guitarist and arranger for NBC TV’s “The Today Show.” He became a key mentor to young jazz pianist Bill Evans, then unknown, and was instrumental in helping Evans get his first record deal with the Riverside label in the mid-1950s.
Lowe moved to Los Angeles in 1965 to work as a guitarist and composer for NBC’s News & Special Events Department. In the 1970s and 1980s, he taught at the Grove School of Music in Studio City and the Guitar Institute of Technology in Los Angeles.
In 1981, Lowe became the musical director of the Monterey Jazz Festival. He resigned in 1987, after being asked to serve in the same capacity for a proposed annual jazz festival in Del Mar.
That festival never materialized. But Lowe and his third wife, noted jazz singer Betty Bennett, happily settled in San Diego, residing in a multilevel home in Tierrasanta. His most recent album, the enchanting “Poor Butterfly,” was released in 2015 on the guitarist’s own record label, Two Helpins’ O’ Collards. His passion for music never ebbed.
“Every morning, I make it a point to play for at least 35 or 40 minutes,” Lowe said in his 2016 Union-Tribune interview.
“I’ve always said that, when you start out in life and get out of school … find something you love doing and could perhaps make a living at. Maybe not something where you’ll make a lot of money, but enough to live, and you can be very happy with what you do.”
In addition to his wife of 42 years, Lowe is survived by a son, Adam Lowe; daughters Debbie Lowe, Jessica Lowe-Wilson and Shari Lowe; and step-daughters Alicia Lowe and Claudia Previn Stasny, who both reside in San Diego. No services have been scheduled yet.
george.varga@sduniontribune.com
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Mitch Margo, second from left, with members of the Tokens. The others, from left, are Eddie Rabkin, Hank Medress, Phil Margo (seated) and Jay Siegel. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Mitch Margo, an original member of the Tokens, the singing group best known for their hit “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” died on Nov. 24 at his home in Studio City, Calif. He was 70.
His family announced his death in a statement but did not specify the cause.
Mr. Margo was only 13 in 1960 when he and his brother, Phil, joined the Linc-Tones, who soon renamed themselves the Tokens. “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” the group’s biggest hit, topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks in 1961 and one week in 1962.
 
 
The Tokens – The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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The Tokens – The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh) Video by thetknsVEVO
Mr. Margo played piano in those early years, and over the years established himself as a multi-instrumentalist, also playing guitar, bass, drums and percussion.
The group wrote a number of its songs — Mr. Margo, his brother and the Tokens’ Hank Medress collaborated on the group’s first hit, “Tonight I Fell in Love” — but not “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” That song was based on a 1939 recording, “Mbube” — Zulu for “The Lion” — by the South African musician Solomon Linda and his group the Original Evening Birds.
Pete Seeger recorded a version in the 1950s as “Wimowe,” which is how he sang the original lyric “mbube” (pronounced EEM-boo-beh). The American songwriter George David Weiss reworked it in 1961, adding the lyrics “In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight.” That’s the version made famous by the Tokens.
“We’ve sung billions and billions of ‘wimowehs,’ ” the family statement quoted Mr. Margo as often saying.
The Tokens’ other hits in the 1960s included “I Hear Trumpets Blow,” “Portrait of My Love” and “He’s in Town.”
The group’s other original member was Jay Siegel. Other members came and went over the years.
The Tokens also produced records for the Chiffons, the Happenings, Randy and the Rainbows, and Tony Orlando and Dawn. It was Mr. Margo’s idea for the Happenings to do an up-tempo version of the Gershwin brothers’ “I Got Rhythm,” his nephew Noah Margo said. The record reached No. 3 on the Billboard singles chart in 1967.
Several songs Mr. Margo wrote or helped write were recorded by other artists, including “Laugh,” released by the Monkees in 1967, and “Slow Dance,” released by the Carpenters in 1989.
Mitchell Stuart Margo was born on May 25, 1947, in Brooklyn. He began singing a cappella at age 9 alongside his brother.
He left the music industry to serve in the Army from 1969 to 1972, in the Special Services division.
Mr. Margo also composed scores for television projects and was a painter. His art is featured in the children’s book “The Very First Adventure of Fulton T. Firefly.”
Mr. Margo’s marriage ended in divorce. His survivors include his sons, Damien and Ari; a brother, Phil; and a sister, Maxine, as well as nephews and a niece.

