About Your Host

Michael P. Zirpolo is a practicing lawyer in Canton, Ohio. He has written numerous articles and given many lectures in the last twenty-five years on jazz musicians from the swing era, including Duke Ellington, (and his sidemen Sonny Greer and Russell Procope), Artie Shaw, Roy Eldridge, Tommy Dorsey, and Gene Krupa, and Bunny Berigan. His critically acclaimed biography of Berigan, “Mr. Trumpet…the Trials, Tribulations and Triumph of Bunny Berigan,” was published in 2011. In 2013 he co-produced the Hep CD Bunny Berigan…Swingin’ and Jumpin’, which contains live recordings of Berigan from 1937-1939. He has written criticisms of reissues of classic jazz recordings, and of books about the music and musicians of the swing era. He has also written about the development of swing and the contributions to that development made by Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke. He has written profiles of bandleader Vince Giordano, whose band the Nighthawks, are featured on the soundtrack of the HBO series “Boardwalk Empire,” and in many Woody Allen movies; jazz guru Phil Schaap; classic jazz blogger Michael Steinman; and jazz historian and musician Loren Schoenberg, which delves into Schoenberg’s association with the legendary Benny Goodman.His article about Billy Strayhorn’s early years as Duke Ellington’s musical associate has been widely praised.He has written pieces about the Erskine Hawkins band, and the musical partnership between Claude Thornhill and Gil Evans. He is a longtime collector of jazz recordings from the 1920s to the 1980s, and has developed considerable skill in the art of digitally remastering vintage recordings. He is frequently consulted by writers, scholars and collectors of vintage jazz recordings from around the globe with questions about the music, recordings, and musicians of the swing era, and has appeared on radio and television discussing classic jazz. In addition to jazz and American popular song, he is a devotee of long-form music.

He can be contacted at:mzirpolo@neo.rr.com