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Dan Levinson

The cover of the August 1998 issue of The Mississippi Rag refers to Dan Levinson as the "in-demand reedman." Indeed, during an active career that began in the 1980s, he has enjoyed working with such jazz luminaries as Dick Hyman, Mel Tormé and Wynton Marsalis. A specialist in the music of the 1920s and '30s, Dan functions as both a leader and sideman, often performing alongside such prominent musicians as Howard Alden, Joe Ascione, Dan Barrett, Jon-Erik Kellso, Randy Reinhart, Randy Sandke, and Mark Shane.

Originally from the Los Angeles area, Dan moved to New York in 1983. The following year he met veteran reedman James "Rosy" McHargue, then 82 years old, who became Dan's friend and mentor. Over the next fifteen years Rosy influenced and inspired Dan, teaching him most of what he now knows about music and life. During that period Dan also studied with world-class clarinet instructor Leon Russianoff and saxophone virtuoso Al Gallodoro.

Dan's "rags-to-riches" career began modestly enough on the streets of Paris, performing with a quartet led by American cornetist Dick Miller that featured a fifteen-year-old up-and-coming vocalist named Madeleine Peyroux. His wander lust soon took him across Europe, through seventeen countries, where he earned a living for year playing clarinet and C-melody saxophone on the street.

Following his European excursion, Dan lived in New Orleans for half a year, where he performed nightly at the prestigious Royal Sonesta Hotel on Bourbon Street and at such jazz meccas as Fritzel's, Mahogany Hall, and on the steamboat Natchez.

Since 1993 Dan has been firmly based in New York, but his busy schedule often takes him around the world. He has performed in Brazil with the Bunk Project, a band organized by Woody Allen and banjoist Eddy Davis, in Italy with the Manhattan Rhythm Kings, in Scotland with the Gully Low Jazz Band, in Germany with the Barrelhouse Jazz Band, in Paris at the Bilboquet Jazz Club, in Japan with the New York Ragtime Orchestra, and in Los Angeles at the Playboy Mansion. His countless music festival appearances include the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the Sweet and Hot Music Festival in Los Angeles, the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee, the Orange County Classic Jazz Festival, the Sedalia Ragtime Festival, the Hot Steamed Jazz Festival in Essex, Connecticut, the Edinburgh Festival and Nairn Jazz Festival in Scotland, and the Brecon Festival in Wales. From 1992-2004 Dan was a regular guest at Dick Hyman's annual Jazz in July Festival in New York. In 2004 Dan organized and was featured in a centennial tribute to bandleader Jimmy Dorsey presented at New York City's Birdland by the JVC Jazz Festival.

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16
Album Review

The Palomar Trio: The Song in Our Soul

Read "The Song in Our Soul" reviewed by Jack Bowers


On The Song in Our Soul, the members of the Palomar Trio look over their collective shoulders to a time when swing was king and musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Art Tatum, Ethel Waters, Gene Krupa, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw and many of their peers were household names. In fact, the trio was named in honor of Goodman's legendary 1935 performance at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, which is widely seen as marking the start ...

6
Album Review

The Bix Centennial All-Stars: Celebrating Bix!

Read "Celebrating Bix!" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello


Cornetist Leon Bismark “Bix" Beiderbecke, while certainly heavily influenced by Louis Armstrong, developed his own highly stylized way of playing and improvising jazz. One wonders what musical highlights might have been accomplished had he lived beyond his 28 years. Celebrating Bix!, originally released in 2003 as a single CD album, adds selections which, due to size constraints, did not make the original release, but they all certainly “make it" here as a double CD and vinyl release. What ...

28
Album Review

The Bix Centennial All Stars: Celebrating Bix!

Read "Celebrating Bix!" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Here's a new album by the Bix Centennial All Stars honoring the legacy of the renowned cornetist Bix Beiderbecke. Sort of. Actually, most of the music on Celebrating Bix! was recorded and released in March 2003, the actual centenary of Beiderbecke's birth in Davenport, Iowa. This expanded twentieth anniversary edition includes a trio of songs not released at that time owing to limited space, and has been reissued on two CDs instead of one. Having said that, ...

31
Album Review

Molly Ryan: Sweepin' the Blues Away

Read "Sweepin' the Blues Away" reviewed by Jack Bowers


New York City-based vocalist Molly Ryan makes an auspicious impression from the outset on her latest album, leading her splendid back-up quartet through the charming song, “Get Yourself a New Broom (and Sweep the Blues Away)" a light-hearted but little- known treasure written in 1938 by Ted Koehler & Harold Arlen. Ryan seems to specialize in unearthing such overlooked gems, presenting several other prototypes in an anthology that spans the years 1909 to 1941. Even to someone ...

260
Album Review

Dan Levinson and his Canary Cottage Dance Orchestra: Steppin' Around

Read "Steppin' Around" reviewed by Michael Steinman


In a jam session or reading an arrangement, the gifted reedman Dan Levinson summons up noble ghosts--Benny Goodman, Bud Freeman, Frank Trumbauer and Rosy McHargue. But he is his own man with his own ideas. In spirit, he resembles Dick Hyman, creating historically accurate but radically lively music. Although Levinson is called “traditional" by those who revel in labels, his approach to the past is energetic, with a mission to rescue otherwise obscure American music, pop and jazz. His second ...

105
Album Review

Dan Levinson and His Canary Cottage Dance Orchestra: Crinoline Days

Read "Crinoline Days" reviewed by Elliott Simon


In 1917, as Russians revolted against the Tsar and the US entered into World War I, the first jazz records, recorded right here in NYC, turned so-called legitimate music on its ear. People danced to the “new music and the national craze that would come to be known as the “Jazz Age was born. That same year, saxophonist Rudy Wiedoeft and his Frisco Jazz band wowed NYC society with their hot sophisticated sound at the Winter Garden Theatre's chic club, ...

194
Album Review

The Bix Beiderbecke Centennial All-Stars: Celebrating Bix!

Read "Celebrating Bix!" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, who considered himself a failure and died (primarily from alcohol abuse) in 1931 at age twenty-eight, would no doubt have been astonished to learn that a group of world- class musicians was assembling to record an album celebrating the hundredth anniversary of his birth. But if Bix was unable to recognize his own genius, others were--and now, seventy-two years onward, he rests comfortably in the pantheon raised to honor such legendary jazz pioneers as Louis Armstrong, King ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

The Song in Our Soul

Turtle Bay Records
2024

buy

Celebrating Bix!

Turtle Bay Records
2023

buy

Sweepin' the Blues...

Turtle Bay Records
2022

buy

Steppin' Around

Stomp Off Records
2007

buy

Crinoline Days

Stomp Off Records
2005

buy

Digga Digga Do

From: The Hot Toddies Jazz Band
By Dan Levinson

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