Now that April’s Jazz Appreciation Month is over, Ivy Style would like to declare the merry month of May Squaresville Appreciation Month.

Throughout the month Ivy Style will cater to philistines, dullards and middlebrows with series of posts devoted to repressed WASPs, conservative politicians, the accounting and insurance industries, Internet trads, and the buttoned-down mind of Bob Newhart. (Continue)

We close our tribute to Jazz Appreciation Month with the short clip above, in which Jack Lemmon demonstrates his impressive piano chops at Cafe Carlyle with Bobby Short. Not one sour note.

Lemmon was born to play the sack-suited, dyspeptic advertising man of the Atomic Age. We’ve previously done posts on his films “Good Neighbor Sam,” “Bell, Book And Candle,” and “The Days Of Wine And Roses.” And from the early days of Ivy Style, check out our collection of LIFE Magazine shots, “When LIFE Gives You Lemmons.”

Since some of you may find the above clip aurally offensive, we’ve provided some photos to look at while you protect your delicate eardrums. — CC

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On our recent post in honor of Jazz Appreciation Month, someone left a comment saying he was at college in the ’50s and that jazz was only for beatniks. Sure beatniks dug jazz, but so did the guys above, and they’re goatee and sandal-free.

The photo is from the 1960 yearbook of Lehigh University, and the album the students are listening to is this:

Of course some would say Brubeck ain’t jazz, but that’s another story.

You can see the rest of the yearbook here. I scoured the pages hoping to see a dapper young Bruce Boyer, but no luck. — CC

April is Jazz Appreciation Month. If you’d forgotten, here’s an easy way to remember.

In its honor, here’s a gallery of album covers from the Ivy heyday, when jazz was king of the campus. — CC (Continue)

Last night on the quiz show “Jeopardy!” there was a jazz category. The contestants left it for last and then failed to answer a single question. America’s classical music, indeed.

On New Year’s Eve I made a resolution to work on my jazz piano chops. It’s the only resolution I’ve kept through March. My girlfriend made the same resolution, so I’ve been rewatching Ken Burns’ documentary with her. Check it out if you haven’t seen it.

Now I’m not suggesting you need to be like me and Bruce, Richard, Charlie and Alan and get hep to the jive. But really, why be an ickaroo any longer? — CC

Last night I was sitting around with the girlfriend pulling up videos on YouTube and trying to explain the difference between swing, jump blues and rockabilly. I went looking for a band I knew from San Francisco and stumbled across a blast from my past: Two recently uploaded clips about an independent movie called “Swing” I worked on over a decade ago.

It was my 15 minutes of Hollywood fame, minus the fame. (Continue)