Matchbox Bluesmaster Series Set 11: – 6 CDs – Black Diamond Express (MSESET11. Album Review by Chris Parker) Disc 1: Blues Piano Disc 2: Kokomo Arnold Disc 3: Peetie Wheatstraw Vol. 1 […]
Matchbox Bluesmaster Series. Set 11 ‘Black Diamond Express’
Matchbox Bluesmaster Series – Set 10 (‘Home Town Skiffle’)
Matchbox Bluesmaster Series – Set 10: Home Town Skiffle (Saydisc /Matchbox MSESET10 – 6 CDs. Album review by Chris Parker) Another set of recordings from Saydisc (Matchbox), featuring blues, rags, the odd […]
Matchbox Bluesmaster Series – Set 9 (Jack O’Diamonds – Library of Congress field recordings 1934-1943)
Matchbox Bluesmaster Series – Set 9 (Jack O’Diamonds – Library of Congress field recordings 1934-1943) (MSESET9 – 6 CDs. Album review by Chris Parker) Disc 1: Mississippi River Blues Disc 2: Fort […]
Paul Sexton: ‘Charlie’s Good Tonight: The Authorised Biography of Charlie Watts’
Paul Sexton: Charlie’s Good Tonight: The Authorised Biography of Charlie Watts (Mudlark, £25, 368pp. Book review by Chris Parker) The Introduction to this biography of Rolling Stone drummer Charlie Watts sums up […]
‘Matchbox Bluesmaster Series’ Set 7:
Matchbox Bluesmaster Series (Set 7: MSESET7 – 6 CDs – Album Review by Chris Parker) Disc 1: Lonnie Johnson Vol. 2 1927–32 Disc 2: The Famous Hokum Boys 1930–31 Disc 3: Songsters […]
‘Matchbox Bluesmaster Series – Set 6’ (Papa Charlie Jackson, Memphis Jug Band, Barbecue Bob…)
Matchbox Bluesmaster Series – Set 6 (MSESET6 – 6 CDs. Album review by Chris Parker) Disc 1: Papa Charlie Jackson 1924–29 Disc 2: Memphis Jug Band 1927–34 Disc 3: Barbecue Bob 1927–30 […]
Christian McBride and Jason Moran at Wigmore Hall
Christian McBride and Jason Moran (Wigmore Hall, 6 October 2021. Live Review by Chris Parker) An amiable, impressive figure with a streak of mischievousness (I once witnessed him doing an impromptu James […]
‘Eberhard Weber: A German Jazz Story’
Eberhard Weber: A German Jazz Story (Equinox, 190pp., £25. Book Review by Chris Parker) “The notes of a musically conscious man, ideally free of conceit” is how virtuoso bassist Eberhard Weber describes […]
Malik Al Nasir – ‘Letters to Gil: A Memoir’
Malik Al Nasir – Letters to Gil: A Memoir (William Collins, 320pp., £20. Book Review by Chris Parker) At the age of eighteen, semi-literate, destitute, bewildered and directionless after spending his adolescence […]
Remembering Charlie Watts. An interview from 2001 by Chris Parker
Chris Parker writes: When Charlie Watts appeared with his Tentet at Ronnie Scott’s in June 2001, I interviewed him on 5 April of that year so that he could give the readers […]
Komeda: A Private Life in Jazz by Magdalena Grzebałkowska
Komeda: A Private Life in Jazz – Magdalena Grzebałkowska (Equinox, 466pp. Book review by Chris Parker) The life of Polish pianist/composer Krzysztof Komeda is marked, above all else, by paradoxes. He is […]
Philip Clark – “Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time”
Philip Clark – Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time (Headline, 464pp., £25. Review by Chris Parker) “You can’t understand America without understanding jazz, and you can’t understand jazz without understanding Dave Brubeck” […]
