Editor’s note: Sonny Rollins, the last of the pioneering bebop giants and a seminal figure in modern jazz throughout the second half of the 20th century, has entered his ninth decade still blowing full force.

Watching the LP section at the huge Tower Records on Sunset shrink by the week, never did I imagine that in 2008 the LP would be back and Tower would be gone. —Michael Fremer, 1/15/08

August 22, 1983. A packed concert at the newly constructed BC Place stadium in Vancouver, British Columbia. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel are halfway through a set on the last leg of their North American tour, billed as “A Summer Night with Simon and Garfunkel.

Once inside, you come upon the packing department, where on the day of my visit, I found workers placing George Harrison's Living In The Material World LPs into jackets. The finished package is then shrinkwrapped and boxed for worldwide shipment.

MG: Jumping back into some old groups that you recorded, Brazil 66....

BB: I really loved that time. That was for Herb Alpert, who was the producer. I prefer Brazil 66, the first album, over Equinox, sonically, because that was another case where it was done on four-track, tube all the way. Also the fact that it was all new to us and it was a big sound, I really liked it.

MG: Was that done at Gold Star Studios?

Our Man in New Orleans Roger Hahn concludes his report from the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival 2009 and meditates on its future. You'll think you went!-ed.

New marketing trends had begun to establish an exploitable connection between highly educated consumers with gobs of disposable income and their fascination for the aura of “authenticity” naturally connected to the “roots” music world.

Corporate leaders began to understand this, too. In 1996, one of the world’s largest software vendors, Computer Associates, began holding its annual trade show in New Orleans and by 1998, had specifically connected attendance at the trade show with a Jazz Fest hospitality tent on festival grounds, spawning an unlikely influx of logo-bearing, polo-shirted Computer Associates employees.