A Holiday Gift That Gives Back: Jazz Foundation’s ‘All Blues’ Collection Returns

From The Harlem Times Culture Desk.

Shopping for the music lover on your list? The Jazz Foundation of America (JFA) has brought back ALL BLUES, a collection of blues recordings offered as a double vinyl album, a CD and a T-shirt, just in time for the holidays.

According to the foundation, the tracks were gathered over a 32-year period by Hank O’Neal, founder of the jazz label Chiaroscuro Records and a JFA board member. The collection is offered in partnership with 32 Bar Blues, a men’s clothing and accessory company, which donates 100% of the proceeds from every T-shirt, vinyl album and CD sold, the foundation says.

The lineup reads like a jazz history lesson: Mary Lou Williams, Earl Hines, the Clark Terry Spacemen, the Junior Mance Trio, Jay McShann and Ralph Sutton, the Lee Konitz Nonet, Ruby Braff and Ellis Larkins, and more.

In the foundation’s announcement, JFA Executive Director Joe Petrucelli said: “The blues – in its form, vocabulary, and spirit – is an intrinsic, foundational element of jazz. As the music has developed across the past century-plus, we have encountered manifestations of these roots in every imaginable style, from Dixieland to the avant-garde.”

The foundation says purchases help it present free, accessible public concerts and provide work for jazz, blues and roots musicians across the country. JFA also films its free concerts, including a recent set by Robert Kimbrough, Sr. Blues Connection at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem.

Featured photo: Mary Lou Williams, between 1938 and 1948. Photo: William P. Gottlieb, Public domain (Library of Congress), via Wikimedia Commons.