Downtown After Dark

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Downtown After Dark

Downtown After Dark is award winning journalist Russ Tarby's weekly take on the best and brightest of happenings inside and outside of Downtown Syracuse. Each week he adds best bets too.

Bio:
Central New York journalist Russ Tarby has been writing about entertainment, crime, sports and politics since the 1970s. His reviews and feature stories have appeared in newspapers such as the Village Voice, the Dallas Observer, the Auburn Citizen and the Syracuse Post-Standard.

For 12 years, he worked as music and books editor for the Syracuse New Times and while there he won several Syracuse Press Club awards including a Best Feature Story award for 'The Sweet Man,' his 1998 profile of 95-year-old jazz trombonist Spiegle Willcox.

In 2000, he was named music writer of the year for weeklies with a circulation of less than 55,000 by the international Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.

Tarby was a member of the steering committees which founded the Syracuse Area Music Awards(Sammys) and the Syracuse Walk of Fame.

He has been a member of the Jazz Appreciation Society of Syracuse's Board of Directors since 1993.

In 2007, Tarby edited "Into The Deep," a book by Dr. Andrew G. Hodges about the 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway on the island of Aruba.

Tarby now works as a free-lance writer and editor. He compiles two weekly columns, Downtown After Dark for the Syracuse City Eagle and Livin’ in Liverpool for The Review, both published by Eagle Newspapers.

He can be reached at 457-1517, or via e-mail at [email protected].

Downtown After Dark

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Rating: 2.7/5 (13 votes cast)

Sep

Ma Rainey was quite a colorful character

rtarby, Downtown After Dark

She wasn’t much to look at, but Ma Rainey sounded like a million dollars. Heavyset and satchel-mouthed, she had piercing brown eyes and a voice that could melt the coldest of hearts.
Ma Rainey was born to sing the blues.
Gertrude Malissa Nix Pridgett made her debut in this world in 1886 in Columbus, Georgia. Her family performed in minstrel shows, and she first appeared onstage in 1900. She later claimed to have discovered the blues when she heard a girl in a St. Louis tent show singing a “man-done-left-me” song.
Long about 1904 she married song-and-dance man William “Pa” Rainey and from then on was known far and wide as Ma Rainey. The couple formed an act that featured blues and popular songs...

CATEGORY: Entertainment News

TAGS: irish fest,syracuse,

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Sep

Calzones, cannollis and Cavallo!

rtarby, Downtown After Dark

The cuisine and culture of Italy will spice up downtown this weekend when Festa Italiana returns to East Washington Street in front of City Hall.
Though the calzones and cannollis are undeniably delicious, one of Festa’s tastiest treats is musician Jimmy Cavallo.

‘Rock, Rock, Rock’
The 81-year-old singer-saxophonist, Central New York’s own Godfather of Rock’n’Roll, was one of the initial inductees into the Syracuse Area Music Awards Hall of Fame in 1993.
“Yeah I’m still kickin’ at 81,” Cavallo recently told an interviewer. “It’s the music that keeps me young!”
Festa’s favorite son will perform a swingin’ set on each of the festival’s three days, at 6:30 p.m. Friday Sept. 12, at 9 p.m. Saturday Sept. 13, and at 5 p.m. Sunday Sept...

CATEGORY: General Society

TAGS: salsa,Gordon Thomas,Cavallo,Shifty’s Tavern, The Gonstermachers,Melissa Tiffany,Jace Collins,orange line

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Sep

Otis Smith deserves a Sammy

rtarby, Downtown After Dark

A deserving musician shouldn’t have to die in order to win a Syracuse Area Music Award. The sad truth is that when a person passes, that’s when we all remember the artistic contributions he or she made all those years ago.
So it is with Syracuse R&B; legend Otis Smith who died Sept. 17, 2008, at Upstate Medical Center after a long illness. His six children, 12 grandchildren and many other family members and friends said good-bye to the late singer at a funeral service Sept. 22, at the DeWitt Memorial Funeral Home.

All Night Workers
Smith’s career began when he was a teenager 50 years ago...

CATEGORY: General Society

TAGS: otis smith,

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