James Moody was a jazz saxophonist and flutist from Newark, New Jersey, celebrated for his virtuosity, his versatility and his onstage ebullience. This is a gentle solo with strings, from Eastwood After Hours, recorded at Carnegie Hall in NYC on October 17, 1996.
Andre Previn is a pianist, composer, conductor and arranger masterfully standing astride two musical genres … both classical music and jazz. Many fans don’t realize that he had one foot in jazz before his other became firmly planted as a classical musician. Here we sample a touch of his conducting, arranging and piano artistry with “Rhapsody In Blue” before stepping back a few years into a swinging performance of Lerner and Loewe’s “Get Me To The Church On Time.”
Mundell Lowe and Louis Stewart perform Satin Doll together with a string quartet. It’s a unique treatment of the Ellington / Strayhorn classic, with the tender touch of one of jazz’s guitar icons.
Wind Song is a rhythmic, medium-up tempo tune featuring Mundell Lowe and Louis Stewart on guitars, Jim Doherty piano, Dave Gausden bass, Peter Ainscough on drums, augmented by a classical string quartet just to keep things interesting.
Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor Baron Thielemans, known professionally as Toots Thielemans, was a Belgian-American jazz musician. He was known for his harmonica playing, as well as his guitar, whistling skills, and composing. Possibly his most important contribution was in championing the ‘humble’ harmonica and making it into a legitimate voice in jazz. His own composition, “Bluesette”, which Toots typically performs on harmonica or while playing the guitar and whistling in unison, has now become a jazz standard. He said, “If there’s a piece of music that describes me, it’s that song.” This rendition was recorded in Rotterdam, Netherlands in 2009.
In Jazzcast #003 I pointed out the symbiotic relationship between jazz and other forms of music. On Lush Life, the second in a trilogy of 1980s jazz albums with Linda Ronstadt and Nelson Riddle, Linda temporarily abandons her pop/rock stardom in favor of more traditional fare. Her excellence in any genre becomes immediately apparent from the first few bars, with the album going Triple Platinum registering sales of over 3 million copies in the United States alone.
The Beegie Adair Trio provides a gentle swinging version of the jazz classic “Autumn Leaves,” written by Joseph Kosma (English lyric by Johnny Mercer), live at the Nashville Jazz Workshop in Nashville, Tennessee. Listen for the way bassist Roger Spencer throws a few bars of “Suicide Is Painless” from M*A*S*H* into his solo!
Beegie is a huge but lesser known talent who never fully received the recognition she deserves. She has been playing piano since the age of five … originally from Kentucky, she now lives in Nashville. Her rendition of “Pete Kelly’s Blues” (one of my favorites) is the best I’ve heard outside of the movie soundtrack.
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