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The Career Of Lewis Nash

Jazz Unlimited for November 17, 2019 will be “The Career of Drummer Lewis Nash.” Born in 1958 in Phoenix, Arizona, Nash was a professional by 1976.  He moved to New York in 1981 and has become one of the most recorded drummers in jazz, even surpassing the recordings of Art Blakey and Max Roach, according to the Tom Lord Discography.  We will present about five percent of his recorded output on Jazz Unlimited.  Nash is a drummer for all styles and seasons, being equally at home in styles that range from swing to bebop, hard bop, free bop and structured abstract improvisation.  We will feature him with vocalists Vanessa Rubin, Kevin Mahogany and Karrin Allyson, pianists Oscar Peterson, Johnny O’Neal and Tamir Hendelman, big bands led by Jimmy Heath, Gerald Wilson, Slide Hampton and Joe Henderson, and jazz giants Scott Hamilton, Gene Harris, Tommy Flanagan, George Adams, McCoy Tyner, Joe Lovano and Jim Hall, among others.

Some of my images of the musicians on this show are available in the Slide Show.

Here is Lewis Nash giving a master class at the Atlantic Jazz Festival in 2010.

Dennis Owsley has broadcast a weekly jazz show for St. Louis Public Radio since April 1983. He holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and is a retired Monsanto Senior Science Fellow and college teacher. His show, Jazz Unlimited, airs every Sunday from 9:00 p.m. to midnight. The show has the largest jazz audience in St. Louis and was named Best Jazz Radio Show in St. Louis for the years 2005-2007 and 2009 by the Riverfront Times. In celebration of his 25 years on the air, January 24, 2008 was proclaimed Dennis Owsley Day" in the City of St. Louis. He is the 2010 winner of the St. Louis Public Radio Millard S. Cohen Lifetime Achievement Award. Dennis is also a noted photographer, and his exhibit, In the Moment: Photographs of Jazz Musicians, ran from September 23, 2005 to January 21, 2006 at the Sheldon Art Gallery. He is a lifetime student of jazz history and teaches short courses on the subject. Dennis is the author of the award-winning book City of Gabriels: The History of Jazz in St. Louis 1985-1973, published in 2006.