It's All About the Music

In fall 2023, three veteran jazz journalists, Bill Milkowski, Rick Mitchell, and Howard Mandel, sat down for a wide-ranging conversation, a portion of which is collected here to remind us all why we fell in love with music in the first place.

From first album purchases to legendary festival moments, they share the records and live performances that impacted them. Whether it's Howard's early attraction to Bill Evans, Rick's reverence for Jimi Hendrix, or Bill's memories of Blind Faith, these are the musical origin stories behind three respected voices in jazz journalism.

This episode captures what happens when writers stop analyzing and start remembering. It is all about the the music that made them who they are, and why. Yes, it's still all about the music.

Check out our playlist of the music mentioned and excerpted in this episode. 

And here are the two episodes making up the discussion this episode is excerpted from:

Part I: Jazz Journalism, Then and Now, with Veteran Writer Bill Milkowski and host Rick Mitchell

Part II: Bill Milkowski with Rick Mitchell and Howard Mandel, reminiscing

Take a look at the Jazz Omnibus, the 600-page anthology of 21st century photos and writings by members of the Jazz Journalist Association, available online and wherever books are sold

Don’t miss new episodes of The Buzz. Make sure you follow us wherever you listen to podcasts.

For more from the Jazz Journalists Association, go to JJANews.org.

Transcript

Lawrence Peryer: Hello and welcome to The Buzz, the podcast of the Jazz Journalists Association, an international professional organization of writers, photographers, and broadcasters focused on jazz. I'm Lawrence Peryer, proud JJA member, managing editor of The Buzz, and your host today for an episode that reveals what happens when three longtime jazz journalists get together, and it reminds us why we do what we do.

Back in the fall of 2023, Bill Milkowski, Rick Mitchell, and Howard Mandel recorded a two-part discussion across a wide range of topics, but my favorite parts were where they talked about music—the music they grew up with, what they first got turned on by, and what they're listening to now in their own time.

Revisiting this discussion reminded me that it's all about the music, and I hope it does the same for you.

Through the wonders of the internet, we're able to include many of the historical performances mentioned by name in the discussion. Enjoy the show.

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Bill Milkowski: Name the first album that you bought with your own money.

Howard Mandel: There are two that come to mind. I don't know if I bought Herbie Mann's Live at the Village Gate. I think that may have been it, or else Don Friedman's Riverside album, Circle Waltz.

Bill: Wow, that's very hip.

Howard: I like Bill Evans, and I came across that Circle Waltz cheap, and I thought that it was similar, which it is actually, and it's a good album. But then that makes me think I must have heard the Bill Evans earlier than that. I think it was probably the Herbie Mann that was probably the first.

Bill: So Howard, you had no rock phase that you went through?

Howard: Oh yeah, I was listening to rock and roll. I just didn't necessarily buy those first. I was interested in jazz simultaneously with being interested in rock and roll. And I wasn't collecting rock and roll records particularly, or soul records. I bought Are You Experienced? I was into Love and Spoonful. I was into the Animals. I was into Butterfield Blues Band. That stuff was around all the time. It was around so much though. We were listening to "East West" in our high school cafeteria because Bloomfield had gone to New Trier where I was, graduated from.

My parents had this record called Remember How Great?, and it was a promotion from Lucky Strike Cigarettes. On one side it opened up with Doris Day singing "Sentimental Journey" with the Les Brown Band, which I liked a lot, but then it ended with "One O'Clock Jump" by Basie, which was good.

And also, I was into "Theme from Peter Gunn." My parents took me to a Mancini concert, and that was the climax, and that was the most exciting thing I'd heard—those trumpets blaring.

And then I had a friend whose dad was into jazz. He gave me one of his albums that I said I liked. It was Miles in the Beginning. So it's the Quartet on Prestige with Philly Joe and Red Garland. That was great. That album, I think, nailed me. I wanted to keep hearing that.

Bill: Schofield told me that when he was in high school, he would take the bus in from Wilton, Connecticut to see Tony Williams' Lifetime at this joint on the Lower East Side. What was it called? Slugs. And he said there were like six people in the audience.

