All that Jazz

BBC Proms '21: Nubya Garcia
A hot new tenor saxophonist with a groovy new album, Source, some of which she performed here in quite a lengthy concert.

Louis Armstrong with his All Stars
A pleasant show from probably the late 60s. Besides decent jazz pieces, he did Mack the Knife, What a Wonderful World, Bare Necessities and You'll Never Walk Alone, also sharing the singing at times. They finished on When The Saints Go Marching In.

Later w/Jools Holland - Nubya Garcia
Clearly, she's big news. She picked Abdullah Ibrahim and the McCoy Tyner Trio from the archives, and played a track herself to close the show. She started on sax at 10, and has another new album coming, and played Brixton last night (or expected to).

Keith Jarrett - The Art of Improvisation
This 2005 looked at a formidable jazz pianist who had his own trio, recorded great albums, but whose career was affected when his health took a bad turn.

Jazz Voice - 2021 
From the EFG London Jazz Festival, a concert MC'd by Jumoke Fashola, whose material didn't always match her enthusiasm. Acts performing included Georgia Cecile, Ayanna Witter-Johnson, Michael Mayo, Lakecia Benjamin and Ego Ella May, whilst Guy Barker conducted the Festival Orchestra in accompaniment.

Blood Sweat & Tears - Live In Stockholm
Perhaps more jazz rock than jazz, but a pleasant change anyway, a steady set from 1973, including a cover of God Bless The Child along the way.

Chasing 'Trane
A lengthy look at John Coltrane, whose centenary will come in 2026. The sax legend was tributed by many other sax players, from the great Sonny Rollins to the less great Bill Clinton. John Densmore saw him live a few times and was moved, Carlos Santana was similarly impressed, his children and other biographers also had plenty to say in his honour.

Jazz All Stars: Cheltenham Jazz at 25
The festival returned this year to mark its 25th anniversary. This gig was hosted by YolanDa Brown, and included performances from the Guy Barker Big Band and the BBC Concert Orchestra, backing variously acts like Gregory Porter, Paloma Faith, Vanessa Haynes, Tommy Blaize, Adi Oasis, Joe Stilgoe, Georgia Cecile and Giacomo Smith. Very entertaining.

Ella Fitzgerald Sings
Presumably made sometime in the 1960s, she belts through a range of numbers ranging from Don't Rain On My Parade and Every Time We Say Goodbye, through to Mack The Knife and That Old Black Magic.

Jazz UK: Spitting Fire
An odd showcase concept, with Tina Edwards linking features on towns like Bristol and Manchester, and new lights on the scene ranging from Alabaster dePlume and Emma-Jean Thackray, to bands like Get The Blessing and Run Logan Run.

Oscar Peterson - Black & White
A major profile on the piano prodigy who some considered in the same league as the great Art Tatum. A great many colleagues and admirers spoke warmly, from Herbie Hancock and Branford Marsalis through to Billy Joel. There was plenty of archive of Oscar himself talking too. When he suffered a left-side stroke, it slowed him down but didn't stop him.

Famous jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders has died at the age of 81. Born in Little Rock, that apparently became a nickname too. RIP 

Music Box: Listening To Kenny G
The last of this series saw Seattle's jazz legend giving his side of the story, and some critics exasperated at his link to the lineage of jazz history. A spot on the Johnny Carson show changed everything, and then Clive Davis got involved, and he never looked back.

Cleo Laine - Spring Collection
A show at the Collegiate Theatre, London form 1974, accompanied as ever by Johnny Dankworth and his band. She ran through a great mix of material from On A Clear Day You Can See Forever through to Unlucky Woman (Born on a Friday). She also did a version of Mad About The Boy from three viewpoints. Shown to mark her 95th birthday last week.

Cleo Laine at the BBC
As was this. Material spanned from 1961 to 2011, some talk shows, concerts, collaborations with the likes of John Williams, Des O'Connor, Tony Bennett and Dudley Moore, and more. A fine tribute.