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Local jazz pianist John Coates Jr. dies at 79
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TIMES-TRIBUNE FILE Jazz pianist John Coates Jr. died Wednesday at the Jewish Home of Eastern Pennsylvania in Scranton at 79.

“ Alone and Live” at the Deer Head by John Coates Jr.
Former Scranton Mayor Jim Connors once asked legendary alto saxophonist Phil Woods what he thought of jazz pianist John Coates Jr.
“People don’t know how good John Coates is,” Woods told Connors, who confirmed Friday that Coates died Wednesday at the Jewish Home of Eastern Pennsylvania in Scranton.
Coates was 79.
Widely regarded as one of the jazz world’s finest pianists, Coates remained largely unknown even among jazz aficionados because he never consistently played outside the Poconos, said George Graham, the longtime WVIA-FM music show host, who featured Coates on the station’s “Homegrown Music” program.
“He is definitely the best piano player people don’t know,” said Bob Mancuso, co-owner of the Deer Head Inn in Delaware Water Gap where Coates played regularly from the 1960s until about 2010.
Born and raised in Trenton, New Jersey, Coates began studying music at 8 years old, traveling to the Mannes College of Music in New York City. He also learned to play clarinet because famed big band leader Benny Goodman played it. Coates performed with his father once a week at Trenton YMCA dances from age 11 to 14, according to an online biography. By age 16, he played six nights a week during the summer at the Deer Head.
Savoy Records, a well-known jazz label, discovered him and had him record an album, “Portrait,” in 1956.
He performed on national television programs including “The Steve Allen Show” and toured with jazz band leader Charlie Ventura, playing Birdland and the Blue Note in New York City, and other noted jazz clubs.
Coates worked in the 1960s and 1970s as an arranger and composer for legendary big band leader Fred Waring, who settled in the Poconos after his career ebbed and set up a music publishing house.
Coates’ regular gigs at the Deer Head helped establish a Poconos jazz scene. His work there and at a Trenton night club regularly attracted famed jazz musicians, who either joined him on stage or just came to listen. They included Woods, Coleman Hawkins, Clark Terry and Stan Getz. Keith Jarrett, an Allentown native, drummed behind Coates for two years at the Deer Head before embarking on a legendary jazz piano career himself.
“Word got out, it was just a regular thing,” Graham said. “People literally traveled from Japan to see him.”
Coates hugely influenced Jarrett, who lifted a Coates melody and used it on a live recording, Graham said.
“He was very innovative,” Graham said. “He had a distinct left-hand technique, very swinging, a combination of swinging left hand and a very melodic way of writing pieces. His tunes, you could go and hum.”
In addition to Jarrett, jazz innovator Dave Brubeck counted Coates as an influence, according to a 1982 Baltimore Sun story.
In 1974, Coates finally recorded again, producing “The Jazz Piano of John Coates Jr.,” the second of at least 15 recordings between then and 2014. In the 1990s, Coates developed a “pretty serious depression,” he told The Allentown Morning Call in 2000. At one point, homeless and almost bankrupt, he tried to kill himself in New York City before recovering and resuming his career.
Connors said Coates suffered from “a whole series of medical problems” and had lived in Scranton since October 2015. Coates always had a fondness for Scranton and its musicians, and played here frequently over the years, including venues like the long-closed Wine Cellar, Connors said.
“He was a humble man, possibly the most humble person I have ever met, despite his incredible talent,” Connors said.
Coates will be cremated, with Miller Bean Funeral Home handling the arrangements. He said a memorial service is in the works. Read his obituary on Page B8.
Contact the writer:
bkrawczeniuk@timesshamrock.com;
570-348-9147;
@BorysBlogTT on Twitter
 
Posted by The Deer Hear Inn
 
Friends of Johnny Coates,
   
So sorry to inform you that our dear friend Johnny Coates passed away quietly Wednesday, November 23, at 2:30 pm at the Jewish Home of NE Pa.
   
He didn’t suffer.
   
Johnny’s wish was to be cremated and arrangements are by the Miller Bean Funeral Home, 436 Cedar Ave, Scranton, PA 18505. Due to the Thanksgiving holiday, cremation probably will not take place until early next week.
 
There will be no calling hours or service in Scranton, however, ironically, Jay Rattman, sax,  and Billy Test, piano, will be performing a previously scheduled program of John’s music at the Deer Head Inn, in Delaware Water Gap Rt 611, this Sunday Nov. 26, 5:00 to 8:00 pm, donation $10. Last years’ performance, as well as  a Bob Dorough concert which Johnny attended, were  rousing successes.
   