Howard: We were big into the Mothers of Invention too. I remember seeing a show at Ravinia that was the Association and the Mothers.

Bill: Wow.

Howard: And I also saw Cream and the Mothers. That was an intense show.

Bill: Did you see the Shakti tour?

Howard: Yeah. Unbelievable. He's getting better. Oh my God, it was so good. It was like he was playing Live-Evil licks.

Bill: It was really Shakti meets Mahavishnu in a way. He's right now in Europe touring with the Fourth Dimension band. This guy will never stop. I hope not.

Rick Mitchell: With all of this though, with all of these other guitarists that we've talked about, Jimi Hendrix is still at the top of my list. I would have to say he was just a genius. I saw him at a rock festival in LA that was a few months before Woodstock, and he came on in the middle of the night just like at Woodstock. I was back in my sleeping bag, but I could hear it.

Howard: Oh, that's an incredible set for a lot of reasons. I saw Hendrix three times. I saw him on that tour with Soft Machine, and I was sitting in the very top row of the Auditorium Theater, and that was before Axis, probably '68. That was like a mind-blowing show.

Then I saw him in Syracuse on the tour with Cat Mother and the All Night Newsboys. And he was just masterful, and I reviewed it for Down Beat. They just released a couple months ago the Experience set Live from the West Coast from that tour. So that show was done a week before the show I saw in Syracuse. It's the same set, and his guitar playing is extraordinary. It's just off the charts. He's doing stuff blues-wise that he's discovering as he's playing. I loved it.

Bill: Speaking of rock festivals back in the day, I went to the Midwest Rock Festival at State Fair Park and saw Blind Faith, Johnny Winter also. But I remember being blown away by Blind Faith. That was '69.

Howard: Yeah, I saw Blind Faith. The best were the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival. 

Bill: John Sinclair was involved with that.

Howard: Yes, at the beginning. But I think he got busted that first year or something. Both Muddy and Wolf were booked on both nights. Wolf played the penultimate set on Friday night, and he went way overtime to stiff Muddy, and Muddy was furious and had to do a short set. So the next night, Muddy fixed it so that he would play the penultimate set. And he was playing and playing, and Wolf came onto the stage on a motorcycle.

Bill: I read about that. Hilarious.

Howard: That festival, that Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival, and one afternoon it was Fred McDowell, Bukka White. It was all the old guys. Roosevelt Sykes. It was like sitting in the Delta, steamy hot, and these guys were just reeling back the years. That was amazing. And then in the evening it was T-Bone Walker and Luther Allison, or the Art Ensemble, or Charles Mingus.

Bill: Sinclair put out a CD of them from the Ann Arbor Jazz-Blues Festival.

Howard: I have that poster up in my hall.

Bill: Wow. That stuff was great. So Howard, you growing up in Chicago, you obviously saw the Butterfield Blues Band. What about Electric Flag or any of that stuff?

Howard: I saw Bloomfield, but much later. I never saw Paul Butterfield. I was too young to get into clubs while they were here. We'd heard them on record, but I didn't go to the live shows.

Bill: Did you try to get into the Checkerboard?

Howard: No, I was not trying to get into the blues clubs at that time. I would go to the blues on the north side. So Alice's Revisited on Lincoln Avenue, Kingston Mines.

Bill: Kingston Mines.

Howard: Yeah. I used to go down to Theresa's a lot. At one point I was thinking about doing a book called Mayor Daley's Blues and Jazz during Mayor Daley's reign, which was long. Both the AACM and the electric blues came to fruition.

Bill: Better than Harold Washington's reign, musically speaking.

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Lawrence: Thank you, Bill Milkowski, Rick Mitchell, and Howard Mandel. And thank you for listening. Don't forget to check the show notes to explore this episode more deeply, and make sure to follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. For more from the Jazz Journalists Association, go to jjnews.org.

I'm Lawrence Peryer. Thanks for listening.