X-Nico

8 unusual facts about Down Beat


Boston Modern Orchestra Project

The response to the label was immediate and celebratory; its five inaugural releases appeared on the "Best of 2008" lists of The New York Times, The Boston Globe, National Public Radio, Time Out New York, Down Beat magazine, and American Record Guide, among others.

Dave Schildkraut

Schildkraut's playing was fluid and brilliant in pure bebop style: so much so that, during a blindfold test for Down Beat, Charles Mingus mistakenly identified him as Charlie Parker.

Folsom High School

Down Beat has also top-ranked the Folsom High Jazz Choir nationally for the past 16 consecutive years.

Down Beat Magazine has ranked Folsom High School’s Jazz Band as the number one High School Big Band in the nation,an honor Folsom High has earned eight times since 1993.

Jimmy Cheatham

Their album Luv in the Afternoon was voted blues album of the year in a 1991 critics poll in Down Beat magazine.

Marshall Stearns

Stearns taught English at several U.S. colleges, and during this time wrote often about jazz music for magazines such as Variety, Saturday Review, Down Beat, Record Changer, Esquire, Harper's, Life, and Musical America.

Rudy Pompilli

Around this time, he was named Sax Player of the Year by Down Beat magazine.

Sonny Dallas

Down Beat listed Sonny Dallas as one of the top ten greatest jazz bassists.


A. B. Spellman

In 1959, Spellman began a career as a music critic for a number of magazines including Metronome and Down Beat, for which he wrote reviews of jazz music and musicians.

Dave Stryker

Gary Giddins in the Village Voice calls him “one of the most distinctive guitarists to come along in recent years.” He was recently voted one of the Top Guitarists in the 2013 Critics and Readers Poll of Down Beat, and previously was elected a Rising Star in the 2004-2007 Downbeat Critics Poll.

Edmond Hall

On the opposite side there was Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Al McKibbon, Ray Abrams, Don Elliott - The record received a top rating of 5 stars in Down Beat.

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jerome Kern Songbook

Awarded four and a half stars by Down Beat Magazine in 1963, this album contains a fine selection of Jazz standards, with All the Things You Are, (named by Tony Bennett as his favourite song), a wistful Oscar winning The Way You Look Tonight, which contrasts beautifully with Sinatra's more famous swinging version from his 1964 album Sinatra Sings...Academy Award Winners, and A Fine Romance from Astaire and Roger's Swing Time.

Jackie Paris

He won many jazz polls and awards, including those of Down Beat, Playboy, Swing Journal, and Metronome.

Jan Persson

Persson has supplied photos to Down Beat since 1962, Jazz Special (DK), Musica Jazz (IT), Melody Maker (UK) and Danish newspapers Politiken, Berlingske Tidende and Ekstra Bladet.

Joe Harriott

Abstract received a five star review from Harvey Pekar in Down Beat, the first such honour for a British Jazz record.

New Jazz Conceptions

Although a critical success that gained positive reviews in Down Beat and Metronome magazines, New Jazz Conceptions was initially a financial failure, selling only 800 copies the first year.

Ozan Musluoğlu

The musicians in this album are: Jeremy Pelt, voted rising star on the trumpet 5 years in a row by Down Beat Magazine; JD Allen on saxophone, Danny Grissett on piano and Darrell Green on drums.

Sheets of sound

Sheets of sound was a term coined in 1958 by Down Beat magazine jazz critic Ira Gitler to describe the new, unique improvisational style of John Coltrane.

Time Tripping

The album beat out recordings in Down Beat from heavy-weight groups at large universities such as North Texas State University's Grammy nominated One O'Clock Lab Band, the University of Miami's Concert Jazz Band, and the Eastman School of Music's Jazz Orchestra.


see also

Jazz at the College of the Pacific

Critic Nat Hentoff wrote on Down Beat magazine that the album "ranks with the Oberlin and Storyville sets as the best of Brubeck on record".