January 3 Victor Borge - 1909 Maxene Andrews - 1916 Herbie Nichols - 1919 George Martin - 1926 Van Dyke Parks - 1943 Stephen Stills - 1945 James Mtume - 1947  

MTV

I understand the difference between the "majors" (Sony, Universal et al.) and Spotify themselves doing it, but of course this is also what the old style labels do; purchase music and then promote it on the streaming platforms by purchasing visibility in various playlists. I have an office job for a living, but have always been playing jazz on the side, most often with no profit whatsoever. By coincidence, I happened to get a gig producing "background café jazz" music for a major label. I cannot disclose any details but I think the deal is fair. I can indeed confirm that mass produced similar music is proposed as a template for yet more of the same, but I want to stress that we try to make meaningful music and that we have a lot of fun doing it. And we have never used a first take of any song.  I agree with the opinion expressed in the excellent Liz Pelly article that this type of music will most likely soon be created by AI and we're just doing this while we can (which might not be for too long).

I met Peter at a Phil Woods Clinic being held at LIU in Brooklyn. Peter was there with his camera taking photos of the event. He was a very friendly guy, and great guitarist. I remember him raving about the album Jim Hall made with Art Farmer, where they played Swedish folk songs. I checked it out, and was surprised to find it was a very dark album, consisting of these songs that were all in minor keys, and very diatonic. RIP.