In the 6 months that John had been a guest of the Jewish Home,  our hope was to get him back in playing shape, but unfortunately, that was not meant to be. 
   
Johnny died with money in the bank and all his bills paid.
 
Thanks for all your calls, letters and visits over the last several years. Johnny was not alone!  
 
Jim and Susie Connors
 

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Lambert, Hendricks & Ross’s debut album, released in 1958, was a hit and made the trio’s partnership permanent. J.P. Roth Collection
John Carl Hendricks (he dropped the “h” from his first name when he went into show business) was born on Sept. 16, 1921, in Newark, Ohio, near Columbus. His father, Alexander Hendricks, was an A.M.E. Zion minister, and his mother, the former Willie Mae Carrington, led the choir at the church where Mr. Hendricks first sang in public, at age 7.
He began singing professionally seven years later, after moving to Toledo with his parents and his 14 brothers and sisters. He sang on the radio and at a local nightclub, where for two years his accompanist was Art Tatum, then little known outside Ohio but soon to become celebrated as the foremost piano virtuoso in jazz.
Mr. Hendricks became a full-time singer in Detroit after high school and then served overseas in the Army during World War II. He later studied English literature at the University of Toledo and harbored thoughts of attending law school. At night he sang and played drums in a jazz band, and when his G.I. Bill scholarship money ran out, he decided to forget about the law and make music his career.
After moving to New York City in 1952, Mr. Hendricks worked as a clerk-typist and achieved a modicum of success on the side as a songwriter, but found little work as a performer. He was inspired to put lyrics to jazz recordings after he heard King Pleasure’s record of “Moody’s Mood for Love,” based on a James Moody saxophone solo on “I’m in the Mood for Love,” for which Eddie Jefferson had written new words.
“I was mesmerized,” Mr. Hendricks told The New York Times in 1982. “I’d been writing rhythm-and-blues songs, mostly for Louis Jordan. But I thought ‘Moody’s Mood for Love’ was so hip. You didn’t have to stop at 32 bars. You could keep going.”
He began collaborating with his fellow jazz singer Dave Lambert in 1953, and four years later their efforts paid off. “Dave Lambert said, ‘You know, before we starve, we ought to leave something to let people know we were here,’ ” he recalled in a 1996 NPR interview. “I said, ‘O.K., what do you think?’ He said, ‘Well, write some words to some Basie things, and I’ll arrange them, and we’ll sing them. And then if we starve to death, at least they’ll know, “Boy, great artists were here.” ’
Mr. Hendricks proceeded to write words for 10 songs from the Count Basie band’s repertoire, based on the original recordings. Mr. Lambert wrote vocal arrangements. ABC-Paramount Records agreed to turn the concept into an album.
Mr. Hendricks and Mr. Lambert hired a rhythm section to accompany their vocals and a 12-piece choir to simulate the sound of the Basie band’s reed and brass sections. When the choir had trouble mastering the rhythmic nuances of the Basie style, Annie Ross, a British-born jazz singer who had made some vocalese recordings of her own, was brought in to coach it.
Ms. Ross’s efforts to imbue the studio vocalists with the proper jazz feeling proved futile, and they were let go. She ended up singing on the session with Mr. Lambert and Mr. Hendricks; their voices were multitracked, a rarity in those days.
The resulting album, “Sing a Song of Basie” (1958), was a hit. In the wake of its success, the three vocalists decided to make their partnership permanent.

 
Mr. Hendricks performing in 2008 with his daughter Aria Hendricks at the Jazz Standard, a club in Manhattan.
 
