Monthly Archives: July 2012

Nina Mae McKinney



Nina Mae McKinney., originally uploaded by carbonated.

I ran across this photo of Nina Mae McKinney (who I wrote about during last year’s Women’s History Month posts here) on pintrest (via p8ronella), and was delighted to see the costume from this (fabulous) film sequence:

Swanee Shuffle – Curtis Mosby

That film clip is supercool for many reasons, though one of them is for the tall-woman/short-man partner sequence (I think the woman leads, though I’m not sure).

News: Coleman Hawkins and Lomax

This Jazzwax post “Coleman Hawkins: 1922-1947” is an interesting complement to the Mosaic Coleman Hawkins set and to the idea of Anthologies or collections of individual works as a creative product in its own right (as I began discussing in my post “More thoughts, also illness-addled and pseudoephedrine-fuelled.“).

I’m also interested in the new film Ballads, Blues and Bluegrass directed by Alan Lomax and featuring lots of lovely archival footage from the Folkways project

Carol Ralph

I’m a massive fan of Carol Ralph, an Australian singer from New Castle (just north of Sydney). I’ve seen her live quite a few times, and she has a gorgeous stage presence – really inviting, warm and engaging. It’s hard to find her CD ‘Swinging Jazz Portrait’, though you can buy it through the Victorian Jazz Archives, and you could probably get it at one of the Australian Jazz Club events. If you can find it, buy it. I DJ from it regularly, years after I first bought it. The recordings feature some of Australia’s biggest names in jazz (including Bob Sedergreen I think), and there’s some totally brilliant lindy hop and blues dancing music in there.

Carol doesn’t have much of a web presence (argh!), but you can get some details via Jazz in Australia.