By David Rutter

Editor’s Note: Our very own David Rutter not only writes for the Beachwood but plays third chair trombone in the Big Band Sound of Deerfield.
For reasons no one but musicians know, Fletcher Henderson was the most influential man in modern music – before the Beatles.
The jazz great of the 1920s was a pianist, bandleader, arranger and composer, who handed his musical arrangements to clarinetist Benny Goodman.
Though he bridged Dixieland into Big Band music on stage and recordings, Henderson could never break through the racial divide of pop music success, though his writing, arranging, and performances were incendiary.
So he became Goodman’s musical muse.
Here, Benny, your band should play these.

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Posted on July 31, 2020

By The Artist Rights Alliance

July 28, 2020
Dear Campaign Committees:
As artists, activists, and citizens, we ask you to pledge that all candidates you support will seek consent from featured recording artists and songwriters before using their music in campaign and political settings. This is the only way to effectively protect your candidates from legal risk, unnecessary public controversy, and the moral quagmire that comes from falsely claiming or implying an artist’s support or distorting an artists’ expression in such a high stakes public way.

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Posted on July 29, 2020

F to the R to the E to the E to the C to the R to the E-D-I-T, RE to the PORT to the DOT to the COM . . .

Now instead of looking fly and rolling phat, my legs are sticking to the vinyl and my posse’s getting laughed at.

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Posted on July 18, 2020

Honoring Its Music And People

More than 60 renowned musicians from around the globe, including Dionne Warwick, Michael McDonald and Tom Morello, will perform in a Concert for Cuba this weekend, the world’s first COVID-19 era international music fest.
Joining them in honoring Cuba – its music and its people – will be a variety of well-known activists, political leaders and cultural icons including Danny Glover, Medea Benjamin, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia and Michael Moore.
Longtime Chicago musicians Erwin Helfer and Reginald Robinson have contributed compositions.

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Posted on July 16, 2020

By Bloodshot Records

The world is hunkered down, socially distanced, tearing apart and pulling together. Studios are closed, tours are cancelled, and festivals just seem terrifyingly stupid. Cramming into a stuffy club to have friends and bands alike sweating and shouting all over the room? Not us, buddy, and hopefully not you either. Not until tides turn; not until science, empathy and common sense re-emerge.
We count ourselves among the fortunate who have some spare (though worry-filled) time on our hands. And with that time we scoured the vaults to bring together this collection of heretofore unreleased or hard-to-find tracks from the Bloodshot gang of wayward music makers – who miss you just as much as you miss them.

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Posted on July 4, 2020