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Lambert, Hendricks & Ross went on to record several more albums, including one with the Basie band itself for Roulette and one devoted to the music of Duke Ellington for Columbia. Although vocalese remained the group’s emphasis, its repertoire also included a number of songs for which Mr. Hendricks wrote the music as well as the lyrics, and many of their songs were used as springboards for their own flights of wordless improvisation.
Annie Ross left the group in 1962 and was replaced briefly by Anne Marie Moss and then by Yolande Bavan, with whom Mr. Hendricks and Mr. Lambert recorded three albums for RCA Victor. The trio disbanded in 1964. Dave Lambert died in a highway accident in Connecticut two years later.
Mr. Hendricks moved to London with his family in 1968 but returned to the United States in 1973. For the next two years he wrote jazz reviews for The San Francisco Chronicle and taught classes in jazz history at the University of California, Berkeley, and California State University at Sonoma.
Mr. Hendricks’s stage show “Evolution of the Blues,” in which he traced the history of African-American music in song and verse, opened at the Broadway Theater in San Francisco in 1974 and ran for five years. His focus later shifted to Jon Hendricks and Company, a vocal quartet that carried on the tradition of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.
His wife, the former Judith Dickstein, who had first sung with him during their years in England, was a member of the group from its inception in the late ’70s and also served as his manager. (His first marriage, to Colleen Moore, ended in divorce.) Over the years its ranks also included Mr. Hendricks’s daughters Michele and Aria and his son Eric, as well as the singer Bobby McFerrin and the actor Avery Brooks.
Mr. Hendricks and Mr. McFerrin shared a Grammy in 1986 for “Another Night in Tunisia,” a track from the Manhattan Transfer album “Vocalese,” for which Mr. Hendricks wrote all the lyrics.
Judith Hendricks died in 2015. In addition to his daughter Aria, Mr. Hendricks is survived by another daughter, Michele Hendricks; a son, Jon Hendricks Jr.; three grandchildren; and a niece, Bonnie Hopkins.
Mr. Hendricks remained active into the 21st century. He taught for many years at his alma mater, the University of Toledo. He was one of the three featured vocalists in the touring ensemble that performed Wynton Marsalis’s jazz oratorio “Blood on the Fields,” which received a Pulitzer Prize in 1997.
He continued to perform occasionally with Jon Hendricks and Company and periodically reunited with Ms. Ross. In 2015 the two of them were among the veteran jazz singers who recorded alongside a vocal group called the Royal Bopsters and performed with the group at Birdland in New York.
In his role as a teacher and a critic, Mr. Hendricks proved that he was adept at dealing with jazz in an analytical way. But he always maintained that words could go only so far in explaining the music’s importance and endurance.
“I wrote the shortest jazz poem ever heard,” he once wrote by way of explaining his philosophy. “Nothin’ about huggin’ or kissin’. One word: ‘Listen.’ ”
 

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George Avakian with Louis Armstrong and W.C. Handy, center, in an undated photograph. Mr. Avakian helped popularize the long-playing record and organized the first jazz reissue series, preserving the recorded legacies of Armstrong and other pioneers. Columbia Records
George Avakian, a record producer and talent scout who played a key role in the early careers of Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Keith Jarrett and Bob Newhart, among many others, died on Wednesday at his home in on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He was 98.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Anahid Avakian Gregg.
Over the course of a career that began when he was in college, Mr. Avakian (pronounced a-VOCK-ee-an) was involved in virtually every facet of the music industry. He helped popularize the long-playing record; organized the first jazz reissue series, preserving the recorded legacies of Louis Armstrong and other pioneers; and introduced Édith Piaf to American audiences.
He made his most lasting mark as a jazz producer with Columbia Records in the 1950s. He brought Brubeck and Davis to the label, helping to transform them from artists with a loyal but limited audience to international celebrities. He signed Johnny Mathis, then an unknown jazz singer, and oversaw his emergence as a chart-topping pop star. He persuaded Louis Armstrong to record the German theater song “Mack the Knife,” an unlikely vehicle that became one of his biggest hits. And he supervised the recording of Duke Ellington’s performance at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, which revitalized Ellington’s career.
George Mesrop Avakian was born on March 15, 1919, in Armavir, Russia, to Armenian parents, Mesrok and Manoushak Avakian. His family moved to the United States shortly after he was born. His younger brother, Aram, became a respected film editor and director.
An avid jazz fan and record collector, George was a sophomore at Yale and already a published jazz critic when he persuaded Decca Records to let him record the guitarist Eddie Condon and other musicians who had been fixtures of the Chicago scene a decade earlier. Those sessions, in 1939, produced “Chicago Jazz,” a package of six 78 r.p.m. recordings that is widely regarded as the first jazz album.
“When I saw how much alcohol Eddie Condon and his guys drank and abused their health,” Mr. Avakian told Down Beat magazine in 2000, “I was very alarmed and became convinced they couldn’t possibly live much longer. So I persuaded Jack Kapp at Decca to let me produce a series of reunions to document this music before it was too late.
“They were only in their mid-30s. But I was 20. What did I know about drinking?”
Columbia hired Mr. Avakian in 1940 to assemble and annotate a comprehensive jazz reissue series, something no record company had undertaken before. Working one day a week for $25, he compiled anthologies of the work of Armstrong, Ellington, Bessie Smith and others, establishing a template that the industry continued to follow into the CD era.
In 1946, after five years in the Army, Mr. Avakian became a full-time member of Columbia’s production staff.
While overseeing the company’s jazz operations, he wore many other hats as well. He was in charge of pop albums and served as a one-man international department, releasing Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose” and other important European records in the United States.
He also played a significant role in establishing the 33⅓-r.p.m. long-playing record as the industry standard, supervising production of the first pop LPs shortly after the format was introduced in 1948.

