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What James Adams is Listening To

Mostly jazz — an idiom in a hard way these days (once Sonny Rollins dies, that’s it for the giants who shaped it from the late 40s onwards; the Toronto jazz festival this year has the nerve to bill KC and the Sunshine Band as its headline act!). Still have a lot of vinyl and have been playing a fair amount of — you guessed it! – Prince, Merle Haggard and, for some unfathomable reason, R.E.M. from the mid-80s.

James Adams is a reporter at The Globe & Mail covering a variety of arts topics.

Comments

Hi James, As you may have noticed, I wrote up a piece on Prince. I've been playing his disks in chronological order and they really hold up for me. I think "Kiss" is one of the great R&B songs, and "Do Me Baby" one of the great soul songs. Yes, jazz is down at the same level as poetry. Are contemporary players as significant or interesting as the 40s onwards people? It seems to me that someone like Josh Redman is a remarkable player, but is he remaking the form in any way?

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