Hard to imagine, but the venerable Japanese jazz publication, Swing Journal, will cease publication after its July issue. The official cause being recent drastically declining ad revenues. As chance would have it---"chance is the fool's name for fate"---I have an article in that issue. But that is now a sad and dubious honor at best.
Even though I can't read Japanese, I always bought SJ for the pictures. Surely it is one of the most opulently-produced music publications in the world. It's been around since 1947, just six years less than I have(you do the math). Highly responsible for re-popularizing jazz in Japan when, post-Occupation, that country's citizens could listen to ALL musics once again after the WW II ban of any non-Japanese music was lifted.
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I'm still able to figure out how old I will be six years from now, but I never got the hang of figuring out how old I was six years ago. Every time I start working on the problem, I start thinking about what I had been listening to back then. I end up pawing through my record collection, and end up forgetting what the question was or who asked it.
For about fifteen years in the 70s and 80s I would go up to midtown to the Japanese book store Kinokuniya each month to pick up Swing Journal. I would make up a list of Japanese only LPs that I wanted and then trade for them with a gentlemen you know very well who happens to be one of the top vocals collectors in the world.
It will be missed by many.
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