 
George Avakian in 2007. Ken Levinson/New York Public Library
Mr. Avakian later worked briefly for the World Pacific label before joining the Warner Bros. movie studio’s newly formed record subsidiary, where he was in charge of artists and repertoire from 1959 to 1962.
With a mandate to get Warner Bros. Records on solid financial ground by delivering hits, he temporarily shifted his focus from jazz. He brought the Everly Brothers to the label and signed a young humorist named Bob Newhart, who had been working as an accountant in Chicago and moonlighting as a radio performer but had never performed for a live audience.
Mr. Newhart’s first album, “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart,” became one of the best-selling comedy records of all time.
In 1962, Mr. Avakian joined RCA Victor Records, where he was in charge of pop production but also had the opportunity to renew his involvement in jazz, producing critically acclaimed albums by Sonny Rollins, Paul Desmond and others.
Tiring of the day-to-day grind of the record business, Mr. Avakian became a freelance manager and producer in the mid-’60s. His first client of note was Charles Lloyd, a saxophonist and flutist whose freewheeling style had attracted a young audience and who became one of the first jazz musicians to perform at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco and other rock venues.
The pianist in Mr. Lloyd’s quartet was Keith Jarrett, and Mr. Avakian worked with him as well, helping to lay the groundwork for his breakthrough as one of the most popular jazz musicians of the 1970s.
By the late ’90s Mr. Avakian had come full circle: He returned to Columbia Records to supervise a series of jazz reissues. This time the medium was CD rather than vinyl. And this time many of the recordings being reissued had originally been produced by Mr. Avakian himself.
Mr. Avakian was married for 68 years to the violinist Anahid Ajemian, a founding member of the Composers String Quartet. She died in 2016. Aram Avakian died at 60 in 1987.
In addition to his daughter Anahid Avakian Gregg, Mr. Avakian is survived by another daughter, Maro Avakian; a son, Greg; and two grandchildren.
In 2014, Mr. Avakian and Ms. Ajemian donated their archives, including unreleased recordings by Armstrong and Ellington, to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.
Among the many honors Mr. Avakian received were a Trustees Award for lifetime achievement from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 2009 and a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters award for advocacy in 2010. Receiving the N.E.A. award, he said at the time, was “a culminating honor that confirms my long-held belief: Live long enough, stay out of jail, and you’ll never know what might happen.”
 

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CBS4’s Tom Mustin interviews Dianne Reeves (credit: CBS)
The Denver native showed off pictures from her more than 40 years as a jazz legend.
“That’s Herby Hancock, myself and Wynton Marsalis,” she showed Mustin.

(credit: CBS)
Her friends are a virtual “Who’s Who” of the music world, from Stevie Wonder to Herbie Hancock.

(credit: CBS)
On the evening of Nov. 28, Dianne is being inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame as part of the “Jazz Masters and Beyond” class… a long journey since graduating from George Washington High School in 1975.

(credit: CBS)
“Being from Colorado is to me very, very special. I’m just very thankful to be here. I’m also thankful to be a part of the history of this state, “she said.
Music has always been a part of Dianne’s life. She sang in the choir at Hamilton Junior High and at G.W.

(credit: CBS)
After graduation she heard fellow Denver native Phillp Bailey from Earth, Wind and Fire was looking for a backup singer. She and her friends packed their car and headed to Los Angeles.
“My mother had a bag of fried chicken and pound cake for each car. So we left bones all the way from Denver to L.A.” she laughed.

(credit: CBS)
Dianne got the gig. Five Grammys later, Dianne has wowed audiences across the globe, including a special performance for President Barack Obama and the First Lady.
“Michelle… I had on this dress. When I walked on stage she went, ‘Yes.’”
Dianne says she’s honored to be recognized by her fellow Coloradans.

(credit: CBS)
She offered some advice to other budding young singers, “Go out into the world with your passion and love for what you do and just never give up.”
Words this Denver legend has lived by on the road to the Colorado Music Hall of Fame.

