Articles by Skip Heller
The Complete Louis Armstrong Columbia & RCA Victor Studio Sessions 1946-66
by Skip Heller
Louis Armstrong officially returned to small band leadership May 17, 1947 via a triumphant concert at Town Hall that was less comeback than reaffirmation. It was even the dawn of his second great period, full of recordings that stood tall with his epochal 1920's output, and the subsequently-assembled Louis Armstrong and his All Stars would immediately establish themselves as a staple of the live jazz circuit as well as a powerhouse recording unit. That era--to the purposes of ...
read moreMarty Sheller: The Name Behind The Sound You All Know, Part 1
by Skip Heller
There are certain musicians who embody eras, even if they're not the player with their picture on the cover. In our contemporary musical climate, Greg Leisz comes to mind. Since 1991, he has popped up on hundreds of acclaimed albums, and without ever really changing his style, he has become centrifugal beyond the considerations of genre —without having made an album as a leader. But it's difficult to think of the last 35 years of American music without him as ...
read morePhiladelphia, Mon Amour
by Skip Heller
I was born in 1965, in West Philly, so I met the world in 1980 or so. My city was then recovering from two terms of mayor Frank Rizzo, whose corruption was on a level not seen since the glory days of New York mayor Jimmy Walker. Rizzo hated anyone who was young or of color. If you were a young male of color, every day was potentially Kristellnacht. He was a brutal authoritarian, and that the city charter was ...
read moreDeath Is Not The End and the Law of Periodical Repetition
by Skip Heller
"Will this wonderful civilization of today perish? Yes, everything perishes. Will it rise and exist again? It will—for nothing can happen that will not happen again. And again, and still again, forever. It took more than eight centuries to prepare this civilization— then it suddenly began to grow, and in less than a century it is becoming a bewildering marvel. In time, it will pass away and be forgotten. Ages will elapse, then it will come again; and not incomplete, ...
read more2020 and Me
by Skip Heller
As I type this, it is December 8, 2020, the fortieth anniversary of John Lennon's murder. I was then a newly-minted barband guitarist, fifteen years old and thinking how the world —via the election of Ronald Reagan —and music had just suffered the worst season that could ever be. 2020 has been an ongoing parade of American horrors. No matter what city you're in, the town is paused. I live in Hollywood, three blocks from the former site ...
read moreDouglas Lee: Themes For Falling Down Stairs
by Skip Heller
There is an alternate universe someplace where the earthshaking jazz event of 1959 is neither Miles Davis' Kind of Blue nor John Coltrane's Giant Steps (Atlantic Records), but is instead the release of Henry Mancini's The Music From Peter Gunn (RCA Victor). Douglas Lee is probably getting his mail there right now. Lee's Themes For Falling Down Stairs arrives, sent by his publicist Josh Mills, whose client roster has long been one of the more interesting here in ...
read moreBack To... SOUL
by Skip Heller
While everyone else seems to have been attending jazz festivals, I've been flying under the radar with film and TV music jobs, so I haven't had the time to write about the summer's recorded music treasures, and it has been bountiful for record/CD fans. Not least of all because some really careful and wise music fans have made sure that round things with a hole in the middle deliver something digital downloads can't: a real package. Two come from Memphis, ...
read morePryor Experiences
by Skip Heller
If it seems like everything is being anthologized into a box set these days, that's because it is. While on a trip to Amoeba Music (the enormous record store from where I live about a block), I took stock of all kinds of box sets. There was even one of the Mitch Miller Sing Along With stuff. Oh joy. The thought of being trapped in a room with someone who could get through even one disc of that... Horrors.
read moreGreek Rhapsody: Instrumental Music From Greece 1905-1956
by Skip Heller
A couple years back, Tompkins Square issued an unforgettable box set called To What Strange Place: The Music of the Ottoman-American Diaspora, 1916-1929, which collected a type of Eastern music that had gone unanthologized, largely because it came from places long since gone from the world map, played on instruments to which most Westerners have never paid much attention. Name three oud players. I dare you.Greek Rhapsody (Dust-To-Digital) surveys rebetika, the international style prominent among Greeks throughout the ...
read moreGrateful Dead: Dick's Picks 24
by Skip Heller
The plethora of available live Grateful Dead material might be a completist's delight, but it can make for a nightmare for the consumer who just wants a few really good discs. This was a truly multifaceted band, with every facet documented to the point of exhaustion (or even tedium, depending who you ask). At their rootsy best, they could claim kinship with both The Band and The Allman Brothers, and as a longform improvising unit, they could be on par ...
read more
Giveaway
Days remaining: 2
