Aug 12, 2025 10:24 AM
Vocalist Sheila Jordan Dies at 96
Sheila Jordan, a vocalist who was celebrated for her scatting and lyric-improvising abilities, died Aug. 11 at her home…
The U.S. Olympic Skateboard Team’s shirts feature an image of a flying eagle playing a saxophnone.
(Photo: Courtesy Nike)Checking out the Olympics? Be sure to notice the U.S. Olympic Skateboard Team’s uniforms. They include an image of a flying eagle, of course, playing a saxophone. What?
Sounds crazy, but the team uniforms were designed, according to Nike SB, to combine “iconic American symbols — the rose, the eagle, red and white stripes.” But the saxophone-playing eagle is meant to capture the “almost jazz-like nature of skateboarding.”
“Unlike other ‘sports,’ the culture of skateboarding has overlapped with music and art from the very beginning,” according to Nike SB’s website. “So much of skateboarding is about being ‘in and of the moment.’ It is pure frenzy, energy — a response to every surface, texture and minute crack in the city. The flashes of blue coming from the saxophone out across the blaze of fire symbolize this creative, ‘in the moment,’ energy so particular to skateboarding.”
Keep improvising, skateboarders, and good luck! DB
Jordan was a dyed-in-the-wool bebopper whose formative musical experiences were with Charlie Parker.
Aug 12, 2025 10:24 AM
Sheila Jordan, a vocalist who was celebrated for her scatting and lyric-improvising abilities, died Aug. 11 at her home…
“I don’t guess I’m going to excite you; I know I’m going to excite you,” Palmieri said in an August 1994 DownBeat feature.
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Famed Latin jazz composer, bandleader and pianist Eddie Palmieri passed away in his New Jersey home on Aug. 6. He was…
“What I got from Percy was the dignity of playing the bass,” Buster Williams said of Percy Heath.
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Buster Williams, who at the age of 83 has been on the scene for 65 years, had never done a Blindfold Test. The first…
Don and Maureen Sickler serve as the keepers of engineer Rudy Van Gelder’s flame at Van Gelder Studio, perhaps the most famous recording studio in jazz history.
Sep 3, 2025 12:02 PM
On the last Sunday of 2024, in the control room of Van Gelder Studio, Don and Maureen Sickler, co-owners since Rudy Van…
The Free Slave, Cosmos Nucleus and Sunset To Dawn: three classic Muse albums being reissued this fall by Timer Traveler Recordings.
Aug 26, 2025 1:32 PM
Record producer and “Jazz Detective” Zev Feldman has launched his next endeavor, the archival label Time Traveler…
