Pieces of Silver

By Matt Silver

If there’s one thing that all the great jazz masters agree on, it’s that mimicry is not jazz, at least not good jazz. Maybe it’s part of the developmental process, but it’s the antithesis of what you strive to present to an audience.

By Matt Silver

There are some things in life you don’t want to perceive being made—laws and sausages chief among them. On the other hand, there are the yoga studio idealists whose wisdom suggests the opposite, that the process is everything, that life’s beauty resides in the journey, and that once you realize that, the destination becomes almost beside the point.

By Matt Silver

On this MLK Day, we honor not just Dr. King’s words and actions but those of the broader struggle for civil rights. And we do so, in our small part, by pairing the stories of that era with the artistic response they incited.

Undoubtedly, the tragedies of that period shaped artistic expression as much as the triumphs, if not more so. The 1963 bombing of the 16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. is no exception. We invite you to read a bit about the tragedy below and engage with the following  musical statements, handpicked by our on-air hosts for this MLK Day.

John Coltrane’s “Alabama”

Charles Mingus’s Town Hall Concerts

Ramsey Lewis’s “Wade in the Water”

George Adams’s “Going Home”

Babs Gonzales’s “We Ain’t Got Integration”

Max Roach’s “Let Thy People Go"

By Matt Silver

On this MLK Day, we honor not just Dr. King’s words and actions but those of the broader struggle for civil rights. And we do so, in our small part, by pairing the stories of that era with the music they inspired.

Read a bit about the Freedom Riders below, and pair with the following tunes, handpicked by our on-air hosts for the occasion:

Art Blakey’s “The Freedom Rider”

Chico Hamilton’s “Freedom Traveler”

Kenny Burrell’s “Freedom”

Dannie Richmond’s “Freedom Ride” (begins @ 8:30)

Civil rights marchers rest along the route from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. in March 1965. Photo by Peter Pettus. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

By Matt Silver

In March 1965, beaten and bloodied, civil rights leaders and ordinary citizens persisted in marching from Selma, Alabama to the state capital of Montgomery. Even after being turned away not once, but twice—first by physical force, then by the legal force of a federal injunction. 

Nina Simone took the stage at Wetsbury Music Fair on Long Island in April 1968, three days after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

By Matt Silver

Over the last several years, America has had to reckon with issues of race, class, civil rights, opportunity, and dignity in a way it hasn’t since Nina Simone first sang protest songs.

Perhaps as a byproduct of the moment, there’s been a resurgence of both popular and critical interest in Simone, the High Priestess of Soul and a civil rights icon. That’s why, on this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I’m compelled to revisit Nina Simone’s ’Nuff Said!

By Matt Silver

KSDS General Manager Ken Poston joined the Jazz Journalists’ Association’s (JJA) monthly podcast — “The Buzz” — this week for an authors’ panel discussing the three books published on and about Gerry Mulligan in the past year. One of those books—Being Gerry Mulligan: My Life in Music, the late baritone saxophonist’s autobiography as-told-to Poston—was a project thirty years in the making.

By Matt Silver

Best of Halloween playlists are ubiquitous this time of year—and, frankly, most of them consist of the obvious, low-hanging fruit. Of course, clichés are clichés for a reason: they have staying power. So, here we acknowledge the very best of the tried-and-true—along with some...deeper cuts. From the absurd and campy to the spooky and truly frightful, you’re sure to find something in these five tunes that speak to what you love most about Halloween.

By Matt Silver

In 1957, Benny Golson wrote perhaps the most beautiful requiem in the jazz canon. Earnest and heart-wrenching “I Remember Clifford” is a bona fide standard, inspiring versions by Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Lee Morgan, Sonny Rollins, Quincy Jones, and nearly every jazz instrumentalist of consequence, including Golson himself.

But it begs the question: Do we follow the lead of Benny’s lament and do enough to remember Clifford ourselves? This year, we do. Here at KSDS, we aim to honor jazz’s great innovators, past and present. Clifford Brown, who tragically died four months shy of his 26th birthday in June 1956, is indisputably one of them.

By Matt Silver

One great thing about staff here at KSDS is their versatility. General Manager Ken Poston basically built a jazz museum from scratch; Production Director Michael Rovatsos plays bass in the West Coast’s premier U2 tribute band, and "Phat Tracks" host Gordon Goodwin has won four Grammys and been nominated for over 20 more. Which is why when I went to City College’s Saville Theatre last Tuesday night to see and hear Goodwin preside over a radio program broadcast before a live audience, I wasn’t that surprised when a full-fledged big band concert broke out.

Musicians…they just can’t help themselves.