Down Beat
Down Beat logo
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| Categories | Music magazine |
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| Frequency | Monthly |
| Year founded | 1934 |
| Company | Maher Publications |
| Country | United States |
| Based in | Chicago |
| Language | English |
| Website | www |
| ISSN | 0012-5768 |
Down Beat (stylized DOWN BEAT) is an American magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond", the last word indicating its expansion beyond the jazz realm which it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1934 in Chicago, Illinois. It is named after the "downbeat" in music also called "beat one" or the first beat of a musical measure.
Down Beat publishes results of annual surveys of both its readers and critics in a variety of categories. The Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame includes winners from both the readers' and critics' poll. The results of the readers' poll are published in the December issue, those of the critics' poll in the August issue.
Well-known features of Down Beat magazine include its "Reviews" section where jazz critics, using a '1-Star to 5-Star' maximum rating system, rate the latest musical recordings, vintage recordings, and books; articles on individual musicians and music forms; and its famous "Blindfold Test" column, in a which a musician listens to records by other artists, tries to guess who they are, and rates them using the 5-star maximum rating system.
In April 1979, Down Beat went to a monthly schedule for the first time since 1939.
The DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame is maintained at Universal Studios' City Jazz club in Orlando, Florida. Current membership, by year, is listed in the following table. The critics' poll was not initiated until 1961, so winners before then were all chosen by readers' polls. In 2010, the Veterans Committee Hall of Fame began electing deserving, deceased musicians of bygone eras.
An essential contribution of the critics' and readers' polls published in the August resp. December issues are the selections for "Jazz Album of the Year", listing the dozen or so most popular albums. Listed here are the top 3 albums of the selections:
2006 critics' poll:
(1) Andrew Hill: Time Lines (Blue Note)
(2) Wayne Shorter Quartet: Beyond the Sound Barrier (Verve)
(3) Sonny Rollins: Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert (Milestone)
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Wikipedia