I realize that by using the word ‘jazz’ in the title of this post I’ve probably caused at least half of my little audience to quickly move onto another blog (or to compulsively check their email) rather than explore today’s post. But hear me out; as a jazz musician myself
Here’s a very nice combo/medley of the Nat Cole trio in 1946 performing a two songs, ‘It’s Better To Be By Yourself’ and ‘Solid Potato Salad’. As in yesterday’s clip the outstanding guitarist is Oscar Moore but this time the bassist is Johnny Miller. At 1:20 there are some excellent
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYsseoG5XV8 Apropos of yesterday’s Nat Cole/Chico Marx post, here’s a terrific demonstration of Cole’s artistry at a young age. It’s a ‘soundie’ (made for jukebox consumption) of ‘Come To Baby, Do’, featuring his original trio which included Wesley Prince on bass and the criminally underrated guitarist Oscar Moore. (I like
Here’s a 1977 commercial for Pioneer home stereo components that appropriates Sonny Rollins’ story of dropping out of the music business in 1959 for two years in order to take his playing to another level, which he did by practicing at night on the Williamsburg Bridge. It’s a wonderfully evocative
In yesterdays post I discussed Buddy Rich’s musical analphabeta (i.e. he couldn’t read music). Today, thanks to some algorithm that I don’t really want to know about, the above video was waiting for me cheerfully in my Youtube queue. It’s a very funny five or so minutes from a 1974
Here’s a ‘drum-off’ between the legendary Buddy Rich and Ed Shaughnessy, the drummer for the Tonight Show band for two decades. The big band arrangement that kicks things off belongs to a genre of music I always think of as ‘heart-attack jazz’, a very specific over-wrought big band mayhem sound
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SOpqyg5fpUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkOpHJ_PgDk In yesterday’s post I mentioned how the members of the ‘Tonight Show’ band (aka ‘Doc Severinsen and the NBC Orchestra’) lent their own comedic talents to the show. One of the strangest examples is that of trombone player Ernie Tack. The show would occasionally do a ‘Stump The Band’
To those of us who remember the Johnny Carson incarnation of ‘The Tonight Show’, the band (or the ‘NBC Orchestra’ as they were formally known) looms as an important piece of the magical synthesis of talents that produced the greatest talk show in TV history. (If you haven’t delved into
It wasn’t easy to become a member of the premium-level all-girl 1920s orchestra ‘The Ingenues’. As you’ll see, you not only had to be a woman who’d mastered one of many instruments that, for various reasons, were not necessarily associated with female players (saxes, trombones, tubas etc.) but you had
Here’s another Fats Waller short made for jukebox consumption in 1941 (see yesterday’s post for ‘Your Feets Too Big’). ‘The Joint Is Jumpin’, written by Waller, Andy Razaf and J.C.Johnson, is another of his hit novelty numbers and it’s given a rowdy treatment in this dramatization of what a Harlem