Driving a few miles north of Hermosa Beach, humming "Appointment In Ghana" as you motor along the Pacific Coast, you find yourself in Los Angeles, the first major city on your jazz journey. Being that this is the capitol of Southern California and its jazz mecca, there's almost too many options to choose from. LA [...]
Leaving Laguna Beach for another beach, you travel almost an hour north towards to Los Angeles to the beach town of Hermosa Beach. Well, it's supposed to be about an hour, but the traffic makes it more like an hour and a half. Pulling into the parking lot of The Lighthouse Cafe, you hear the [...]
If there's one thing that I and the Raggy Waltz staff love more than Brubeck and Desmond, it's starting blog series. Well, here's another one, inspired by the forced Coronacation we're all on. Here in the United States, at least, we're still under travel restrictions and social distancing regulations. As such, I thought it would [...]
It's been a wild couple of weeks for everyone, with uncertainty and anxiousness everywhere. During stressful times like these, my record library takes on the role of a refuge and safe space. It's a place where I can recharge, relax and unwind. Luckily, my record shelves are full of the best stress-reducing medicine I've found: [...]
Although I am a huge fan of Dave Brubeck and his music, I don't always listen to his music. There are times, however, when I revisit his music and momentarily listen to nothing else BUT Brubeck. During one of those recent (ok, current) Brubeck Binges, I had thought about all of the wild, next-level, phenomenal [...]
You really never need a reason to throw a Horace Silver album on. In fact, we here at Raggy Waltz headquarters (all one of me) are rather partial to Mr. Silver and his music and have been adding his albums to the collection as rapidly as possible. This album, however, has a lot of special [...]
Regular readers of Raggy Waltz may have noticed the staggering amount of posts that I made last month in March: 0. I had things planned and ideas lined up, but then the world came to a screeching halt and working in a hospital became more dramatic. Here at Raggy Waltz Headquarters, we wanted to bring [...]
To say these are uncertain times would be an understatement. Every day there seems to be more bad news, more news of orders and decrees going into action that further disrupt our daily life. In times like these, my records mean more to me than almost anything else. They're a sonic refuge, a place to [...]
Marching right along with the special Black History Month celebration, here's an album that I got early in my record-collecting career and one that shows how musically diverse black Americans could be, even in one style of music like jazz. In other words, here's an album from a fellow Californian and musical innovator, Chico Hamilton. [...]
It's February, which means it's Black History Month (at least here in the United States), a time where we spend 28 (29 this year!!!) days to think about the life and times of black Americans. Here at Raggy Waltz, we use the month of February to highlight albums by black men and women as well [...]