(credit: CBS)
“We’re going to have a good time and we’re going to party and celebrate Denver, Colorado.”

(credit: CBS)
The induction ceremony for this year’s Colorado Music Hall of Fame, presented by Comfort Dental, will take place Tuesday, Nov. 28 at the Paramount Theatre. Other inductees include Phillip Bailey, Andrew Woolfolk, and Larry Dunn from Earth, Wind, and Fire, as well as Charles Burrell, Bill Frisell, Ron Miles, and East High School. Tickets are on sale through Altitude Tickets.
Tom Mustin is CBS4’s Weekend Anchor. He has been with CBS4 since 2002, and is always looking for great story ideas. Connect with Tom on Facebook or follow him on Twitter @TomCBS4.

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Mel Martin playing tenor sax between Bobby Hutcherson (left) and Bobby Watson (right). In the back left corner is Mulgrew Miller on piano (Courtesy of the Martin family)
By
Mel Martin, a multi-instrumentalist and composer who dedicated his life to the Bay Area jazz scene, died last week at the age of 75.
Martin died of a heart attack on Friday, Nov. 17, according to his daughter Sara Breindel. Her announcement of his passing on Facebook inspired in an outpouring of condolences on social media.
“I am in mourning, shocked, and saddened beyond words. Jazz Saxophone Giant, Mel Martin has just passed,” jazz guitarist Steve Homan wrote. “It is so hard to even share this news. Your beautiful music, and the times we shared the stage, playing music together, will be with me always.”
 
 
To Catey With Love
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Martin played with many legendary artists over his 60-year career in music, backing up jazz greats like Dizzy Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald and playing alongside stars in others genres like Frank Sinatra, James Brown and Tom Waits.
Born in Sacramento, Martin fell in love with jazz at the age of 12. Though Martin’s parents loved music and played piano at home, they hoped that their only son would take over the family real estate business. But Martin never showed any interest; instead, he spent much of his time at jazz clubs watching legends like Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman and Cannonball Adderly.
“He discovered jazz and there was no stopping him,” Breindel said.
Originally a clarinet player, Martin began playing saxophone and flute as teenager in the music program at Sacramento High School. It was around then that he landed his first big gig playing with legendary jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery. According to Martin’s bio on his website, by then, the Montgomery brothers (Wes, Monk and Buddy) were living in Sacramento and playing shows around town. Martin was already confident enough in his abilities to jam with other working musicians, so he got the nerve to ask the brothers if he could join them on flute.
“All of a sudden I was up there and I noticed I’d never sounded so good in my life. When you play with great musicians, you tend to up your game,” Martin wrote on his website. “At another gig Wes wrote out the changes to ‘West Cost Blues’ on a napkin that I still have.”

Mel Martin with Dizzy Gillespie (Courtesy of the Martin family)
After high school, Martin moved to San Francisco to attend San Francisco State University (SFSU), where he majored in music. He didn’t stay long, as he found the school “disappointing” compared to the excellent program at his high school.
“The streets, however, were another story,” Martin said in a 2011 interview.
Martin then began playing with fellow SFSU student John Handy in his Freedom Band — an experience Martin would later describe as his first time “working within a real jazz situation.” He spent the rest of the ’60s living the jazz life: Gigging at jazz clubs around the Bay Area, like Bop City and the Jazz Workshop, and staying up until the early morning hanging out with fellow jazz players.
In the ’70s, Martin began making a name for himself in the emerging jazz fusion scene. Among the groups he played and recorded with were Azteca, the Latin-fusion group led by legendary percussionists Coke Escovedo and Pete Escovedo; and Doug Sahm’s Honkey Blues Band, the influential Texan musician’s short-lived band in San Francisco. He also played on recordings by Boz Scaggs, Chuck Berry and Dr. John, among many others.
 
 
Listen feat. Mel Martin – Aural Hallucination
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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In 1977, Martin started Listen, his jazz fusion group whose first two albums — 1977’s Featuring Mel Martin and 1978’s Growing — brought him real acclaim, including the Musician Of The Year award from the San Francisco chapter of National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS), the same organization that hosts the GRAMMY Awards. The first Listen record also won the BAMMY for Best Jazz Album that same year.

