Before Nate Bargatze, Dave Chappelle, Larry David, Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor, Robin Williams, Andy Kaufman, George Carlin, Redd Foxx, Woody Allen, Flip Wilson, Joan Rivers, Bill Cosby, Bob Newhart and Lenny Bruce, there was Jonathan Winters. [Photo above of Manhattan’s Upper West Side in the early morning hours last week by Marc Myers]

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What makes New York special is that everything big happens here all at once. It’s where exceptionalism comes to leave its mark in food, fashion, finance, the arts, sports, entertainment, architecture, technology and writing. [Photo above and below of New York by Marc Myers]

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Every June in Manhattan, the New York Philharmonic performs a live free concert on Central Park’s Great Lawn. Yes, classical music is still a thing among families who love sitting outside in the evening on blankets on the expansive grass space listening to a live orchestra through a huge speaker system. I passed by in the afternoon of June 10 just after they had finished setting up the stage for that evening. [Photo above and photos below of fireworks by Marc Myers]

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This weekend’s post began in the shower, where the best ideas spring forth. For some reason, a shower sets your head in neutral. Washing and shampooing are auto-pilot chores, freeing up your brain to wander. The following came to mind last week [photo above of Central Park by Marc Myers]:

Since the end of World War II, in 1945, major innovations in musi…

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My breakfast is rather simple but exciting. A cold banana, a kiwi that I peel with a knife while reading the paper and then a slice of lightweight whole-wheat toast and a latte coffee. My soul rests in Europe, so coffee, like shaving, had to be a hands-on, primitive experience. [Photo above of Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain, dedicated in 1873, taken l…

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Most life-long New Yorkers will draw a blank if asked the following question:

Q. Is there a Picasso in New York you can touch without getting into trouble?

A. Yes, in Greenwich Village. It’s the sculpture, Bust of Sylvette, that’s pictured above. It’s tucked away in a plaza formed by New York University’s Silver Towers off of Bleecker Street. [Photo at …

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Nothing makes me happier than giving you joy. Six days a week, I post on my passion, music, and many of you love what I write about and listening to the clips I include. This isn’t a traditional blog. It’s a relationship, a shared journey, an education and a line of communication designed to get you through the week by starting your days on an upbeat note. [Photo above of Belvedere Castle in Central Park by Marc Myers; photos of the park below by Marc Myers as well]

So, if you’re a free subscriber, please consider upgrading to paid. That tells me you find value in what you’re receiving, which in your case is just two posts per week. Meaning you’re missing out on the other four posts. The fact that you received this Editor’s Note today is a rarity.

Normally, my weekend post is exclusively for my paid subscribers, but I made an exception this weekend. If you find JazzWax rewarding, please let me know by upgrading. If not, you’re more than welcome to enjoy the two posts you receive. I just wish you were able to enjoy what you’re missing as well as all that the JazzWax site has to offer.

New York’s in love. After a chilly early spring, with temperatures as late as last week requiring a heavy sweater, New York is finally in the clear. The weather this weekend will be in the 70s and 80s, and the temperature is supposed to remain locked into spring/summer rolling forward next week. Which means the streets, restaurants and the parks this weekend will be jammed. Everyone here is in such a marvelous mood. Until the first heat wave, that is. For now, we’ll take it. To celebrate with you, I took a bunch of photos last week while crossing Central Park on an overcast day [Photo above of my favorite tree in Central Park, which stands along the Ellipsis that surrounds the Great Lawn]

Recommended streaming: Here’s what I watched and loved last week: Stranger Things (five seasons; Netflix), The Proposal (rom-com film; Netflix) and Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (rom-com film; Netflix)

They say it’s spring. When true spring arrives in New York, I think of singers and songs.

Here’s Tony Bennett singing Don Costa’s arrangement of Spring in Manhattan, in 1963…

Here’s Ella Fitzgerald singing I Got the Spring Fever Blues with Chick Webb in 1936, arranged by Van Alexander (to read my interview with Van, go here)…

Here’s June Christy singing Suddenly It’s Spring in 1963, with Al Viola on guitar and Bud Shank on flute…

Here’s Chris Connor singing Spring Is Here with the Ellis Larkin Trio in 1954…

Here’s Billy Eckstine in 1958 singing Younger Than Springtime, with a Nelson Riddle orchestration…

Here’s Sammy Davis Jr. and Julie Andrews singing a medley of spring songs on TV in 1973…