Victor Evans has died at 88:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-63542155

He had been fighting Alzheimers since 2012. RIP

Sir John Dankworth at the BBC
In fact a repeat from soon after his death, in 2010, and introduced by Cleo Laine. Material included didn't always include Cleo, there was plenty of music in its own sake from the late 1950s onwards (he and Cleo did make it to Jools Holland's show).

misery guts wrote:Jazz Voice - 2021 
From the EFG London Jazz Festival, a concert MC'd by Jumoke Fashola, whose material didn't always match her enthusiasm. Acts performing included Georgia Cecile, Ayanna Witter-Johnson, Michael Mayo, Lakecia Benjamin and Ego Ella May, whilst Guy Barker conducted the Festival Orchestra in accompaniment.

Guy Barker, Kurt Elling and Friends at Jazz Voice 2022
I had the vague sense this was a repeat, but in fact as I see it's been almost a year. Jumoke Fashola was back again to MC the acts, who included Ian Shaw, Dana Masters, Carroll Thompson, Amythyst Kiah, Mica Millar, Marisha Wallace, Kurt Elling and former Noisette Shingai. Guy Barker conducted the Festival Orchestra again.

BBC Young Jazz Musician 2022 - Final
From the Queen Elizabeth Hall at the Southbank Centre in London, Jams Supernova and the ubiquitous Huw Stevens presented the final 5 contenders as they performed various pieces. Previous winner Deschanel Gordon played while the judges decided, and Ewan Hastie, erstwhile double bassist, became the latest winner.

Nina Simone - The Lost Album
How two songwriters came up with six songs for Nina Simone in the late 1960s, which she never did. They turned up again eventually, and Emeli Sande gamely did them at Ronnie Scott's club, together with another written by someone else but also undone by Nina. A pleasant show and some good new songs.

Cleo Laine - The Unseen Home Movies
For a 95 year old, she's on telly quite a lot lately. This doc looked at Danklaine Films, the self-made home family films made by Cleo and Johnny and their children, with a few celebrity fans and experts to discuss the new footage, even though most of it was silent.

Hitler's Jazz Band
Both of these were made by Victor Lewis-Smith's company, and this came with a tribute since he died just a few weeks ago. The plot was more in his idiom, an attempt at propaganda by the Nazis, using a band of proper jazz musicians to create songs to not so much inspire the Germans, as to try and demoralise the Allies, much in the vein of Lord Haw-Haw. Some archive had interviews from several members of the band, who at least avoided a grimmer fate as soldiers by playing along. The most successful attempts, which wasn't saying much, came from parodies of existing songs, a comic genre still much in use all these years later, though usually in less drastic circumstances.

The Charlie Watts Orchestra - Celebration Jazz
A show from 1986, with Watts joined by a wealth of jazzers from Courtney Pine to even Jack Bruce on the cello. There was an on-screen intro from Bill Wyman, and further investigation suggests it may have taken place at Fulham Town Hall.

"Good Evening, Ev'rybody" - In Celebration of Louis Armstrong
From the Newport Jazz Festival, 1970, and nice to see the great man himself talking about some of the other performers, and some music he rates (such as "Let It Be"). Mahalia Jackson did a few songs, Dizzy Gillespie charmingly played and did a take-off of Louis, and he himself did quite a few numbers too. Quite charming.

TUNE - DIY Jazz
Rebecca Vasmant looks at the state in Glasgow, club nights and other like-minded players. She came from being a Techno DJ to embrace the world of jazz.

Playing Against Time
Barbara Thompson was a sax player who led her own band, Paraphernalia, and was in a long-term relationship with Jon Hiseman, whose own band were called Colosseum. They were subjects of a prog in 1979 when they had young children to cope with as well as their musical life. This prog ran over several years, looking at their life since Barbara had been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease. She tried new and experimental drugs, with good results and bad side-effects. She continued to play and compose, and encourage new, young players. Though completed in 2011, it was repeated to mark that she died in July of last year (and Jon had died in June 2018!).

