City Paper's Michael West on Christian Scott's "Yesterday You Said Tomorrow"

Washington City Paper's Michael West, in the comments section on Lerterland, David Adler's blog:

But yeah, I prefer to focus on YYST, which I believe to be the first great album of 2010.

» Full blog post here

Rapper Nas' father is jazz coronetist Olu Dara

Who knew? From Wikipedia:

Olu Dara Jones (born Charles Jones III in Natchez, Mississippi on 12 January 1941) is an American cornetist, guitarist and singer. He first became known as a jazz musician, playing alongside avant-garde musicians such as David Murray, Henry Threadgill, and Art Blakey.

OluDara.info

DC's Club Bali

Club Bali at 14th & T in DC is one of the places Keter Betts talked about a lot in the conversations we had in 2005, when we were set to work on a project together. He said Club Bali was the spot for a time, where everyone played and everyone went. He told me he played there with Ella, and it seemed as if he really enjoyed the time he spent there.

It's crazy to think that in the early 1980s when I worked at Charlie's Georgetown, a jazz club where Keter often played, it never occurred to me that he was someone who had actually played at Club Bali. But that's probably true of many of the artists who performed at Charlie's.

Here's some cool historical information about Club Bali, and some amazing photos.

• Photo of Charlie Venture at Club Bali


• Photo of Louis Armstrong


• Photo of Sarah Vaughn


• Advertisement for the New Bali Restaurant


• Advertisement for Club Bali

How artists and tweeps can work together (or Atane's piece on Regina Carter's new album, Reverse Thread)

The Twitterverse moves at breakneck speed and sometimes events take shape and move forward before you've even had a chance to process what's going on.

That's what happened when Regina Carter's team contacted me with show information for Regina's March performance at Black Rock Center for the Arts, to post on my DC Jazz Shows blog.

I told them about our network of jazz lovers and jazz supporters on Twitter, and how we tweet and retweet information about the music, the musicians, performances, releases, etc. I pressed my case to receive a copy of the new CD in order to have a review written. They were in short supply of physical copies, so I was not able to get one, but I was able to get access to the songs online. Because of Atane Ofiaja's love for African music (it's what he and I bonded over), and because of his wealth of knowledge of hidden African musical history, I knew I wanted him to write the review. Thankfully, he graciously agreed to write it.

It's good. I hope you'll read it — Album Spotlight: Regina Carter – Reverse Thread

Atane posted the review on his own blog The Sophisticated Audiophile; I wrote about and linked to his review from the DC Jazz Shows; and I'm writing about it once again here. Atane tweeted a link to his review. I retweeted it. Others in our network will also retweet it. I'll also be submitting Atane's review to Digg.com, where jazz tweeps have met up to promote jazz-related content. And through all of this, we, the real fans of this music, get to participate in getting it the exposure it deserves.