And here are the Beach Boys in 1966 singing And Their Hearts Were Full of Spring, a tribute of sorts to the Four Freshmen…

Another by the Beach Boys in tribute to spring and the Four Freshmen? Here’s Graduation Day in 1965; on guitars were Carl Wilson and members of the Wrecking Crew session musicians…

Lastly, when seasons lock in, I traditionally post the old WNEW-AM jingle that matches that time of year. Here’s the spring theme…

The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album was released on May 16, 1966—60 years ago on Saturday. It was and remains a towering and influential emotional work. In tribute, Capitol/UMe is releasing today The Beach Boys: The Pet Sounds Sessions Highlights as a two-CD package and multiple double-LP sets as well as a digital download and streaming. It’s hugely satisfying. [Photo above of Brian Wilson recording Pet Sounds in 1966 in Los Angeles by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images]

While all of these isolated tracks were previously released on the four-CD 30th-anniversary box released in 1997, Capitol has remastered and ordered them as they appear on the album. The new collection features 25 alternate takes, layered a cappella tracks, demos, backing tracks, alternate versions and mixes, and tracking sessions. All are on vinyl for the first time.

For example, the first disc/LP features isolated Four Freshmen-inspired vocals with minimal instrumentation. It's like listening to a choral group or Gregorian chants. The second disc/LP features assorted tracks related to the songs.

At the time of the record’s release, leading rock artists were spellbound. Paul McCartney has often cited Pet Sounds as his favorite non-Beatles album and called it a significant influence on the group as they composed and recorded Sgt. Pepper, released in May 1967. The same goes for George Martin.

Instead of caustic messages of protest and rebellion, Brian tapped into the youth psyche and what it felt like to come of age and grapple with maturity. The mood was inspired by the many records recorded by groups like the Ronettes and Righteous Brothers and produced by Phil Spector in the early 1960s. Pet Sounds’ songs seem to exist in a twilight zone between the safety of childhood and the daunting responsibilities of adult independence.

Its appeal rests in innocence backed by grand instrumental arrangements organized as a concept, with one song leading into the next. The record’s very title expresses pure nature—the noises friendly animals make to convey pleasure, anger, yearning for food or attention, and a range of other basic needs.

The music also sets a mood. I interviewed Brian Wilson, Al Jardine and Mike Love multiple times on a range of topics and attended one of the best outdoor summer concerts ever: Brian, Al and the Beach Boys at the California Mid-State Fair in 2016, performing the entire Pet Sounds album at dusk as large beach balls were belted around a sizable crowd. Off in the distance were the neon lights of amusement park rides shimmering in the humidity. Even live, you could hear the insecurity and acne between the lines.

If you lived in Los Angeles or the surrounding area at the time, as friends of mine did, the album was a radical break from the formulaic pop rock and pop soul that dominated AM radio then. It also was a departure from the Beach Boys’ own endless summer, beach-centric themes and a journey into psychological issues and self-doubt.

Just as the cover of the Beatles’ Rubber Soul in 1965 made pre-teen guys my age (9) pause after seeing the Fab Four with facial hair and realizing we would soon be them, Pet Sounds did the same for those soon to be exposed to a host of angst-y issues.

Here are Tony Asher and Brian’s lyrics for I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times:

I keep looking for a place to fit in / Where I can speak my mind / And I’ve been trying hard to find the people / That I won’t leave behind / They say I got brains but they ain’t doing me no good / I wish they could.

To hear all of these songs with just the vocals or isolated backing tracks with music are a revelation. Not only do you come to realize how special Brian was as a vocal arranger and falsetto singer but you also marvel at the vocal sophistication that the Beach Boys needed to pull off the harmonizing.

The set is enormously rewarding on so many levels. If you want to be transported back to an age of teenage innocence, when all that mattered were cars, romantic relationships and the beach, this new set will serve as a summer concentrate. And to think, all of this was in Brian Wilson’s head.

Here are the isolated stacked vocals for Wouldn’t It Be Nice, newly remastered...

And here’s the remastered I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times…

All great artists were inspired by other artists as they found a singular way to express themselves and corner the market for their particular approach. On the jazz side, I’m thinking of Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, McCoy Tyner, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk and many others.

