Episode 30, A Potpourri of Discoveries.

Today’s podcast features eleven selections that I just felt like playing.  Most of them are records, cd’s, or downloads that are pretty recent, the only exception being Hoagy Carmichael’s piano solo version of Stardust. The other piano solo on this program is something by recently deceased free jazz pianist and composer, Cecil Taylor. Two songs are played in two different versions.   “Social Call” is a record from the mid 50’s from Betty Carter, and its also the title of a 2017 recording by Betty Carter reincarnated, Jazzmeia Horn.  I play the title tune as sung by each of them.   Both are truly great….and very different! Then there is an instrumental version of Embraceable You illustrating Toronto trumpeter/flugelhornist Chase Sanborn’s claim that a musician can improvise best if he or she knows the lyrics to the song as well as the melody.  I play one version by Chase Sanborn with pianist Mark Eisenman, and another by the late great vocalist, Gene McDaniels. The opening tune I should have put on one of my jazz Beatles special, as it is still active pianist Roger Kellaway and his 1965 rendition of  a Paul McCartney tune.  Kellaway recently put together and toured a whole suite called “Many Moods of McCartney”. Rounding off the program is a song and narration from Phil Woods Children’s Suite based on the poems of A.A. Milne, The Modern Jazz Quartet, Peter Appleyard with some of the best jazz musicians ever, and Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane. For the rest of the Spring and Summer these podcasts will be programs created specifically for the podcast, rather than those broadcast first on Trent Radio in Peterborough.