Mel Martin at Keystone Korner in the ’70s. Martin was a regular at the legendary jazz club (Brian McMillen/Courtesy of Todd Barkan)
Martin was also a working composer and studio musician, writing and recording parts for a wide variety of projects, including commercials and even animated shorts on Sesame Street. He contributed music for the TV show the Twilight Zone, and movies like the the Warriors, Rumblefish and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Martin was a member of the musicians’ union and always had some kind of recording studio set up at his house. Even during periods when he was often playing live, he was still working on new music.
“His first love was definitely jazz but he played TV shows, commercials — whatever they would hire him for,” Breindel said. “I grew up with music around me 24 hours a day, in recording studios and concert halls and night clubs. There were always musicians in our house.”
After years of looking to the future of music, Martin began looking back at the legacy of jazz in the ’80s and ’90s. He started projects like the Mel Martin All-Star Big Band and the bebop tribute group Bebop & Beyond, who recorded albums of music by Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie — artists Martin backed on multiple occasions in his later years. Martin later started a tribute band dedicated to one of his heroes, Benny Carter. He received five grants from the National Endowment for the Arts for his tribute and preservation work.
 
 
Another Time, Another Place: Mel Martin and the Benny Carter Tribute All Stars
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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In his later years, Martin dedicated much of his time to teaching and mentoring younger musicians. After an 11-year stint teaching at the Stanford Jazz Workshop, he went on to tutor students at his home in Novato and at schools around Marin County. He also spent numerous hours on the internet discussing music, most notably on his popular Facebook group MEL MARTIN’S JAZZ SAXOPHONE FORUM, which currently has over 2,000 members. Breindel says her father was on his computer, reaching out to his musician friends on social media when he died.
“He did not isolate himself at all. His thing was to share the music and really connect with people on that level,” she said.
 
Breindel is a college-educated classical musician herself. “I wanted to rebel against my father and have all the notes written down for me,” she said, adding that there will probably be a musical celebration for her father at some point. But she feels that the big band concert Martin organized for his 75th birthday at Filoli Gardens, which included a lot of his old musician friends, was a perfect sendoff for him as he was able to play and enjoy it.
“It really felt like an honor and a tribute to my father’s life,” Breindel said. “I’m so glad he did that because now that I look back, I can see it was a bit of a farewell.”

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Della Reese, left, with other cast members of “Touched by an Angel” in 2003. From left are Roma Downey, John Dye and Valerie Bertinelli. CBS
Della Reese, the husky-voiced singer and actress who spent almost a decade playing a down-to-earth heavenly messenger on the CBS series “Touched by an Angel” and became an ordained minister in real life, died on Sunday night at her home in Encino, Calif. She was 86.
Her death was confirmed by her manager, Lynda Bensky. She did not specify the cause but said that Ms. Reese had diabetes.
Ms. Reese had been under contract to Jubilee Records for three years when, in 1957, she had her first big hit record, the romantic ballad “And That Reminds Me.”
Named the year’s most promising “girl singer” by Billboard, Variety and Cash Box, she was soon making regular appearances on the leading television variety shows of the day. Her biggest hit was “Don’t You Know” — adapted from “Musetta’s Waltz,” an aria from “La Bohème” — which reached No. 2 on the Billboard singles chart in 1959.
But she became best known as an actress, particularly in the sentimental drama series “Touched by an Angel,” which had its premiere in 1994 and evolved into one of prime time’s top-rated shows. It placed in the Nielsen Top 10 from 1996 to 2000, with an average of more than 20 million weekly viewers at one point.
In the show, Ms. Reese, by then in her 60s, was cast as Tess, a stern but loving supervisor of angels who guided a softhearted and less experienced angel, Monica (Roma Downey), in helping humans at crossroads in their lives. The series told reassuring stories of forgiveness and second chances with mild irreverence. (“You get your little angel butt back to the city,” Tess told Monica in one episode.)
Ms. Reese contended that no career switch was involved. “Every time I sang the blues, I wasn’t blue,” she said in a 2008 interview for the Archive of American Television, alluding to her emotional connections and delivery as a vocalist. “I was already acting.”