Another legend to pass is Wayne Shorter, who was 89. RIP 

Another loss as pianist Ahmad Jamal has died at 92. In his career he worked with Miles Davis, among others. RIP 

misery guts wrote:Another legend to pass is Wayne Shorter, who was 89. RIP 

London Jazz Festival - Wayne Shorter Quartet
A show from 2001 at the Royal Festival Hall in London, repeated in tribute, and introduced by Courtney Pine, and with some chat from band members and Wayne himself.

misery guts wrote:
Guy Barker, Kurt Elling and Friends at Jazz Voice 2022
I had the vague sense this was a repeat, but in fact as I see it's been almost a year. Jumoke Fashola was back again to MC the acts, who included Ian Shaw, Dana Masters, Carroll Thompson, Amythyst Kiah, Mica Millar, Marisha Wallace, Kurt Elling and former Noisette Shingai. Guy Barker conducted the Festival Orchestra again.

Spring Soul & Jazz
At Cheltenham this time, with comedian Marcus Brigstocke handling the MC duties, as Guy Barker's Big Band teamed with the BBC Concert Orchestra for a program which included Kurt Elling and Ian Shaw again, but also Ashton Jones, Mica Millar, Tommy Blaize, Vanessa Haynes, Madeline Bell and the Power Dresser herself Mica Paris. They ended with a James Brown medley tribute.

Last Chorus, by Humphrey Lyttelton
Compiled from diaries and other notes, this posthumous book covers, among other things, his time as a band-leader, and the many jazz legends he knew, met and worked with. Such as Louis Armstrong, to whom he put togtether a mock crown in tribute, which Louis was so touched with, he sent it home to the US.

Louis Armstrong's Little Satchmo
Sharon Preston-Folta was the jazz legend's only child. However, her mother was not his wife, and said wife refused not to consider ever divorcing him, and edited his will to cut Sharon out. However Sharon has mementoes of her father, including audio tapes of him sending messages to her as she was growing up (she born in 1955). A somewhat melancholy story of a lesser-seen side of the great man.

Gregory Porter - In Concert
Back in 2016, he got invited to the BBC Maida Vale Studios, where he belted out a good long set, made sure to mention the members of his band, and mention his latest album, Take Me To The Alley.

Ron Carter - Finding The Right Notes
A lengthy tribute from 2022 to a legendary bassist who worked with anyone from Miles Davis onwards, released many records himself, and was widely recognised worldwide. His son Myles had tragically died during filming, which strained him a bit, but he passed his 80th birthday, and even the covid pandemic, and retained his stature.

Oscar Peterson - Words & Music
Clearly he had his own show back in 1980. This repeat was the opener to the series, and featured a guest turn from the great Ella Fitzgerald. They chatted and she sang a few numbers, sat by Oscar's piano. She talked about her early days, and songbook projects.

Radio 2 In Concert: Michael Buble
Jo Whiley introduced this 2011 concert which had a partial Christmas theme. But he did several other tunes like Home and Haven't Met You Yet, with Big Band accompaniment.

Look at Life: Jazz All The Way
A short film from 1960 covering a 3 day jazz festival in Cleethorpes, over the August Bank Holiday, with 12 bands including Humphrey Lyttelton. Then also footage from a fortnight festival at Belle Vue, Manchester, which included Dizzy Gillespie, and Acker Bilk. A charming curio.

Radio 2 In Concert: Caro Emerald
Reportedly somewhat jazzy, though there are many styles of jazz. This 2013 concert was around her peak UK success with tracks like That Man.

Oscar Peterson: In Concert
A short set from 1974 in which the pianist was accompanied by other members of his trio at time. No attempts to say what tunes were what, and he was sweating copiously by the end. But a great show.