ESSAYS

This section includes essays on various jazz subjects, written by a number of writers. Contributions are welcome. Writers interested in contributing are welcome to contact the editor by filling out the form in the CONTACT tab. Photographs to illustrate those essays are welcome. Readers can click on the INDEX button for a list of articles in this folder.

IN CONVERSATION: QUINCY JONES

by David Marchese

Vulture.com February 7, 2018

In both music and manner, Quincy Jones has always registered — from afar, anyway — as smooth, sophisticated, and impeccably well-connected. (That’s what earning 28 Grammy awards and co-producing Michael Jackson’s biggest-selling albums will do.) But in person, the 84-year-old music-industry macher is far spikier and more complicated. “All I’ve ever done is tell the truth,” says Jones…

AUSTRALIAN JAZZ HISTORY: A BRIEF OVERVIEW

by Tony Gould

Oxford Companion to Australian Music 1997

The emergence of jazz in Australia as a clearly identifiable genre can be placed in the years immediately after World War I. Johnson (1987) calls this period ‘the first wave’, and historians cite several performances which can be regarded as significant markers, among them those by Belle Sylvia and Her Jazz Band in Sydney in 1918, publicised as ‘Australia’s first jazz band’, and those by Frank Ellis and His Californians, who visited from the USA in 1923. Such events, with their impact on the broader community, together with the social interaction between Americans and the impressionable Australians during and after the war, and the increasing exposure to the new world of American entertainment generally, resulted in jazz soon becoming the principal popular music in the nation…

FIRST LADIES OF JAZZ: ELLA AND SARAH

by Maureen Meers

102.5 Fine Music Magazine, February 2018

When one hears the phrase ‘First Ladies of Jazz’, immediately one thinks of Ella Fitzgerald, nearly always referred to as the ‘First Lady of Swing’ and ‘Lady Ella’. She was a singer noted for purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, and the use of the voice with ‘horn-like’ ability in her scat singing. Ella Jane Fitzgerald was born on 25 April 1917 in Newport, Virginia, and in 1934 made her debut at the Apollo Theatre, winning the Amateur Night contest...