 
Ms. Reese performed in concert in 2001 as part of Detroit 300, a festival celebrating the city’s 300th anniversary. As a singer, she had her first big hit record in 1957, with the romantic ballad “And That Reminds Me.” Paul Warner/Associated Press
Ms. Reese’s religious faith was a major influence in her career. In 1996 she told The Chicago Tribune that she had consulted with God about whether to sign on for “Angel.” “As clearly as I hear you,” she said, “I heard him say: ‘You can do this. I want you to do this, and you can retire in 10 years.’ ”
The series lasted nine years, and she continued to act for another decade after that.
The only notable complication during the show’s run was a highly publicized salary dispute during the 1997-98 season. Ms. Reese went public with her displeasure at being offered a 12.5 percent pay increase for the new season, while Ms. Downey received a 100 percent raise.
The matter was settled the next summer with a three-year agreement that eventually increased Ms. Reese’s salary from $40,000 to $100,000 per episode (which was still less than what Ms. Downey was earning). Part of CBS’s argument against the raise was that the network had made scheduling concessions to allow Ms. Reese to fly from the set in Utah to California every weekend for church services.
In the 1980s, Ms. Reese had been ordained as a minister by the Universal Foundation for Better Living and founded the Understanding Principles for Better Living Church, a nondenominational Christian ministry. She delivered Sunday sermons there for many years.
Delloreese Patricia Early was born on July 6, 1931, in Detroit. Her mother, the former Nellie Mitchelle, was a domestic worker and her father, Richard, a steelworker, but there were early signs that their daughter might occupy a completely different world.
When Delloreese was 13, Mahalia Jackson heard her sing at a Baptist church and invited the girl to join her gospel-choir tour. “I was arrogant enough to think I was helping out this old lady,” Ms. Reese recalled in a 1998 interview with The New York Times.
She entered Wayne State University with plans to become a psychiatrist, but after her mother died she had a falling-out with her father, left school, moved out of the family home and supported herself with a variety of jobs, including music.
Her big break was a one-week engagement at the Flame Show Bar in Detroit, which she won in a contest that asked newspaper readers to vote for their favorite local singer. That one week turned into months, a manager spotted her, and she soon moved to New York, where she became a vocalist with the Erskine Hawkins Orchestra. Although her biggest hits came in her youth, she continued to record well into her 60s and received a Grammy Award nomination for her 1998 gospel album, “My Soul Feels Better Right Now.”

 
Ms. Reese with Rue McClanahan in the 2000 television movie “The Moving of Sophia Myles,” about a pastor’s widow who fights to remain in her church-owned home. In real life, she was an ordained minister with a congregation in California. John Seakwood/CBS
Ms. Reese made her television acting debut as a nightclub owner on the police series “The Mod Squad” in 1968. She went on to appear in scores of television movies and series, including the 1970s sitcom “Chico and the Man,” in which she had a recurring role, and the 1991-92 series “The Royal Family,” which ended shortly after the death of her co-star Redd Foxx.
Feature films were not a major part of her career — she appeared in fewer than a dozen — but she considered her role as a 1920s madam in Eddie Murphy’s “Harlem Nights” (1989) pivotal because it proved she could play a character different from the ones she had in the past. She told The Ottawa Citizen in 1997, “For a long time, I was the woman who owned the club where the star came in after he broke up with his girlfriend.”
Ms. Reese, who sometimes filled in for Johnny Carson as guest host on “The Tonight Show,” was the first black woman to host a national television variety-talk show. The syndicated “Della” lasted only one season (1969-70), but that amounted to almost 200 episodes. Her guests included George Burns, Ike and Tina Turner, Little Richard, Steve Allen, Tony Bennett, Ethel Waters and Gypsy Rose Lee.
“The Tonight Show” was also the occasion for a brush with tragedy. In 1980, while taping a musical segment, she suffered a brain aneurysm that almost proved fatal. After multiple operations, she returned to work.
After “Touched by an Angel,” Ms. Reese continued to act occasionally in movies and on TV. Her last roles were in two holiday-themed 2013 television movies, “Dear Secret Santa” and “Miracle at Gate 213” (NBC), and two episodes of the Hallmark Channel series “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” (2014).
Ms. Reese married Vermont Taliaferro, a Michigan factory worker, in 1951. They were divorced in 1958. Her second husband, from 1959 until their divorce in 1961, was Leroy Gray, an accountant. A brief 1961 marriage to Mercer Ellington, Duke Ellington’s son, was annulled. In 1983 she married Franklin Lett, a concert producer, who survives her.
Complete information on other survivors was not immediately available. A daughter, Delloreese Daniels Owens, died in 2002.
Ms. Reese saw no conflict between her religious beliefs and the enjoyment of stardom’s perquisites. A 2003 Los Angeles Times article quoted one of her sermons: “I like to sit on soft things and sleep late,” she told her congregation, adding playfully: “I like 45 $100 bills in my pocketbook. It kind of makes me feel like a real woman.”

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