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.

TRINKLE TINKLE BANG BANG: PIANO JOYS

by Ian Muldoon

November 15, 2018

A jazz pianist can cause an atheist to gasp “sweet Jesus”. When Barney McAll plays the blues in a cathedral he makes electricity.  A teenager is somewhat bored by Otis Blackwell’s song All Shook Up even by Elvis Presley’s efforts interpreting that song, but he hears for the first time Phineas (fine-us) Newborn Jr play Clifford Brown’s Daahoud and he is dazzled and excited, completely “shook up”.  To some, the piano solo by Bill Evans on Flamenco Sketches seems to be art that has existed forever, handed down from years past by Apollo himself…

JUDY BAILEY TRANSFIXES AUDIENCE

by Gilbert Haisman

The Evening Post, Wellington, New Zealand, February 7, 1996

Judy Bailey could play Fur Elise, Brahms’s Lullaby and Humoresque if she was a classical pianist and win over hardened New York critics. She almost did the jazz equivalent in this solo concert of standard themes, some of them in medleys, from leading pianist-composers that ranged from Joplin to Corea. And more than got away with it…

BIRTH OF A JAZZ LABEL

Interview with Horst Liepolt

Jazz Down Under, November, 1975

When Horst Liepolt, Jazz Down Under’s Associate Editor, announced to us the birth of a new record label, 44 Records, with himself as executive producer, we were not only delighted, but very curious, as we’re sure our readers are, as to how it all came about. So we asked him…