In rock ‘n’ roll, the greats who come to mind are Little Richard, Chuck Berry, B…

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This year’s most glaring cultural oversight can be found in a New York Times feature this week entitled The 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters. The very title begs trouble. To pull off such a list successfully with the fewest possible arrows from readers, one would have to proceed with enormous sensitivity, caution and due diligence. [Photo above o…

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For those of you who don’t know what AI is and why it’s important, neither do I. Then again, my only interaction with artificial intelligence is with ChatGPT and Google’s AI functionality. In short, when you type in a question, ChatGPT and Google AI reaches into the galaxy of all information to produce a concise answer. Remarkable, really.

Now the dark …

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The temperature in New York climbed into the 80s for three days last week. Air conditioners went on all over the city, and out came the flip-flops, T-shirts and shorts. But it’s still April, the fake-out month of the year here. Today (Saturday), the high will be 65, then 56 on Sunday and 51 on Monday, with nights in the 40s. Spring remains fickle. [Phot…

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Spring is a slippery season in New York. It pops its head up briefly only to have winter barge back in. When the weather starts to become consistently warmer, it often rains and the wind blows the blossoms off tree branches.

So, net-net, the city tends to get just two weeks of sunny weather in the 70s before summer brushes it aside. If we’re lucky, those spring days in the mid-70s will fall on a weekend. That was the case last Saturday. [Photo above and all photos below by Marc Myers]

Since I was crossing Central Park en route to my place on the West Side after visiting my daughter on the East Side, I thought I’d take a bunch of photos of early spring in all its magnificence to share with you:

What I’ve watched. I have been screening a ton of upcoming films and series in advance of Hollywood interviews for my House Call column in the WSJ. But rather than torture you with what you can’t see yet, I figured I’d share two films that I loved that you can access: Agent Zeta (Amazon Prime), a Spanish action film, and Guy Ritchie’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (Roku/free).

A special thanks to my paid subscribers for their support, their comments and their wisdom when a post needs a factual tweak.

How JazzWax works. If you like logging in to JazzWax and roaming around, let me explain how the site is set up.

Across the top you’ll see a menu: Jazz101 houses my posts on jazz history; Albums holds my posts on records; Tracks are my posts on individual songs; Films are my posts on music documentaries; Interviews are my conversations with jazz musicians and singers that took place after JazzWax moved to Substack; Beyond are all posts that don’t fit any category—commentary on rock, pop and other forms of music as well as my Editor’s Notes; 2007-2025 is the JazzWax archive with all of my pre-Substack posts dating back to 2007; and WSJ is where you’ll find my Wall Street Journal columns, accessible if you subscribe to the newspaper’s online site.

Want to read my pre-Substack JazzWax interviews? Scroll down the home page. On the right side you’ll see a long list of jazz legends. Just click on a name and you’ll be taken to the interview.

Disclaimer. A reader last week asked why I provide links to buy albums and whether I received payment for doing so. The answer is absolutely not.

Receiving payment (pay for play) would be a conflict of interest. I include the links in case readers want to buy what I’m posting about and don’t want to fuss. As most readers know, nearly all of the music I write about can be heard via streaming at Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify and other platforms without charge.

Charles Tolliver. Bill Kirchner last week sent along the Gerald Wilson Orchestra playing Paper Man, composed and arranged for Wilson by Charles Tolliver. Solos are by Charles Tolliver (tp), Hadley Caliman (ts) and Phil Moore III (p).

As for the Gerald Wilson Orchestra: Al Porcino, Gary Barone, Dick Forrest, Larry McGuire and Alex Rodriguez (tp); Charles Tolliver (tp,arranger of track #1); Thurman Green and Lester Robinson (tb); Mike Barone (tb,arranger on #3); Don Switzer (b-tb); Anthony Ortega and Ramon Bojorquez (as); Hadley Caliman and Harold Land (ts); Howard Johnson (bs,tuba); Phil Moore III (p); Jack Wilson (org); Buddy Woodson (b); Carl Lott (d); Gerald Wilson (arr on balance of tracks).

