My writing credits include 30 books (fiction and non-fiction), several magazine articles, some short stories and essays, a few television screenplays (a long time ago), and a stage play (fairly recently). Additionally, there have been hundreds of record reviews and several thousand encyclopedia entries.

About half of the books are crime fiction; most of the rest are divided between jazz and popular cinema. The jazz books include biographies of Gene Krupa and Benny Goodman, and books on jazz singing and big band music.

The other non-fiction books include biographies of Burt Lancaster, Robert Mitchum and Michelle Pfeiffer, as well as studies of myth & reality in the movies, film noir, prison movies and a history of television comedy.

It is, though, jazz that is the prime topic here.

Elsewhere on this website you will find:

- interviews exploring the lives and careers of three of today's leading jazz artists, singer René Marie, pianist David Hazeltine and tenor saxophonist Donny McCaslin.

- essays on some jazz artists of the near and distant past who although gone are not forgotten by many fans. These pieces are brief assessments of the lives and careers and the artists concerned are Pete Brown, Don Byas, Ernie Caceres, Paul Gonsalves, Sonny Greer, Pete Johnson, Ike Quebec, Zutty Singleton, Tab Smith, Eddie South, Dave Tough and Cootie Williams. Following on from these are longer pieces prompted by the relatively recent deaths of distinguished figures from the world of jazz: Betty Carter and Benny Carter.

Although most of the CD reviews I have written over the years appeared in magazines, here on this website are some others. The artists appearing here are grouped alphabetically:  A - L and M - Z.

Other pages on this site include:

- links to several other interesting and useful jazz sites ... also sites dealing with other subjects that might take your fancy ...

- short stories of mine that are previously unpublished, one of them, Been Here And Gone, was inspired by blues singer Jimmy Rushing. The other, What's In A Name, has absolutely nothing to do with jazz. This is a tale of alienation and sudden, bloody death that reveals how easy it is to unwittingly cause devastating damage to those we claim to love ...

 - a gallery of drawings and paintings, mainly of jazz people ...

 

 -ooOoo-

On the next page of this site is a list of all my published books (under real and pen names), complete with ISBN numbers.

And if you like what you see here, don't forget to tell your friends.

 

Finally, an apology ...

Spammers used the email address that appeared on my previous site to such devastating effect that I am obliged to refrain from giving it here. Hence, if you want to write to me saying nice things about the site, you can't. Sorry!

 Latest update: September 2008