Girls, put your records on…

This Saturday, April 18th, 2009, is Record Store Day and wax dealers everywhere are celebrating with live in stores and giveaways. If there’s a record store near you, you’re invited to the celebration! Visit the Record Store Day website HERE to see what’s going on this Saturday near you!

Record Store Day was founded in 2007 as a celebration of the unique culture surrounding over 700 independently owned record stores in the USA, and hundreds of similar stores internationally.

This is the one day that all of the independently owned record stores come together with artists to celebrate the art of music. Special vinyl and CD releases and various promotional products are made exclusively for the day and hundreds of artists in the United States and in various countries across the globe make special appearances and performances. Festivities include performances, cook-outs, body painting, meet & greets with artists, parades, djs spinning records and on and on. Metallica officially kicked off Record Store Day at Rasputin Music in San Francisco on April 19, 2008 and Record Store Day is now celebrated the third Saturday every April.

This Saturday, give your local record store some love by buying a record or two! And since it’s Jazz Appreciation Month, why not a jazz album?

I recommend:

The LP reissue of Rubaiyat Of Dorothy Ashby by Dorothy Ashby

Incredible work from amazing jazz harpist, Dorothy Ashby. This album is a brilliant set of funky and spiritual tunes, set to full back. It is easily one of Ashby’s greatest.

Listen to a track off that album below. Along with her beautiful harping, we experience Ashby’s warm voice on this track as well.

After the jump, we put you on to a Record Store Day 45 Record Giveaway by one of our favorite labels, Daptone Records (of Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings fame), at a dig near you!

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New to me but perhaps not to you, Little Dragon hails from Gothenburg, Sweden and has had my ear listening since I was introduced to their song “Constant Surprises”. Vocalist Yukimi Nagano’s smooth soulful stylings are backed by her close high school friends Erik Bodin (drums), Fredrick Källgren (bass) and HÃ¥kan Wirenstrand (keyboards). Their electro-pop-jazz-soul-sounds are surely an aural treat and you won’t be disappointed.

For the summer 2008 collection Mama takes you back to the Roaring 20’s when smoke-filled speakeasys and jazz clubs were the place to get a cocktail during Prohibition.  A time when flappers were chopping their hair into bobs and hiking their skirts up and showing their ankles – so scandalous! Mama celebrates this exciting period and gives it a contemporary twist.  The Mama’s Joint Look Book is laid out like a silent film and was shot at Milk Bar in San Francisco to give it that “secret spot� feel. You can view the Look Book here.  Sit back, relax and turn the listen to all that jazz.  

More pics and credits after the jump . . .

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Jazz is love — in my book. It’s hard to go a day without indulging myself in the intense sounds of Miles Davis and sultry lyrics of Billie Holiday . So this month I’m excited to have an excuse to celebrate one of my greatest inspirations.

Jazz Appreciation Month , created to be observed every April, is a celebration that encourages people to attend jazz concerts, listen to jazz recordings, support jazz programs, and simply enjoy the music’s verve, pulse, and power.

In 1942, Viola Smith, a veteran drummer with 17 years of professional paradiddles under her belt, sent shock waves through the readership of Down Beat by extolling the existence of "hep girls," female jazz musicians "who could sit in any jam session and hold their own." A firestorm of letters-to-the-editor ensued, passionately debating the topic: Can women play jazz ?

Ladies: Pour yourselves a glass of wine or brew a cup of tea, sit back, relax (you deserve it!) and celebrate Women in Jazz.

Don’t know where to start? How about HERE!

Info: PBS.org & Images: smithsonianjazz.org