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Howard Mandel

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Howard Mandel’s Biography

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I'm a veteran freelance writer specializing in music -- author of Future Jazz and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz, senior editor of the Billboard Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues, past staff at DownBeat, RhythmMusic, Ear magazines, columnist in The Wire (UK), Jazz Life and Swing Journal (Japan), Rytmi (Finland) and Bravo! (Brazil). I blog at www.ArtsJournal.com. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association (www.jjanews.org) and taught for 27 years at New York University's …

Howard Mandel’s Journalist Portfolio

Hyde Park Jazz Festival, summer's last dance

Hyde Park Jazz Festival, summer's last dance

A creatively curated, free-of-charge two-day fair highlights Chicago's diversity of talent and discerning fan…

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War for laughs: Marx Brothers, Strangelove, Chaplin, Lehrer

War for laughs: Marx Brothers, Strangelove, Chaplin, Lehrer

(Inspired by presidential sabre-rattling): My father taught me at age 8 to trust the Marx Brothers' for t…

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Articles

‘Harmonica Man’ Billy Branch Proves the Blues is Truly Relevant

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By Howard Mandel Verified
| DOWN BEAT Verified
By Howard Mandel   I  Aug. 11, 2026 On The Blues Is My Biography, Branch employs far-reaching roots to advance the blues process of observation, reportage, assertion, transcendence. (Photo: ) Has the blues world changed very much — or not at all — in the 100-some years since the music was first recorded?
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Sonny Rollins, colossus of the saxophone, has died at 95

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By Howard Mandel Verified
| KNKX-FM (Tacoma, WA) Verified
The way some musicians play, you think they'll never die. Theodore "Sonny" Rollins was such a man: A saxophonist revered for his huge tone and seemingly inexhaustible improvisations. Rollins died Monday afternoon at his Woodstock, N.Y. home at the age of 95. Rollins was a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, a recipient of a Kennedy Center honor and a recipient of the National Medal of the Arts. And he was the very incarnation of a modern jazz musician. His art was his life.
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Sonny Rollins Passes Away at 95

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By Howard Mandel Verified
| DOWN BEAT Verified
By Howard Mandel   I  May. 26, 2026 Onstage, Rollins would move about restlessly, thrusting his tenor sax in the air as he blew. (Photo: Michael Jackson) Sonny Rollins, the iconic saxophonist, composer and improviser whose career stretched from the origins of bebop to 21st century free melodicism — encompassing calypsos, reshaping the blues, touching on rock and relentlessly reinterpreting the American songbook — died Monday, May 25, at his home near Woodstock, New York.
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Interview

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What was your first job as a journalist?

Copy clerk, Chicago Daily News

Have you ever used a typewriter?

Oh yeah.

How is social media changing news?

It's much hard to sell articles, fewer publications and no ability to make multiple sales in disparate markets.