We're on a roll now; several weeks in a row! Just keep them jazz links coming....

• Jazz promoter George Wein came out of "retirement" to provide funding to keep the legendary Newport Jazz Festival alive. Now called the CareFusion Jazz Festival 55, Newport is going to have a great lineup of jazz this summer in a couple of weeks, August 7-9. To download some free samples of some of the artists appearing there, check out the NPR Music at Newport Sampler.
• I've heard a number of musicians around Rochester saying they spent the weekend in the "woodshed" or have been doing a lot of "woodshedding" recently. As Paul Klemperer explained in Woodshedding & the Jazz Tradition, "[w]oodshedding is the nuts-and-bolts part of jazz, the place where you work out the techniques that form the foundation of your improvisational ability." That explains it....
• In many ways jazz itself came out of Africa as it has such a basic foundation in the music and culture of African-Americans. Well here's some jazz out of Africa brought to you by NPR's version of "Take Five".
• 12VoltArts Jazz Practice Loops site provides practice loops for jazz musicians to use to practice their soloing.
• Now this is just weird ... former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan was a jazz musician for awhile. But somehow the "Green Man," as he was known, put aside a fairly promising career in jazz (Mingus thought he was alright) eventually to end up as one of the most powerful men in the U.S. economy. Perhaps he just didn't have the heart following his humiliation after challenging Coltrane to an onstage showdown in 1949 (via HotHouse blog).

So take five and explore. Let me know what you think in the comments ....There will be five more next week.