TALK ABOUT OVERDUE

It's only now that they're setting up a real Jazz Museum in Harlem, possibly next to the Apollo theater, where it bloody well belongs.

The museum will feature performances, storytelling and interactive exhibits from modern players and scholars, and should be a boon to the local community as well as filling a cultural gap that's been around forever.

Before this, if you wanted to make a New York jazz pilgrimage of any kind, what was there? Pay thirty bucks to see some hit-or-miss flashyfingered hotshot at the Village Vanguard or Birdland? Really, there was very little. In New Orleans, by comparison, virtually the entire French Quarter has become a jazz-age study hall, and places like Pete Fountain's, Tipitina's and Preservation Hall stand as places where you can see, learn and absorb what was happening fifty or seventy-five or a hundred years ago while still seeing top-notch contemporary stuff.

New York hasn't had a consistent place where the best of then and the best of now could be shown in proper contrast, and hopefully this place will fill that void.

[Two WSJ articles cited in one week does not constitute a trend, okay?]