Joe Bonamassa "Drive"

 

From his CD/DVD compilation "Live at The Sydney Opera House" in Sydney, Australia, here is Joe Bonamassa with his ballad, "Drive".  

Monty Alexander Trio - Battle Hymn Of The Republic - 11/06/1976 • World of Jazz

 

Montgomery Bernard "Monty" Alexander (born 6 June 1944) is a jazz pianist. His playing has a Caribbean influence and bright swinging feeling, with a strong vocabulary of bebop jazz and blues rooted melodies. He was a regular guest at the North Sea Jazz Festival. In this footage that we found in the archives; he performs in the dutch tv-show "Music All In". 

Is Stevie Wonder A Jazz Singer

 

From Bret "Jazz Video Guy" Primack.  "Jazz Video Guy" poses the question.  Is Stevie Wonder a jazz singer?  Read the comments from fans of his YouTube page, to find out, and watch/listen to the performance to make up your own mind on this one.  Definitely a very open-ended question.  

Whisper Not - Benny Golson and McCoy Tyner

 

From Bret "Jazz Video Guy" Primack. 

Whisper Not (Golson) Benny Golson, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Avery Sharpe, bass and Aaron Scott on drums. Jazz in Marciac 1997

Milly Scott - (Get Your Kicks on) Route 66 - 16/03/1979 • World of Jazz

 

Dutch singer Milly Scott (1933) gained a lot of popularity in her country the Netherlands, in the middel sixties, when she starred at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1966 with the song Fernando & Filippo. It was the first time Holland sent an exotic song, Scott being from Surinam origine to the festival.

In the ‘50s she worked five years in Sweden, where she sang with great artists like Quincy Jones, Judy Garland and Gerry Mulligan. Then she returned to Holland, to perform jazz songs in several tv-shows. She had two shows of her own: “Scott in de Roos”, and “Hello Milly”. She was invited three times at the North Sea Jazz festival. The clip we found in our archives shows Milly in the Dutch tv-programme “Voor de vuist weg” in 1979. She sings “Route 66”, a classic from 1946, about the famous road between Chicago and L.A.

Buddy Rich Big Band - Birdland - 15/07/1978 • World of Jazz

 

Line up:

Buddy Rich (Drums)
Tom Warrington (Bass guitar)
Bob Kaye (Piano)
John Marshall, Mike McGovern, Mark Ohlsen, Chuck Schmidt (Trumpets)
Dale Kirkland, Glenn Franke, George Moran (Trombones)
Steve Marcus, Gary Pribeck, Chuck Wilson, Andy Fusco, Greg Smith (Saxes)

Bernard "Buddy" Rich (September 30, 1917 – April 2, 1987) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. Rich was billed as "the world's greatest drummer" and was known for his virtuosic technique, power, groove, and speed.

Rich was born in Manhattan, New York, to Jewish vaudevillians Bess (Skolnik) and Robert Rich.:6 His talent for rhythm was first noted by his father, who saw that Buddy could keep a steady beat with spoons at the age of one. He began playing drums in vaudeville when he was 18 months old, billed as "Traps the Drum Wonder." At the peak of Rich's childhood career, he was reportedly the second-highest paid child entertainer in the world (after Jackie Coogan). At 11 he was performing as a bandleader. He received no formal drum instruction and went so far as to claim that instruction would only degrade his musical talent. He also never admitted to practicing, claiming to play the drums only during performances and was not known to read music. He expressed great admiration for, and was influenced by, the playing of Chick Webb, Gene Krupa, Dave Tough, and Jo Jones, among others.

Rich first played jazz with a major group in 1937 with Joe Marsala and guitarist Jack Lemaire. He then played with Bunny Berigan (1938) and Artie Shaw (1939), and even instructed a 14-year-old Mel Brooks in drumming for a short period when playing for Shaw. At 21, Rich participated in his first major recording with the Vic Schoen Orchestra (the band that backed the Andrews Sisters).In 1938, he was also hired to play in Tommy Dorsey's orchestra where he met and performed with Frank Sinatra. In 1942, Rich left the Dorsey band to join the United States Marine Corps. He rejoined the Dorsey group after leaving the Marines two years later. In 1946, Rich formed his own band with financial support from Sinatra and continued to lead different groups on and off until the early fifties.

The Buddy Rich Big Band in the 1940s In addition to Tommy Dorsey (1939–42, 1945, 1954–55), Rich also played with Benny Carter (1942), Harry James (1953-56–62, 1964, 1965), Les Brown, Charlie Ventura, and Jazz at the Philharmonic, as well as leading his own band and performing with all-star groups. In the early fifties Rich played with Dorsey and began to perform with trumpeter Harry James, an association which lasted until 1966. In 1966, Rich left James to develop a new big band. For most of the period from 1966 until his death, he led successful big bands in an era when the popularity of big bands had waned from their 1930s and 1940s peak. In this later period, Rich continued to play clubs and stated in multiple interviews that the great majority of his big band's performances were at high schools, colleges and universities, with club performances done to a much lesser degree. Rich also served as the session drummer for many recordings, where his playing was often much more understated than in his own big-band performances. Especially notable were Rich's sessions for the late-career comeback recordings of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, on which he worked with pianist Oscar Peterson and his famous trio featuring bassist Ray Brown and guitarist Herb Ellis.

Gladys Knight & The Pips - Midnight Train to Georgia - 11/06/1976 • World of Jazz

 

On june 11th, 1976 a very special concert took place in the studios of the Dutch TROS tv-programme "Music all Inn". The audience witnessed a great concert of Gladys Knight and (her family group) the Pips, and as a special guest starred Al Foster, the drummer who played for a long time with Miles Davis. Here Gladys performs "Midnight train to Georgia". Songwriter Jim Weatherly created this song, that was originally titled "Midnight plane to Houston". Starlett (and the later actress) Farah Fawcett was on the phone with Jimmy, when she suddenly said she had no time, because she had to take the plane to Houston"... The song was inspired by the story of Fawcett and her friend/husband Lee Majors. Short story: a girl comes to L.A., doesn't make it and takes a plane home. The guy accompanies her. The song was an instant success but became really famous when Gladys Knight and the Pips recorded it as "Midnight train to Georgia".