Forgotten Journal

Thirty two years after his death, jazz legend Duke Ellington’s name was suddenly being used to sell a high end brand of cognac which has made his family all sorts of mad. Duke’s grandson has filed a federal lawsuit in New York, claiming that the people responsible for the liqueur called ‘Duke Ellington XO Cognac’ in 2006 never got the proper permission to use the singer’s name and signature on their product. In the documents, the Ellington estate claims that the people behind the cognac “once attempted to negotiate with [the estate] … but no agreement was ever reached between the parties.” Now, the family wants the company to stop selling the cognac and they also want all the profits that have been earned from previous sales.

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Category : Music Artist, Music Legends, jazz

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Thirty two years after his death, jazz legend Duke Ellington’s name was suddenly being used to sell a high end brand of cognac which has made his family all sorts of mad. Duke’s grandson has filed a federal lawsuit in New York, claiming that the people responsible for the liqueur called ‘Duke Ellington XO Cognac’ in 2006 never got the proper permission to use the singer’s name and signature on their product. In the documents, the Ellington estate claims that the people behind the cognac “once attempted to negotiate with [the estate] … but no agreement was ever reached between the parties.” Now, the family wants the company to stop selling the cognac and they also want all the profits that have been earned from previous sales.

Category : Singers, jazz

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It’s looking to be the year of the comeback divas. The much anticipated album of Whitney Houston is coming out this September and Barbara Streisand is also back with her first new studio album in four years! On ‘Love is the Answer’, the iconic singer teamed up with Canadian jazz singer Diana Krall. The album is scheduled to drop on September 29th. It’s Barbra’s first full-length collection of all new recordings since ‘Guilty Pleasures’ back in 2006. I hope she’s got a lot of good material on there. She’s got a lot of time to make up for, not to mention that crappy TV special she put on a while back.

Category : Whitney Houston, jazz

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The singer has recently signed a deal to use images and lyrics from her “Back to Black” album in order to make greeting cards. A source revealed the following about Amy Winehouse’s new business endeavor: “The bosses at EMI are keen to keep the cash cow churning out the money. The first item in the Winehouse range will be wrapping paper with the chorus of ‘Rehab’ emblazoned all over it. The Amy-branded cards are classy too. ‘You Know I’m No Good’ is best for heartfelt apologies and ‘Back To Black,’ with an appropriate wreath, will be the respectful response to a bereavement.” This so-called source must’ve been a publicity advisor for Amy Winehouse. Watch as the fiend neatly conceals his intentions under the cloak of apparent sarcasm!

Category : Amy Winehouse, jazz

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Louie Bellson has often been hailed as ‘the world’s greatest drummer’, he has passed away due to complications of Parkinson’s disease at Cedars Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles at the age of eighty-four.

Louie began his musical career as a teenager and is best remembered for performances he dished out being the member of big bands while working with the likes of jazz legends such as Count Basie, Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington. During the 1940’s and 50’s he was the star attraction at every show he performed in.

Amongst his achievements are winning 6 Grammy Awards and also won the coveted and prestigious American Jazz Masters Award in 1994.

Yeah that’s a really stellar career Louie hand and I’m sure he led a very dignified life and played with the best in the business. I have hardly ever heard a drummer winning 6 Grammys so this gentleman must have been really special.

Category : Los Angeles, Music Legends, jazz

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People may be saying that Whitney Houston is more than ready for a comeback but maybe that’s strictly for the recording studio. The recovering crack-head performed for 30 minutes for a reported $3 million to a sold out crowd at the Plymouth Jazz Festival on Sunday. According to BV Buzz, her voice was anything but ok and that it became raspy by the third song. She was also unable to hit the big finish for ‘I Will Always Love You’. To add to that, she has no sense of geography as she kept shouting to the crowd “I love you Trinidad!” The thing is, she was in Tobago.

