Jazz & Blues Lounge

I have continued to poke arond on YouTube to see if I could find any more footage of Charlie “Bird” Parker.  It turns out that the stuff I posted yesterday is not exactly the ONLY existing footage of him performing live, at least from what I can see.  However, the one clip that struck me was the one you can see HERE.
The clip is from the Ken Burns’ documentary “Jazz” which you can buy in full at whatever PBS store is near you or on the PBS website.  It was a powerful and fascinating documentary, if a bit flawed.
It’s just …read more

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I can’t get enough of YouTube.  I shouldn’t write about them so much, I suppose and you can just as easily spend half your day doing searches there like I have been doing.  Still, I am trying to save you some time and effort by pointing you to the great jazz performances.
Not long ago I wrote about the man who called himself the “inventor of jazz” Jelly Roll Morton.  Well, there isn’t any video of him that I can find, but you can still listen to his music at YouTube.  Click right HERE and hear one of his classic compositions, …read more

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I have completely fallen in love with the stuff on YouTube.  Well, that is to say, I was already wasting for too much time hanging around looking at stuff on YouTube, but now that I found some very cool concert footage of some of the artists I talk about here, I can’t stop looking.  You knew it was only a matter of time before I looked up some Miles Davis stuff.
Well, I found it.  What was even more cool was the sheer amount of classic 1950s and 60s Miles Davis footage I was able to find.  For my money, this …read more

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There are times it is just hard to come in here and write.  I love writing this blog and I love writing about jazz, but after you  have spent the entire afternoon pushing around a vacuum cleaner and then a broom and then a mop and you have cleaned everything including a toilet…well… There are just times when the last thing on your mind is writing about jazz or blues.  I may be wanting to sing the blues as my shoulders scream at me from all of the work, but I don’t really have the blues on my mind.
Still, I hate …read more

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Since I just wrote about Louis Armstrong, I found this rather amusing.  Now, I mentioned how Louis was vital to jazz, the advancement of jazz and was a major player in early jazz.  Of course, he is also probably best known for his song “What a Wonderful World.”  Well, I came across this little number on YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKoiMiOQvMc
I figured I would share.
You see, just because he is known for that song, doesn’t meant it’s a bad song.  I argue, the reason it’s a song people bring up again and again and again is because, well, it’s just a damn good …read more

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