Journal
The stories behind the records. The artists, the pressings, and the nights themselves.
Sep 3, 2026
The best thing about a listening night is never the records
We put a documentary about Bristol on the wall. What came out over two sides was Maxell tapes, a warm Breezer, and Sam the Record Man's neon still lit three blocks away.
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Sep 3, 2026
He put an empty counter on the front of his own record
February 1, 1960: four students sit down at a Woolworth counter in Greensboro and are refused service. Max Roach heard that Greensboro and Sharpeville were the same story, and cut Candid's second record to say so.
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Aug 24, 2026
He lost the argument, so he went and chanted for twenty minutes
Herbie Hancock's new drummer wanted to play something the producer didn't want. So he walked out, chanted alone for twenty minutes, came back, and cut the take in one pass.
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Aug 22, 2026
The word everybody knows is a man's name
Ras Tafari was Haile Selassie's given name before he was emperor. Two years after a hundred thousand people met his plane in Kingston, three young men in Kingston named a band after it.
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Aug 15, 2026
Sylvester made it disco. This group made it gospel.
Gospel boogie is a genre I'm still opening myself up to, still learning as I go, and one thread keeps leading to another.
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Aug 14, 2026
He taught Brooke Shields, Naomi Campbell, and Britney Spears to dance
I recently stumbled on a couple of Frank Hatchett records. I had no idea what they were, but the story turned out to be incredible.
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Aug 13, 2026
Jay-Z's first charting single was built on a record by a band nobody remembers
Thirteen people from Richmond drove to Atlanta in 1976 believing this was the beginning. It turned out to be the only one.
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Aug 11, 2026
Nobody told him his hand was a problem. Somebody handed him a piano.
I went looking for what Horace Parlan actually thought about his own hand. There isn't much. He just played.
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Aug 6, 2026
Herbie Hancock's album title was a name somebody else gave him
Before Mtume was known for Juicy Fruit, he was a competitive swimmer training toward the 1968 Olympics.
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Aug 4, 2026
Fired for his locks, he paid for the studio session himself
Peter Broggs never actually set out to be a singer. He lost a factory job for what he believed, and figured music was the only thing left to try.
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Aug 3, 2026
A gospel boogie banger, relatively unknown
Picked this one up in south Atlanta at a small thrift shop. A gospel sampler on a label I'd never heard of, which is usually enough to get me to hand over the money.
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Aug 1, 2026
I bought it for Patrick Adams. The name above his is the real story.
Patrick Adams is the name I chase. Then I actually read the credit, and found the one I didn't know.
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Jul 31, 2026
I watched a room full of strangers cry through this record
It's been a couple of days since we finished our Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges Clube da Esquina listening night, and something happened that I still haven't fully sat with.
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Jul 28, 2026
Dusty In Memphis contains, vocally, none of Dusty in Memphis
Every photo of Dusty Springfield sold me the same story before I put on the record. Turns out that image was armor, and she built it herself.
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Jul 24, 2026
Everyone knows Sinatra's My Way. Critics say Nina Simone's is better.
This song wasn't born in triumph. In 1967 French songwriter Jacques Revaux wrote the melody while behind on commissions.
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Jul 22, 2026
88 keys, four revolutions: Herbie Hancock in August
Four Tuesdays, one artist, two seatings a night. The artist is Herbie Hancock, and honestly, this one's personal.
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Jul 21, 2026
VOP: the word he made up, and the dance empire he built on it
It was raining Frank Hatchett this past weekend. I'd never heard the name before that day. Here's what I didn't know yet.
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Jul 19, 2026
American military radio is why he grew up loving the Beach Boys
When I hear city pop I picture neon skylines and glossy nostalgia. Going deeper into Spacy, I found the gloss is the point.
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Jul 18, 2026
He wrote the soundtrack to the Civil Rights years and owned none of it
There's a kid in this story before there's ever a record. Not a studio. A pew.
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Jul 14, 2026
He spent years trying to destroy the record critics now call his best
I went further down a rabbit hole with this record than almost anything I've researched.
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Jul 12, 2026
Miles Davis was critical of him. Hank Mobley didn't need him to be right.
What happens when you're hired to replace John Coltrane in Miles Davis's quintet? In 1961 that question landed on Hank Mobley.
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Jul 10, 2026
Too funky for jazz radio, too jazzy for R&B radio, so nobody played it
“I guess the business didn't want me.” That's how James Mason described what happened after Rhythm of Life came out in 1977.
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Jul 6, 2026
Two people, one roof, one deadline: how In The Moonlight almost didn't happen
I have been sitting with In The Moonlight since it landed on Star Creature Universal Vibrations, and it has not left my rotation.
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Jul 5, 2026
One month into building a listening night in Toronto
In real time. In public. Here's what I've been learning. The highs, and the lows.
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Jun 26, 2026
The piano intro on Breezin' isn't George Benson. It's this man.
In 1976 George Benson released Breezin' and won the Grammy for Record of the Year. The piano intro on "This Masquerade," the four bars that open the whole album before Benson plays a single note, that's Jorge Dalto.
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Jun 25, 2026
DJ Premier found it in 1992. Kanye found it in 2005.
In 1992, DJ Premier found "Funk It Down" on this record and built Gang Starr's "Ex-Girl to Next Girl" around it. Thirteen years later Kanye West lifted a different track from the same six songs.
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Jun 24, 2026
A Canadian walked into a Harlem classroom and asked kids to write an album
What I find fascinating about Galt MacDermot is his willingness to walk into environments that had nothing to do with where he came from and make something real inside them.
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Jun 22, 2026
Minnie Riperton was a legend long before her daughter was
Minnie Riperton was working as a secretary at Chess Records in Chicago when Charles Stepney heard her voice and pulled her into the studio.
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Jun 21, 2026
Cream's biggest blues song was written by a Stax soul singer
I found this at Dick's record store in Santa Fe. When I picked it up he looked at me and said do you know who wrote Born Under A Bad Sign? I didn't know it was William Bell.
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Jun 19, 2026
Someone in Tucson made this gospel record, and there's almost no trace of them
New Joy. Gospel funk soul. Lighthouse Records. Tucson, Arizona. 1987. A Black church band that booked studio time, wrote their own songs, pressed their own vinyl, and put it into the world on their own terms.
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Jun 17, 2026
Coltrane believed in him before anyone else did
In 1961 John Coltrane said this about his pianist: "He holds down the harmonies and that allows me to forget them. He's the one who gives me wings and lets me take off from the ground."
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Jun 16, 2026
His day job was corporate law. His night job was recording Pharoah Sanders.
I pulled this record because of the name. Kings of Mali. Chico Freeman on India Navigation. 1977. Four tracks, all originals, all dedicated to the ancient kingdom of Mali.
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Jun 13, 2026
Crashed cars, one pool, one summer in Ibiza: New Order's first No. 1
In April 1988 New Order flew to Ibiza to record. They chose Mediterranean Studios over Peter Gabriel's brand new Real World Studios in Bath. The reason had nothing to do with sound quality.
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Jun 6, 2026
Miles Davis sent his band to study Ahmad Jamal. We did the same.
Miles Davis told his pianist Red Garland to sound more like Ahmad Jamal, and sent his entire rhythm section to sit in a Chicago club and study how the trio used space and silence.
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