My son is a big fan of Break.com, one of those sites where members can post short video clips. There is some very funny stuff there, but be warned that some of it is racy. More attention has been lavished on YouTube, and that includes, I gather, a billion plus buyout by Google. Anyway, YouTube has a wealth of clips that jazz finds will find wonderful. The images are fuzzy and the audio is all over the board, but that gives them a vintage, bootleg film sort of feel.
In this one, from the Steve Allen Show (1964), the Miles Davis Quintet plays "So What?", the first cut from Kind of Blue. My personal favorite jazzman, Wayne Shorter, replaces John Coltrane on sax, and Herbie Hancock replaces my other favorite jazzman, Bill Evans, on piano.
In this one, Shorter is still playing for Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. He was musical director for that famous group, and composed many of their numbers. On trumpet is Jason's favorite jazzman, Lee Morgan. This is 1965, about the time that Shorter jumped ship to join the aforementioned Miles Davis group. Unfortunately, only a little later Davis sailed that ship over the falls, and Shorter was on board when it crashed. Needless to say, I am no fan of the fusion period that would waste a couple decades of their tremendous talent.
ps. I have a long standing affection for Steve Allen. I saw him on TV a lot when I was a child. I listened to his public radio show on Jazz when I was in graduate school. I still remember him describing how vibraphone players sound when they play the piano, with one finger of each hand like some people type. He also had a show on public TV called "Meeting of Minds" where actors would present different persons from very different periods and circumstances, and he would engage them in conversation. On one show he hosted Oliver Cromwell and Leonardo Da Vinci. Cromwell was the more difficult of the two.
Recent Comments