Jonny Whiteside

Credit: Courtesy BeachLife Festival

Beverly Hills Boxing Club: Packing a Star-Powered Punch for L.A.'s Youth

Jonny Whiteside
Beverly Hills Boxing Club founder Bobby Giordano exudes a formidable aura — equal measures steely Sicilian certitude and welcoming fraternal warmth — that perfectly reflects the dual nature of his organization. Created with the twin goals of fundraising for St Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital and providing guidance to at-risk youth, BHBC represents a deep-rooted, scrappy slice of unusual Los Angeles culture....
Dick Dale; Credit: Courtesy of the artist

R.I.P. Surf Guitar Pioneer Dick Dale

Jonny Whiteside
Rock & roll titan Dick Dale has played his last chord. Dead at 81 on March 16 after 50-plus years of battling rectal cancer, Dale’s thundering approach revolutionized early '60s electric guitar style, kick-started the fledgling surf music style and made him one of the most memorable and influential stylists in the idiom’s history....
Credit: Eric Allard

Dizzy Dale Williams Blends Free Jazz and Chicago Blues

Jonny Whiteside
Chicago-born musician Dizzy Dale Williams is a natural-born paragon, a master of both deep blues and free jazz, armed with electrifying capabilities and a stunning résumé that includes fruitful stints with everyone from Sun Ra to LL Cool J. Any conversation with the longtime San Fernando Valley resident is mind-bending, lined with a singular cosmological perspective and an utter disregard for the spiritually illegitimate. Tune him in:...
Credit: Joe Santos

Randy Rhoads' Spirit Rocks This Family-Owned Winery

Jonny Whiteside
D’Argenzio Enoteca is a beautiful little spot where the restless spirit of the late, legendary Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Randy Rhoads enhances an already fabulous vibe. Lovingly curated by the ax-man’s sister, Kathy Rhoads-D’Argenzio, and her lifelong soulmate/husband, Richard D’Argenzio, it’s a complex and delicious confection of disparate aesthetics and cultural contradiction that nonetheless resoundingly succeeds....
Wah Wah Watson; Credit: Courtesy Itsuko Aono

R.I.P. Wah Wah Watson and Freddie Hart

Jonny Whiteside
Walk down any street in Los Angeles and you’re engulfed in a roiling tide of psychic history, the accrued mana of generations of big-city struggle and achievements. Life here is a perpetually kaleidoscopic course of joy and pain, exultation and tragedy, and for music fans these cycles oft swirl and eddy with particular ferocity. The past week was a real mother in that regard with two ghastly losses: fabled Motown session guitarist Melvin “Wah Wah Watson” Ragin on Wednesday, followed by old-school country star Freddie Hart early on Saturday morning....