Kevin Whitehead
Kevin Whitehead is the jazz critic for NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Currently he reviews for The Audio Beat and Point of Departure.
Whitehead's articles on jazz and improvised music have appeared in such publications as Point of Departure, the Chicago Sun-Times, Village Voice, Down Beat, and the Dutch daily de Volkskrant.
He is the author of Play the Way You Feel: The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film (2020), Why Jazz: A Concise Guide (2010), New Dutch Swing (1998), and (with photographer Ton Mijs) Instant Composers Pool Orchestra: You Have to See It (2011).
His essays have appeared in numerous anthologies including Da Capo Best Music Writing 2006, Discover Jazz and Traveling the Spaceways: Sun Ra, the Astro-Black and Other Solar Myths.
Whitehead has taught at Towson University, the University of Kansas and Goucher College. He lives near Baltimore.
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Critic Kevin Whitehead reflects on the jazz notables who died this year, including Sheila Jordan, Andy Bey, Ray Drummond, Bunky Green, Chuck Mangione, Eddie Palmieri and Jim McNeely.
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Some books give Smith's birthdate as Dec. 8, 1925, but more recent sources cite 1928 as his birth year. Regardless, the late musician always delivered the goods, even as the beats behind him changed.
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Of all the folk songsters from the 1960s, Mitchell has proven to have the strongest influence on jazz singers. Joni's Jazz features her collaborations with stars like Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock.
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Sept. 1 marks what would have been Pepper's 100th birthday. Kevin Whitehead offers an appreciation of the jazz saxophonist, who started on clarinet at age 9. Pepper died in 1982.
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Moody made untold records over 63 years of recording, and really excelled as a live performer. 80 Years Young: Live at the Blue Note is a recording made on his 80th birthday in 2005.
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The jazz singer's 1960s concert career is amply documented on record, with live albums from Berlin, LA, Tokyo and the French Riviera. Now comes a newly released concert of Fitzgerald in Oakland, Calif.
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Born March 13, 1925, Haynes was a drummer who liked to prod his fellow players. Over the course of his career, he played with Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, Chick Corea and many others.
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From music producer Quincy Jones, to critic and archivist Dan Morgenstern, jazz historian Kevin Whitehead remembers just a few of the influential musicians and personalities we lost this year.
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The Philadelphia bandleader didn't always connect with traditional jazz audiences, but he found a second home doing so in Baltimore. A new double album revisit a show he and his "Arkestra" gave there.
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Haynes, who died Nov. 12, was a heavy hitter, whose limber beat could lift the bandstand. His 65-year recording career was studded with more classics than we have time to even hint at.