Category : Music Festival, Song, Whitney Houston, jazz

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Here’s a look at Beyonce and Adrien Brody on the set of ‘Cadillac Records’ in New Jersey on Monday. Beyonce stars as the legendary blues singer Etta James and Adrien plays the legendary record producer Len Chess. Etta spoke to PageSix about Beyonce portraying her saying “Etta James ain’t been no angel! I don’t think she looks like me, but that’s all right. They can fix that up.” Is that possible?

The film chronicles the rise and fall of influential R&B record label Chess Records. They will also shoot in Mississippi later this month. Mos Def, Jeffrey Wright, Emmanuelle Chriqui and Cedric the Entertainer co-star in the movie.

Category : Beyonce, Blues, Divas, Etta James, Record Label, jazz

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The diva has really done it this time! Diana Ross actually pissed off a crowd of 40,000 at the 2008 Air Jamaica Jazz & Blues Festival on Saturday where the 63-year old was booed and heckled by Jamaicans in attendance at Montego Bay after organizers told them that “to honor Miss Ross’ wishes, she will not be shown on the monitors”. That piece of news was met with a whole lot of hissing. The audience in the stadium-sized arena was unable to see the diva onstage but she wouldn’t allow to put her performance on the big screen but she would not go on stage if any cameras were present. The booing continued for her whole hour-long set when the crowd beyond the first section couldn’t even see her.

Category : Concert, Diana Ross, Music Festival, Performance, jazz

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Dave Brubeck’s latest solo piano offering ”Indian Summer” is a musical remembrance of things past – or as the jazz pianist describes it ”a sort of Indian summary” of his extraordinary life. It ranks as one of the most personal and intimate sessions in his 60-year recording career. Firstly not out of context, I am native of India and tough I now live out side the country I have experienced the heat of an ‘Indian Summer’ and let me tell you guys that it could be insanely hot and unbearable. So if Dave wants us to buy that CD he better think of a cool name that we can hear in pleasant weather and not something that’s related with heat and dust of India. No offense to India but the heat can leave a person dehydrated and exhausted quite a bit. If he wants to remember all the good things of the past then why Indian summer and why not the cool beaches of the Aussie Gold Coast, well him CD his name his wish.

Category : Classical Music, Concert, Music, Music Legends, New LP, Selebs, Song, jazz

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 By his 30th birthday, Max Roach was already considered the greatest drummer ever by his peers. By the time he died this week, the 83-year-old master percussionist was known worldwide as much more: innovator, activist, teacher, genius.

Roach, whose rhythmic innovations and improvisations defined bebop jazz during a career marked by expectations defied and musical boundaries ignored, died late Wednesday in a Manhattan hospital after a long illness.

No additional details were available, said Cem Kurosman, spokesman for Blue Note Records, where Roach played on seminal recordings with Thelonius Monk, Duke Ellington and Miles Davis. Roach was elected to the Downbeat magazine Hall of Fame in 1980, and the Grammy Hall of Fame 15 years later.

“Max was one of the founders and original members of the A-Team of bebop,” said fellow music legend Quincy Jones. “Outside of losing a giant and an innovator, I’ve lost a great, great friend. Thank God he left a piece of his soul on his recordings so that we’ll always have a part of him with us.”

In 1988, he became the first jazz musician ever honored with a MacArthur Fellowship receiving a $372,000 “genius grant.”

The creatively restless Roach, who debuted with Ellington’s band as a self-taught 16-year-old drummer in 1940, challenged his listeners and himself by making music that connected the jazz of the pre-World War II era with the beats of the hip-hop generation.

His place in the pantheon of jazz greats long since secured, Roach collaborated with drummers from around the world, with a string quartet that featured daughter Maxine, and with rapper Fab Five Freddy.

“I try to show my students the correlation between hip-hop and Louis Armstrong,” he once said. “That’s how well-rooted hip-hop is, coming out of an environment where people were denied any kind of cultural enrichment.”

Category : Memories, Music, News, Selebs, jazz

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