Yours truly, interviewed on KBEM's Corner Jazz

Maryann Sullivan, host of KBEM's "Corner Jazz" program (which airs live on Saturday nights from 8-11 p.m.), invited me into the studio last month for an interview. Portions aired in November, and now the whole edited interview is up on KBEM's website. We talk about jazz and jazz writing, learning curves and listening, how I got started, that sort of thing. I'm pleased with how it turned out, and grateful. I left the studio feeling I had been a boring blabbermouth, but Maryann's editing made me sound like a reasonably intelligent and thoughtful sort of person.

Maryann is a warm, smart, and gracious interviewer. Anyone she asks to speak with should say yes and be glad. She once told me that when she's preparing to interview someone, she writes down one question and lets the rest come naturally. That would scare the bejesus out of me.

Jimmy Scott, for Maud Hixson

Seeing Jimmy Scott perform live at the Montreal Jazz Festival several years ago made Maud Hixson decide to be a jazz singer.

Seeing Jimmy Scott perform live at the Dakota several years ago made me decide to write about jazz, or try. I was so moved by the experience that I wanted to put something in writing so I could look back later and remember.

Last night, Maud heard me tell my how-I-became-a-jazz-writer story on Maryann Sullivan's radio show,"Corner Jazz," on KBEM. She wanted to read what I had written about Jimmy. Since the article is five years old, it's a bit hard to find on the Jazz Police website, where it was originally published, so I've pulled it into Bebopified. Here it is on Jazz Police as well.

MnMo on jazz, sort of

The May issue of Minnesota Monthly magazine includes a section called "Hot Summer Nights" that describes "47 ways to kick up—or cool—your heels after sunset." I'm happy to see they've included jazz. But I'm puzzled by how Andrew Putz, MnMO's editor, introduces the topic:

Here’s the problem with jazz these days: For everyone save true aficionados, it’s too damn hard. Hard to understand. Hard to appreciate. Hard to love. Hell, it’s even hard to find a good place to hear jazz live (at least, if you don’t live near Minneapolis’s Dakota Jazz Club & Restaurant or St. Paul’s Artists’ Quarter).

Yee-ouch.

Putz recommends an upcoming show at Orchestra Hall called "DownBeat's Rising Stars," which I plan to see; I expect it will be a highlight of the summer. But he does it in a back-handed way:

This summer, however, the people who put on the jazz series at Orchestra Hall have done something scientists once believed impossible: They’ve made jazz easy.... Indeed, the only way it would be any easier to see great jazz would be to move next door to the Marsalis family.

MnMO is a major lifestyle/culture/arts magazine in the upper Midwest. It has a long relationship with Minnesota Public Radio. MPR has a Saturday night jazz program, "The Jazz Connection," hosted by Maryann Sullivan, who emails a weekly calendar of all kinds of jazz events happening in and around the Twin Cities.

I've sent a letter to Mr. Putz, inviting him to be my guest at a jazz event somewhere besides the Dakota, the Artists' Quarter, and Orchestra Hall.