Helen Oakley Dance dies—journalist, producer, promoter, and wife of Stanley Dance
by Francis J. Dance

Helen Margaret Oakley was born on February 15, 1913 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. A member of the prosperous Simpson Knitting Mills family, she was educated in her youth with her sister Cynthia by a succession of English governesses, often wintering in Nassau, the Bahamas. She attended Ovenden College, a private school in Toronto from 1926 to 1930, and then spent a year at Trinity College at the University of Toronto prior to finishing school at Les Fougeres in Lausanne, Switzerland.

A conversation with Chicago's own
Bob Centano and Bob Ojeda
by Charles Walton

I was recently invited to a card game where I was surprised to meet the legendary bandleader and saxophonist Bob Centano. After a couple of conversations with Bob and after hearing his band, I thought others might be delighted to learn about him, too. On the day of scheduled interview, he called to say that Bob Ojeda, composer/arranger/trumpet player with the Count Basie band, was in town and suggested that I might also be interested in what he had to say. Thus, here is a conversation with the two Bobs.

The New Black Music Repertory Ensemble:
2001-2002 Season Opening
reviewed by Rahsaan Clark Morris

In the past month we lost a Father and a King.

The material below is drawn from the websites of The Boston Globe (BG), The LA Times (LA), and the Associated Press (AP), enhanced by my own fond memories of this most talented and human scholar-father during occasions in Storyville in Boston, Newport, and elsewhere in New England.-Susan Markle

In New England in the '50s and New York in the '60s, a familiar figure on the scene, on the airwaves, in the jazz press, and at jazz events was Father Norman J. O'Connor, the "jazz priest," who died June 29, 2003.

Chasing the Moment: Monty Alexander

interviewed by Judith Schlesinger

J.J. Johnson 1924-2001

Several years ago, Erik Moseholm (THE guy in Danish Jazz) and I were having dinner and, somehow, the subject of "who is still here" came up. After compiling a frighteningly short list, he looked at me and said "there aren't many left."

Damon Short
interviewed by Lazaro Vega
Blue Lake Public Radio

Meade Lux Lewis
(1905-1964)
by Joel Simpson

Boogie-Woogie
The driving left-hand blues style known as boogie-woogie was probably invented around 1900 (Eubie Blake's broken octave, descending bassline in the "Charleston Rag" from 1899, is highly suggestive of a boogie pattern). It began to surface in saloons, honky-tonks, bawdy houses, and "barrelhouses" in the South and Midwest around 1912.

by Steve Voce

My philosophy is to have a really good time and never to let anything stop me from doing what I want to do.
—Michel Petrucciani

Most Valued Player: Buddy Tate
by Nic Jones

There have been two dominant approaches to playing the tenor saxophone in the history of jazz. The trailblazer, not only in terms of approach but also in terms of making the saxophone a legitimate instrument of jazz expression, was Coleman Hawkins; his hardness of tone was combined with harmonic sophistication. Lester Young has come to embody the other approach, although Bud Freeman was the first on record with a lighter, more supple tone and a slipperiness of phrasing by comparison with Hawkins.