@JazzStandards.com : “I Can’t Get Started” was introduced by Bob Hope, who sang it to Eve Arden in Ziegfeld Follies of 1936. Opening on January 30, 1936, at the Winter Garden Theatre, the Broadway revue ran for 115 performances.

@Alligator : Katie Webster toured the country with Redding, and can be heard on his Live At The Whiskey A-Go-Go album. Unable to join Redding on tour in 1967 because she was pregnant, Webster was not on the plane that took Redding’s life.

Bill Evans @Amazon : More emotionally naked than his recordings with other labels. And you cannot miss the duet tracks with Eddie Gomez. The music is as overwhelming and heart-wrenching as the extremely personal liner notes.

@Red Hot Jazz Archive : Initially doctors wanted to amputate his leg but Django refused. He was moved to a nursing home where the care was so good his leg was saved. Django was bedridden for eighteen months. During this time he was given a guitar, …

@jazz.com : Artie Shaw ’s first such hit, “Begin the Beguine,” left him rich, famous and utterly disgusted with the “morons” who insisted he play it at every appearance. Count us among the morons.

@Bricks In My Pillow : For all his influence Robert Nighthawk remains a mostly neglected and mysterious figure. One reason was that he recorded very sporadically which saw only about a dozen scattered sessions from the 1930’s up until his death in 1967.

@The Advancement of Creative Musicians : Chico Freeman has been compared to the greats in jazz history by many critics, but the proof, beyond arguable opinion, is in the fact that he has played and recorded with some of the most innovative musicians in the world.

@NPR : Lydia Mendoza, queen of Tejano music, began her legendary career singing in the plazas of downtown San Antonio with the chili queens in the 1930s. She shared her memories with The Kitchen Sisters for Hidden Kitchens.

@Pat Martino : One of the greatest guitarists in jazz. Martino had suffered a severe brain aneurysm and underwent surgery after being told that his condition could be terminal. After his operations he could remember almost nothing.

@BBC : It was January 1939. Strayhorn travelled up from his home in Pittsburgh to New York. He was making the journey to impress Duke Ellington but fearing that might not be enough he had also written a composition using the travel instructions Ellington’s office had given him to get to the band’s venue. It was called Take the A Train.

@Oscar Peterson : His father told him that he couldn’t “let him leave high school to be a jazz piano player. You have to be the best, there is no second best.” And so his music career began…