Jammin’ The Blues is a short film from 1944 that was directed by Albanian born photographer, Gjon Mili. It features jazz musicians of the time getting filmed during a jam session. For some of the musicians, this is the only appearance that exists of them on video.

Upon hearing that the musicians were going to be paid $30 a day, while the dancers were paid $50 a day, the techincal director Norman Granz threatened to remove the musicians off the set if they weren’t paid the same rate as the dancers. Granz had a reputation for his defiant anti-racist stance, a rarity in show business in the 40s. Granz sent a memo to Warner Brothers head honcho Jack Warner demanding equal pay. He got equal pay for the musicians, but it came at a price. Warner Brothers exec Gordon Hollingshead told Granz that he would never work in Hollywood again. After the production of the film, Granz was banned for life from the Warner Brothers studio lot.

It should be noted that Barney Kessel, the guitar player in the jam session is white. However, for the film to be screened in the segregated south, Kessel was cast in the shadows, and was never shown close up, only in profile. His hands were colored with berry juice to conceal his identity as a white man. A white man in a film with a largely black cast would not go over well in the segregated south. A film with a predominantly black cast was groundbreaking in of itself for the time.

The full cast in the jam session are
Lester Young – Tenor Sax
Illinois Jacquet – Tenor Sax
Harry “Sweets” Edison – Trumpet
John Simmons – Bass
Red Callender – Bass
Marlowe Morris – Piano
Big Sid Catlett – Drums
Jo Jones – Drums (for final song)
Barney Kessel – Guitar
Marie Bryant – Vocals & Female Dancer
Archie Savage – Male Dancer

Have you ever seen an album cover that looks eerily similar to a much older album cover? I’m not talking about a cover that’s paying homage or respect to an older album. I mean a flat out ripoff. Something with no relevance or background for a homage. Just a cheap imitation. That’s pretty much the story of jazz album covers. To be exact, jazz album covers from the 60s. The 60s were perhaps the most fertile time period for album covers thanks to Blue Note and Impulse. The ripoffs are not just limited to shamelessly imitating covers unfortunately. Everything stylistically is up for grabs. Most of the time with zero accountability or even accreditation for the work they brazenly took.

The extent to which jazz is appropriated and “borrowed” from knows no bounds. I find this ironic, as there are no shortages of articles saying jazz is dead (thanks Terry Teachout!). Since jazz is allegedly dead, does the wanton sacrilege, plunder and pillaging make it some sort of necrophiliac exercise? From uncredited sampling, to outright stealing, it’s a plague that continues to get worse. Sounds, images, fashions, styles, album covers, it’s all fair game for kleptomania. Many of the original musicians are dead or elderly, so a lot of this goes unnoticed, and many of the listeners of the kleptomaniac musicians are young, so they will not notice. What’s old is what’s new, not just with jazz, but with everything. It’s why Lady Gaga is fresh and exciting to a lot of young people, while older folks are yawning to death at the retread because they know Grace Jones, and Lady Gaga is no Grace Jones.

So here we are with the cover of the single The First Vietnamese War by The Black Angels. It’s not new or anything, it’s a few years old. Now, look at the cover next to the cover of Freddie Hubbard’s Hub-Tones from 1962. Look familiar? If Reid Miles had a dollar from all the people that imitated his work, his estate would be worth a lot of money. These copycats have no vision and obviously lack originality. What does it say about you when you have to “borrow” 50 year old album covers? It’s very lazy, not to mention boring. Has the dearth of creativity for some people reached such abysmal levels that they can’t even design their own record covers anymore? It’s all rather pathetic.

I’m also not buying most of the people saying these copied covers are homages either. They’re saying that to protect their slimy hides. Somewhere in the sewage of mediocrity where most of these copycats reside, they want to say they are invoking the ghosts of the musicians they continue to steal from I presume. Maybe it’s for the better that many of the jazz musicians are not alive to witness this nonsense.

Live in Detroit 1986 marks the first new material released from Fela Kuti in 20 years. I wrote about it for This is Africa. Read it here.

Click here to read my piece on the new Soundway Records release by The Funkees for This is Africa.

If you love Afrobeat, then you need no introduction to Oluseun Anikulapo Kuti, better known as Seun Kuti. He is the youngest son of the legendary Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti. Seun currently leads his father’s old band, The Egypt 80 and they’ve been on a blistering tour schedule. I caught up with Seun ahead of his forthcoming show in New York (which was on Sunday) to chat with him about Fela, Afrobeat, Occupy Nigeria, the future of Nigeria and why he named his second and most recent studio album From Africa with Fury: Rise. You can read the full interview here.

Click here for some concert pictures I took at the show.

You can also read a short blurb on the show here.

Esperanza Spalding – 3/26/12, a set on Flickr.

The kick-off for Radio Music Society.

Cuernevaca by Kelan Philip Cohran & The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, recorded live as part of Another Honest Jon’s Chop Up at the Fiesta des Suds, Marseille, 30 October 2011.

From the forthcoming album Kelan Philip Cohran & The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble on Honest Jon’s Records, to be released May 2012.

A documentary on Cecil Taylor. Worth the watch.