On this date in 2007, I launched JazzWax on a dare. Friend and critic Terry Teachout had been over my apartment weeks earlier to listen to jazz and insisted I start a blog. I protested that I was too busy, but Terry brushed me off, explaining that no one was busier than he was and that he blogged. "What's more," he said, "you know too much about jazz."
So I took Terry up on his challenge. I went to Register.com and after fooling around with names for the blog, I landed on JazzWax.com, which was available. "Jazz," for obvious reasons, and "wax," since it was both a Billboard euphemism for records and a verb meaning to expound upon.
Nearly 4.3 million page-views later and 3,000 posts along with two Jazz Journalist Association "blog of the year" awards, JazzWax remains a six-day-a-week affair, attracting readers from countries on every continent. Over time, I have developed close friendships with many people I have never met and regularly corresponded with jazz fans in far-flung places, from Rio and Tokyo to Paris, London, Dublin, Stockholm, Copenhagen, India and Cairo, to name a handful. Over the past nine years I have conducted upward of 350 jazz-legend interviews for the site (all linked in the right-hand column) and posted about hundreds of albums. I've always envisioned JazzWax as a comfortable den where you can stop by and relax for a spell before going on with your business.
Thank you one and all for being great readers and even greater friends.
from JazzWax http://ift.tt/2aRJi1w
No comments:
Post a Comment