American Music
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A Christmastime Homage to Tony Bennett December 25, 2024
Longevity is a rarity in the entertainment business, and vocalist Tony Bennett is an extraordinary example of someone who enjoyed a free-flowing, 70-year career that included (or concluded with) a bittersweet yet triumphant last act. How did he do it...
The Genius of Ella Fitzgerald May 29, 2024
Ella Fitzgerald made singing feel like thinking. Her interpretations of the Great American Songbook—taken as a whole, still its most ambitious rendering to date—are full of harmonic risk and expressive lucidity. Her exhaustive approach to improvisati...
Great American Musical Artists in their Roaring Nineties December 18, 2023
As 2023 closes out, some of America’s great musical artists are well into their out-chorus, without due recognition for their long and distinguished careers. Consider, for example, trumpeter Doc Severinsen, 96, who gained fame with the “Tonight Show ...
The Undoing of a Great American Band September 20, 2023
Is there a way to look at Sly Stone—a musical genius and, for a couple of years, an avatar of spiritual freedom—that isn’t dualistic, split-brained, one thing in opposition to another? That isn’t about light versus darkness, up versus down, Logos ver...
