Aural Robert

Most of the provocative and charismatic popular music made today is an unclassifiable mixture—a hybrid of whatever styles, sounds, and instruments happen to move its creators. Violinist Jenny Scheinman not only composes multi-hued music that is singularly her own, but she lives in two very different musical worlds: the progressive world of jazz, and the more song- and tradition-based environs of Americana.

Scheinman's latest solo album, All Species Parade, released in October 2024 on the Royal Potato Family label, is a classic example of her unique vision and chameleon-like ability to blend seamlessly into disparate musical contexts, with nods to both jazz and Americana.

Playing an astonishingly original mix of reggae and thrashy punk rock, Bad Brains released their self-titled, cassette-only 1982 debut on ROIR records. Punk rock is notorious for eschewing well-recorded music in favor of lo-fi murk, and that original tape fit the pattern. But the next year, the turbulent foursome—guitarist Dr. Know, bassist Darryl Jenifer, drummer Earl Hudson, and vocalist H.R.—went into Synchro Sound in Boston with Ric Ocasek of The Cars and tracked Rock for Light, a huge step up in the quality of Bad Brains' recorded sound.

At this late date, it seems impossible that there could still be "lost" albums lingering in the vaults by musicians as important and successful as Johnny Cash and Paul McCartney. And yet Universal Music has just released "new" albums by both artists that significantly add to their already hallowed recording catalogs.

It's no secret that the musical history of New Orleans is rich and varied. From Buddy Bolden to a young Louis Armstrong being consigned to the Colored Waif 's Home for shooting off his stepfather's pistol on New Year's Eve, to the many pianists who accompanied the irresistible allure of Storyville, musicians and their music have forever been a key ingredient in NOLA's flamboyant DNA. Most elemental of all—did he facilitate the birth of rock'n'roll?—are those honeyed days at Cosimo Matassa's humble but groundbreaking studio J&M Recording on Rampart Street (1947–1956). There, his infallible ears and uncanny skill placing microphones somehow imparted a raw and very real sound to early recordings of Roy Brown, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Dave Bartholomew, Ray Charles, and my personal favorite, Smiley Lewis. Such labels as Atlantic, Mercury, Aladdin, Specialty, Chess, Savoy, and Modern sent artists to The Crescent City, hoping to glean some of Matassa's elusive magic.

For all its insidious ferocity, the COVID ordeal also spawned a new musical genre: pandemic records. Stuck indoors like everyone else, some musicians found ways to express their creativity at home, often exploring new repertoire. While some of the resulting albums were myopic and indulgent, others—McCartney III for example—confirmed that artists who need to create will find ways. Trapped indoors, New York singer/actor Hilary Gardner found her musical muse wandering toward an unexpected place. "The songs I was initially drawn to—because I'm in this one-bedroom apartment in downtown Brooklyn—were about life on the trail, out in the natural world, generally being alone," she told me in a recent Zoom call, recalling the claustrophobia of that time. "They were songs that either embraced that feeling or were kind of rolling around in the melancholy of solitude. I wanted that thematic thread of being on the trail to connect all the tunes."

Recently, a letter to the editor from Len Eggert arrived in Stereophile's digital mailbox that closed with a question: "How about coverage of other notable 'outlaw' singer-songwriters who shunned Nashville and put Austin on the musical map: Guy Clark? Kris Kristofferson? Jerry Jeff Walker? Waylon Jennings? Billie Joe Shaver? David Allan Coe? Are you listening, Robert Baird?"

Timely if nothing else, that email came just after I had serendipitously acquired a new-to-my-collection, first-pressing LP copy of the first Guy Clark album, Old No. 1.

There's a fear out there, even among jazz cognoscenti, that the music's best years and true geniuses are all part of the past. Even in New York City, the richest magnet for live jazz on earth, it sometimes seems that experiencing generational talent, the kind that once drove the music forward, is now confined to gazing at the famous photos on the walls of the music's most revered shrine, the Village Vanguard. Yet, seeing pianist Sullivan Fortner at the Vanguard, as part of Cécile McLorin Salvant's band, convinced me that there's still jazz magic in the world. By turns playful, blindingly brilliant, and at times puppy dog goofy, Fortner was spectacular. He is clearly a star in the music's future.