Paper Man was recorded at Marty’s on the Hill in Los Angeles on April 1, 1967…

Piano trios. Last week I heard from Mark Rabin…

Marc, I’ve been in a piano trio mood lately. I found two piano trio live-streams that I enjoyed:

Here’s Bruce Barth at Clement’s Place in Newark, N.J.…

And here’s Bill Cunliffe at Mezzrow in New York…

Weekend listening. Here’s Don Patterson on organ with tenor saxophonist Sonny Stitt, guitarist Blue Grant and drummer Billy James playing Donny Brook, from the Prestige album of the same name, recorded in 1969…

One more? Here’s João Donato and Bud Shank playing live in 2006…

Before singer-songwriters Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Carly Simon, there was Laura Nyro. The composer recorded her first album, More Than a New Discovery, at age 19 in 1966, for Verve Folkways. But it was her next one, Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, for Columbia in 1968, that turned heads.

The LP is still warm and intriguing, and established her…

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Last weekend, I watched You’ve Got Mail, with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. I hadn’t seen the movie since it came out in 1998, and the film choked me up, especially that gorgeous ending. For me, the film is personal, since it was shot in my neighborhood on the Upper West Side when my daughter was little. [Photo still above of Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks in You’ve…

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I’ve always enjoyed Bette Davis as a film actress. Like a great jazz musician, her artistry was superb but she never quite fit in with the other actresses signed to studio contracts. As she said in interviews, she simply wasn’t pretty enough. [Photo above of Bette Davis courtesy of Corbis / Getty]

Davis had the looks of Betty Boop and the confidence and …

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I spent my teens running fingers through bins of new LPs at record supermarkets such as Tower, Sam Goody and those inside department stores. Today, just the sight of 12-inch vinyl sets my heart beating faster. [Photo above of Colony Records at the base of the famed Brill Building on 49th St. and Broadway; the store closed in 2012 and today it’s a CVS]

Bu…

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A friend has been talking up the arrival of spring. And given that temperatures look like they’ll hover in the mid 60s next week, I’m sure I’ll see neighborhood teens in shorts and flip-flops.

Teens’ tastes and trends may change over time but their passion for warm weather and showing off their bods remains intact across generations.

Sorry to break the …

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A week ago, a massive nor’easter was bearing down on New York. When it hit last Sunday into Monday, the storm delivered everything that was promised—nearly two feet of snow. But with the temperatures above freezing this past week, much of the snow has melted away.

Now, spring seems to be lurking in the shadows. The light on buildings has a warmer look, the days are growing incrementally longer and baseball is around the corner.

What remains of the storm for New Yorkers are the stunning views of Central Park’s trees and lawns decorated in white. What a scene! [See photo at the top courtesy of Instagram]

For months, I’ve been urging those of you with a free subscription to upgrade to paid. Here’s why: You’ll get all five of my weekly posts plus the Editor’s Note each weekend. You’ll also be acknowledging that my efforts to entertain and inform you each day have value. And you’ll have access to all of JazzWax’s site content, including my prized jazz legend interviews.

Last week, free subscribers missed out on three incredible posts—Frank Sinatra’s live Tokyo concert in 1962, which I recently found uploaded again after being taken down; five superb new jazz CDs that are worth a listen; and the entire concert video of Woody Herman at the BBC in London in 1969.

What’s more, my weekend Editor’s Note may soon be for paid subscribers only. That may happen at any time. So if you love what you’re reading, please upgrade to paid.

How to do it: Navigate to your Settings, click on Subscriptions, select the publication, and choose “Upgrade to paid” to enter your payment details. Many thanks in advance.

Tony Bennett. Here’s Tony in 1966 on his Singer Sewing Machine TV special, complete with original ads…

Here’s Sarah Vaughan in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1969, backed by pianist Johnny Veith, bassist Gus Mancuso and drummer Eddy Pucci…

And here’s a tribute to the late Neil Sedaka, the Brill Building composer who wrote the music for numerous teen pop songs and hits. He died yesterday at age 86:

Here’s Breaking Up Is Hard to Do with music by Sedaka and lyrics by Howard Greenfield…

Here’s Laughter in the Rain, with music by Sedaka and lyrics by Phil Cody…

Here’s Oh! Carol, with music by Sedaka and lyrics by Greenfield…

Here’s Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen, with music by Sedaka and lyrics by Greenfield…

Here’s Love Will Keep Us Together, with music by Sedaka and lyrics by Greenfield…

And here’s the ballad version of Breaking Up Is Hard to Do…

By late 1964, the British Invasion was in full swing in the U.S. Americans fell hard for all things English, from fashion and soap to cars, music, movies and TV. The Beatles, of course, spearheaded the cultural incursion with teens, but James Bond films captivated adults. [Photo above of British composer and orchestra arranger and conductor Tony Hatch]

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