Westlake Records Blog Posts

I FINALLY REALIZED how I could demonstrate the difference between the kind jazz (and orchestral music) I usually prefer and the other kinds. I chose a random photo I had taken and modified it. Here is the original photo. Here…

AS A PHOENIX rises from ashes, sometimes it takes a tragedy to reveal one’s greatest talent. If that is true, my clarinet teacher, John Neufeld, would be a good example. He began his career as a young clarinet prodigy. At…

A FRIEND TOLD me a horror story about when he was a student at USC. He was a music major and had put together a vintage Swing sextet for a jazz concert. The concert director was a jazz teacher from…

PLEASE BUY THEM (A Rather Vitriolic Tirade) EVERYDAY I CHECK the statistics of this website to see what visitors do when they come here. The vast majority simply listens to our free podcasts. A few bother to visit the New…

LAST WEEK I saw a want ad for jazz by a motion picture company. The last sentence caught my attention: “NO INSTRUMENTALS — please!” That’s analagous to saying, “WANTED: Doctor of internal medicine. No physicians — please!” When did jazz…

THE PHONE RINGS on Monday afternoon. The bandleader I often work with, Jonathan Stout, is in trouble. His small group has a weekend job in Houston and the tenor sax player has just canceled. Will I do him a big…

A FRIEND GAVE me a lot of albums documenting small jazz bands from 1940 to the late ’50s. Even though all were Dixieland groups, as the recordings moved forward in time I could hear the style regress from its original…

THE JAZZ SCENE? What jazz scene? You mean that small group of musicians who play for each other and their friends and almost nobody else? If you live in a very big city and really search, you might find as…

MUSICAL SHOWS HAVE exploited pretty girls for centuries but does that kind of exploitation belong in jazz? Recently an otherwise top-notch ensemble of middle age men appeared with a cute young woman in the front line. She could play but,…