Robo-Ukulele

Robots that play your instrument for you! Here you will find a Lego robot that plays reggae on a Ukulele. http://community.middlebury.edu/~jlagman/mike_and_jarvis.htm

Marian McPartland

Here is an interview heard today on NPR's Morning Edition with Marian McPartland, host of Piano Jazz. She is 87 years old and going strong. The page contains links about her show and other interviews.

Dr. Gene Scott

Before the onscreen tv guide, I would channel surf every available station and stop at almost anything musical. One day, I happened upon a rockin blues band, complete with sax and a Hammond B3. They weren't the greatest but they were authentic characters right out of New Orleans. At the end of the song, the camera moves to this bearded, cigar chomping televangelist, standing in front of a black board with circles and arrows around Satan and bible quotes. This guy was unbelievable. Dr. Gene Scott died yesterday at age 75. Hear about him on NPR here.

Ray Charles

Watched the movie "Ray" last night. (Thanks for the B Day gift Darwin). Ever since I can remember, I have always liked Ray Charles' music. He could take any song and make it his own. I never knew or thought much about his personal life and the movie fills in that gap (up to about 1964). I'm still sorting out what I think of his attitude but the music just rocked. Ray did the singing and playing for the sound track himself and Jamie Fox just nailed the performances. His actions and speech put Ray Charles on the screen. Every character, costume, prop and set in this movie is authentic. The cars are outrageous. The musicians are real (even Jamie plays the piano). There is a 3 dimensional texture to every face. Even the extras are great on the dvd. There are no interviews of the actors explaining the plot of the movie that you just watched, just shorts of Jamie and Ray working together, deleted scenes and extended music cuts. I saw Ray Charles once at the San Mateo County Fair about 12 years ago and that was as good a show as any in this movie. Most excellent and highly recommended.

Worley's Blog

Good news everyone. John Worley has started his own blog! http://worleysworl.blogspot.com
He wants to talk about running bands and keep us up to date on his gigs but I hope it degenerates to his Boulderdash style of writing.

Anyway, his band is at the old Hamasushi house, now known as BoAs in the Club Elite in Cupertino this Saturday. Wayne Wallace, Murray Low and more. Well worth the drive (and the cover.)

Also going to see Anton Schwartz and Taylor Eigsti play a duo concert on Friday. I can't see how that will be bad. More on that later.

Music Instruction

Michael and Christine have found a Steel Drum class at Chabot College that sounds really interesting. They supply the drums. MUSP 19 - Steel Drum Band

Anton Schwartz has some one time workshops coming up at the JazzSchool in Berkeley that include:
- Designing & Manufacturing a CD
- CDs and the Jazz Media - Marketing & Radio Airplay
- Altered Dominant and Dominant 13-flat-9 Chords - The How, When & Why of Using Them

We just missed the " How to be your own record label" yesterday.

Mardi Gras party

I'm still laughing from last night's birthday/mardi gras/white elephant party. Some of you left your gifts here! I hope you at least took some gumbo. You would think I would be used to these parties by now and not get so embarrassed and everything was going fine until I fired up the Exotic Tiki with Hooter Horn video on our home theater that Andy stole and locked down. Nice one Andy. I ran off to make coffee and play bass like the coward I am.

Thanks to Susan for the face painting. She seemed to have as much fun as the paintees. I will post a picture of the faces when I can get them from the Worleys.

Thanks to everyone for coming. Cool guitar Michael. Happy birthday Lori and thanks for the gumbo. More later.

Michael Lipskin interview

I heard a great interview with stride pianist Michael Lipskin this morning on KQED's Forum. He talked about Eubie Blake, James P. Johnson and Fats Waller. It should be in the archives shortly. http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R502111000.

Joey DeFrancesco and James Moody will perform a tribute to Jimmy Smith at Yoshi' next Wednesday through Sunday, February 16-20. http://yoshis.com

Friend and pianist Sue Crossman is at Garden City, San Jose tonight, Friday February 11 toughing it out with a broken foot. http://www.gardencity-casino.com/home.htm

Ed Kelly and Jimmy Smith

A fond farewell and thank you for all the music to Ed Kelly and Jimmy Smith. Here is a picture I took of Ed Kelly at a JazzNow party. Click on the picture for the Oakland Tribune article.



Jimmy Smith played a lot of notes in his life. He played an awful lot of notes just that one night when we saw him in the Plush Room at the Fairmont in SF. Hear about him at NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4492790

Thanks again guys.

Hey, look at me, I'm Blogging!

I will be organizing my thoughts here, if I ever have more than one at a time. Maybe I can talk about upcoming bay area jazz events or recent shows I've seen. Maybe this will be the beginning of my gigs from hell web site although there are already several out there. Maybe just jazz humor in general. I'll start with this.

Ever see the Ten Comandments for Arrangers? Check it out at http://www.jazzoasis.com/Images/Ten%20Commandments%20for%20Arrangers.PDF

You can make comments here as often as you like. Maybe you would like your own blog. It seems to be free. Ask me how.

Bookmark this page and help me test out this forum.

later