Bob Weinberg , Author at JAZZIZ Magazine

Bob Weinberg

Requisite: Duke Ellington, ‘This One’s for Blanton!’ (1975, Pablo)

Few practitioners have changed the way their instrument is played forever, but Jimmy Blanton ranks…

Ronnie’s Specter: In His Recent Documentary, Director Oliver Murray Explores the Mystery of the Man Behind a Cherished London Jazz Club

All that was written on the label of the 16 mm film can was “jazz…

Spring 2022 JAZZIZ On Disc: Annotated Tracklist

Disc One: The Drum Thing As a quartet that expanded to a quintet with the…

Motian Pictures: Filmmaker Michael Patrick Kelly Provides a Window Into a Modern Jazz Master

Paul Motian’s was a singular voice in the jazz world. Going back to his work…

No Energy Crisis: Hard-Bop Icon Louis Hayes Still Brings the Heat

The pandemic has weighed heavily on the mind of Louis Hayes. It’s no accident that…

John Coltrane: Interstellar Space (Impulse!, 1974)

Rashied Ali didn’t know the session was going to be just drums and saxophone until…

Streaming Cecil: How an unissued performance by an avant-garde giant found new life

Released in 1974, the Cecil Taylor Unit’s Spring of Two Blue-J’s captured the second set…

Winter 2021 JAZZIZ On Disc: Annotated Tracklist

Disc 1: Passion For more than 20 years, saxophonist Will Vinson has been an integral…

Manhattan Island Serenade: Gonzalo Rubalcaba Reconnects with the Colleagues and the City That Helped Him Realize His Dream

Gonzalo Rubalcaba first glimpsed the New York skyline in 1993, when he was granted permission…

Bebo Valdés: ‘Bebo de Cuba’ (Calle 54)

A titan of Cuban jazz, Bebo Valdés had been living in exile in Sweden for…

Dr. Lonnie’s Wild Ride: Remembering a Jazz Organ Legend

The scene was positively trippy. In a dimly lit chamber of centuries-old stone, cannons hanging…

Growing Up Ira: Ira Sullivan was a legend in the jazz world, but to Brev Sullivan, he was Dad.

Attired in a shredded black muscle T and tight leather pants, long blonde hair framing…

Cassandra Wilson, “New Moon Daughter” (Blue Note, 1995)

Her second album with producer Craig Street, New Moon Daughter was the apotheosis of Cassandra…

Voicing Opinions: Lauren Henderson and Camille Thurman

During their formative years, neither Lauren Henderson nor Camille Thurman anticipated that singing would be…

A Profound Hush: Sachal Vasandani Speaks Volumes with a Sublimely Quiet Recording

The setting is so intimate you can hear him breathe. Like the dry clack of…

Chambers in Session: Joe Chambers returns to Blue Note

Joe Chambers is the first to admit it: He messed up big. Having participated in…

Requisite: The Ornette Coleman Trio, ‘At the Golden Circle, Stockholm, Volume One’ (Blue Note)

Ornette Coleman had burst into the public consciousness with his quartet, but for his two-week…

Jazz Spoken Here : Archie Shepp bridges generations of poetic expression

Decades before Public Enemy and NWA, Archie Shepp was electrifying audiences with his gritty urban…

Requisite Listening: Gill Scott-Heron, ‘Small Talk at 125th and Lenox’

Gil Scott-Heron Small Talk at 125th and Lenox (Flying Dutchman), 1970 On his debut recording, Gil…

Black and White and Shades of Gray

Larry Vuckovich’s love affair with the movies began in his native Yugoslavia. The California-based jazz…

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Larry Vuckovich’s love affair with the movies began in his native Yugoslavia. The California-based jazz pianist, 84, recalls joyfully watching productions such as Wintertime, a 1943 musical romp featuring ice-skating Olympian Sonja Henie and performances by the Woody Herman band, and 1944’s Bathing Beauty, which starred swimming champ Esther Williams and swung young Larry’s socks off when the Harry James band played “Trumpet Blues.” But the screen genre that seems to hold the most resonance for Vuckovich is film noir. These shadowy dramas, popular in the 1940s and ’50s, involved high stakes, dark portents and moral dilemmas, all of which were reflected in their moody, often jazz-centric scores. The pianist paid homage to this cinematic influence with his recordings Street Scene (2006) and High Wall: Real Life Film Noir (2008). For Vuckovich, the central conflicts of film noir were more than an abstraction. While he was watching Victor Mature or Richard Widmark navigate seemingly impossible odds on the big screen, there was someone in his own life who had triumphed in similarly no-win situations: his father. Living in Montenegro during the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia, Milutin Vuckovich supported the underground resistance. Serbian guerrillas ferociously battled the Nazis, delaying their march on Moscow by six weeks, when freezing winter weather acted as yet another defensive force against the German invaders. Villagers, including Vuckovich Sr., hid hundreds of Allied airmen who had been shot down while bombing Romanian oilfields in 1944. The Vuckoviches stashed a pilot in their home until he could be spirited to safety. “When the flier was there, they didn’t tell me, because little kids can’t keep a secret,” says Vuckovich from his home in Napa Valley. “So my [older] brother brought him food in the attic for two weeks. But as they say in film noir, there’s always somebody who likes to rat on people to win points. And when the Nazis knocked on the door — three officers — my father kept his cool. They said, ‘We understand you have strangers.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I have three.’ ‘What?!’ ‘Yeah, the three of you!’ They searched everything, they didn’t find him. When they left, he was shaking. They told me later about it. But we have letters from the flier. He was from San Antonio, Texas, and he sent us letters and a photo.” After the war, Vuckovich’s father fell afoul of the Tito government and was deemed an enemy of the state. But the family made it out of Yugoslavia and settled in San Francisco when Larry was in his teens. Vuckovich couldn’t believe the abundance of jazz in his new home city. Once, he went to see a movie — the title of which he’s long forgotten — at the Paramount Theatre. Of course, he has no trouble recalling Duke Ellington’s Orchestra, who performed right after. “I walk in, I watch a movie and here comes this band,” he says. “I remember the piano was white. I said, ‘Who is this guy with two bass drums?’ That was Louie Bellson. I come again a couple weeks later, and up on the screen, you have airplanes going, from a newsreel, and Lionel Hampton and his band playing ‘Flying Home.’ ” In addition to the remarkable San Francisco jazz scene of which he’d later become a part — working with Jon Hendricks, Clifford Jordan and Lucky Thompson, among others — Vuckovich also fell in love with film noir, recognizing the parallels in his family’s perils. Films such as Cry of the City, The Dark Corner and Asphalt Jungle fired his imagination and appealed to his sense of justice. “I liked film noir because it had a cross-section of people,” he says. “You see the dark side of American life, but you see a wide range of characters. You see some really decent people who always stick to their beliefs, no matter what.” Here, he relates back to his father’s difficulties after the war, when some of his neighbors were called on to testify against him. “Some of the people you couldn't buy. [The government] wanted them to talk against him. No. Others will sell you for a nickel. So in film noir, you've got all of that."