Jazz Notes features stories about New England jazz makers, events and places, as well as articles that have appeared in the Quarter Notes newsletter.

• New England Jazz Hall of Fame contributing photographer Burt Goldblatt dies of congestive heart failure at 81.
• NEJA board member and Milford native Leo Curran signed on with the Stan Kenton Orchestra as band boy in 1948 and toured with the band for the next ten years. Find out about Leo's adventures in jazz.
• They call her “Boston’s First Lady of Song,” and for good reason, but “jazz singer” only tells part of the story. Take a peek inside Mae Arnette’s Musical Scrapbook for the rest of it.
• He wrote “Exactly Like You,” “A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening,” “I’m in the Mood for Love,” and many more staples of the jazz canon. Richard Vacca profiles songwriter Jimmy McHugh.
• NEJA remembers Boston piano standout Mabel Robinson Simms.
• An appreciation of Boston drummer Bill “Baggy” Grant by Brent Banulis.
• Gone but not forgotten. A look back at the friends of New England jazz who died in 2004.
• For over 40 years, he played trombone with some of the best big bands of the era—Artie Shaw, Sam Donahue, Claude Thornhill, Tommy Dorsey, Herb Pomeroy. “Tak” Takvorian recounts the high points of his long career.
• Wynton Marsalis meets the Bostonians at a jam session at the Biarritz Lounge.
• Ed Bride remembers Stephanie Barber of the Music Inn in Lenox.
• Three who mattered: Vinny Haynes, Fr. Norman O’Connor, and Eric Nisenson weren’t musicians but left a big imprint on local jazz.
• Dan Morgenstern from the Institute of Jazz Studies talks about New England jazz.
• In the 1970s and 1980s, Dan Kochakian edited Whiskey, Women, and..., a labor-of-love magazine documenting jazz, blues, and R&B with interviews, photos and original articles. Some of these articles have been made available to NEJA (sorry, no photos) and as we get them scanned, we’ll present them here. First up are three articles from the “Boston issue” of December 1985: George Moonoogian’s overview of the Boston scene, Boston Bandstand, and interviews with the multi-talented Preston Sandiford and pianist/arranger Charlie Cox.

• Ed Bride explains how it all came together at the first Pittsfield CityJazz Festival in October 2005.
• Now we’re 15 as NEJA inducts five Hall of Fame members in April 2004.
• The college bands were Wailin’ in Williamstown at the 2004 Intercollegiate Jazz Festival.
• NEJA’s message at the IAJE conference in 2004: “All great jazz is local.”
• The NEJA 2003 conference report from Hartford.
• Kendrick Oliver and the New Life Orchestra help Bryant College celebrate Black History Month 2003 in style.
• We spotted many New Englanders at IAJE 2003 in Toronto.

• Roanna Forman visits a Saturday afternoon jazz institution, the Club Caravan in Revere, Mass.
• Al Natale and Richard Vacca recount the origins of the legendary Jazz Workshop in Boston.