Selected MP3s of guitar instrumentals, jazz, big band, and classic easy listening from the original vinyl.
Welcome to Guitars & All That Jazz
Welcome to Guitars & All That Jazz
Guitars & All That Jazz was a radio station that webcast via Live365 for 11 years, ending in June 2011. The playlist consisted of guitar instrumentals, jazz, big band, early rock 'n' roll, lounge music and classic easy listening.
I hope to share some of this music with you via this blog. Most of it will be taken from the original vinyl (LPs and 45s) , cassettes and the occasional commercially unavailable CD.
Here's hoping you'll find something to enjoy. Please note files are available only for a limited time.
I urge you to purchase the digital version of the albums featured, either on CD or via download, wherever possible.
Listen to the Music
There are now two music streams. Click the appropriate player to the right.
1. Guitars & All That Jazz:Five hours of the best in jazz, guitars and other instrumental gems. New songs are added weekly.
2. Tiki Shores: Music to sweep you away to a tropical isle, a South American dance floor or a bossa nova on the beach at Rio. About 4.5 hours of classic exotica music, Latin rhythms and bossa nova.
Oscar Peterson Sings Nat King Cole is a 1970s British budget label reissue of an album called With Respect to Nat, which was released on the Limelight label in the U.S. in 1965.
The LP came out shortly after Cole's death and in his tribute Peterson, who didn't sing on record very often, sounds very much like Nat. On half of the tracks he's backed by a big band arranged and conducted by Manny Albam. On the rest former Oscar Peterson Trio members Herb Ellis (guitar) and Ray Brown (bass) provide the support. Overall the album provides a very pleasant listen. Below is a sample taken from the Contour vinyl reissue.
Hawaiian music must have been very popular in the 1950s and 60s judging by the number of ultra-cheap albums of this genre that flooded bins in discount, grocery and drug stores. Seldom did record stores carry albums like Songs of Hawaii by the Honolulu Guitars.
Like many of these low-priced LPs, which often sold for as little as 99 cents, Songs of Hawaii contains absolutely no credits -- no musicians, no composers, no source, not even a release date. This probably came out in the mid- to late 60s, although the music sounds like it was recorded years earlier.
The recording could well have been done by session cats in the continental U.S., possibly in Los Angeles. In any case, below is a sample from the LP, with a rather generic Hawaiian title. Despite the "mono" label on the picture above, this track is in very echoey stereo, likely doctored from a mono recording.
Aloha
There were several LPs released by the Power label under the moniker of the Honolulu Guitars. One, titled simply Hawaii, is available as a download from Amazon. Listen before buying, however, as it's probably dubbed from vinyl.
The Power label albums show up regularly on the online auction sites, but there's something about paying $6 and up for an album that originally sold for 99 cents (sometimes less) that turns me off. What makes matters worse is that these albums are often of poor technical quality -- lots of hiss and vinyl pops and clicks even when new.
My suggestion is to keep an eye on those thrift store bins.
This 1968 Blue Note release by pianist and arranger Duke Pearson (1932-1980) is one of his best. Strangely, it's also one of his least known, perhaps partly because of its limited availability in the digital age.
This post-bop recording of Pearson's complex arrangements came after he led a big band for an extended period. The nine-member group, including the leader on piano, Jerry Dodgion on flute and Bobby Hutcherson on vibes, packs quite a wallop.
Blues for Alvina is the shortest and most laid-back track on the album.
Jazz and blues singer Jimmy Rushing (1901-1972) reached the peak of his popularity during his 15-year stint with the Count Basie band (1935-1950). But he had begun performing at clubs in California in the mid-1920s.
In 1927, Rushing joined Walter Page's Blue Devils. Two years later, he went with Bennie Moten's band. When Moten died in 1935, Basie took over the orchestra.
By the time Rushing Lullabies came out on Columbia in 1960, the singer was in his mid-50s but still at the top of his game. The backing group on the album couldn't have been better -- pianist Ray Bryant, organist Sir Charles Thompson, saxophonist Buddy Tate, guitarist Skeeter Best, bassist Gene Ramey and drummer Jo Jones. Here's a sample, taken from a cassette copy of the album.
'Deed I Do
Rushing Lullabies has received at least three releases on CD -- as a single album in 1996, paired with the 1959 LP Little Jimmy Rushing and the Big Brass a year later and another pairing with Brubeck and Rushing (with the Dave Brubeck Quartet) in 2010. Copies of all are available. Rushing Lullabies can also be purchased as a download. Visit Amazon for all the details.
Via YouTube, here's another selection from Rushing Lullabies.
Illinois Jacquet (1922-2004) is one of jazz's great saxophonists and his fiery tenor solo on Lionel Hampton's Flying Home in 1942 directly influenced such R&B honkers and shouters as Big Jay McNeely, Joe Houston, Rusty Bryant and Red Prysock.
Bottoms Up, the title track from a 1968 Jacquet album on Prestige, had been in the sax man's repertoire for more than two decades, making its first appearance in 1946 on an Apollo label 78. The track had been recorded in Los Angeles the previous year.
Although the jazz world was continuing to evolve around Jacquet in 1968 (avant-garde jazz was starting to have considerable influence), his own playing had changed little over the years, as you can hear in the updated version of Bottoms Up from the Prestige LP. The MP3 is actually taken from a DJ 45 single, which, since the tune is quite short, contained the full album track.
Bottoms Up
The Bottoms Up Prestige album is widely available on both CD (used copies are cheap) and as a download. Do yourself a favour: add this one to your collection.
A version of the Dukes of Dixieland has existed ever since New Orleans brothers Fred (trombone) and Frank (trumpet) Assunto put together the group in 1949. The current lineup still performs on Bourbon Street, although Assunto family members are no longer involved. Fred died in 1964 and Frank in 1974.
The Dukes have recorded dozens of albums over the years, including several with Louis Armstrong. Their peak years were between 1956 and 1966 when they recorded for Audio Fidelity and Columbia.
The Dukes' Columbia recordings were enhanced by the presence of such stellar musicians as clarinetist Jerry Fuller and guitarist Herb Ellis. Both are pictured on the cover of Now Hear This, which was released in 1962. A sample track, taken from the vinyl album is available below.
When You're Smiling (The Whole World Smiles With You)
Now Hear This has never been released on CD and is not available as a download.
To close a vintage (c. 1959-60) clip of the Dukes playing Slide Frog Slide on a local Los Angeles TV show.
Fans of strict tempo dance music could do worse than pick up some of the Ballroom Dancing series of CDs and cassettes put out by the Francisco Montaro Ensemble in the 1990s. There were at least half a dozen albums in the series and all of them frequently reside at your neighbourhood thrift stores.
Swing is Volume 4 and was originally released in Europe by the budget Tring label in 1993 with a different title and cover.
It was released by the Quebec label Madacy in 1994 with a revised title and the cover pictured at the top of this post. This version was widely distributed in Canada and the U.S.
Was (or is) the Francisco Montaro Ensemble a real, working orchestra? The chances seem pretty slim. Although there are a few real instruments involved in the recording, much of it is electronically generated. Still, the sound is miles ahead of the dozens of similar albums out there. Here's a sample from Ballroom Dancing, Vol. 4: Swing.
All My Loving
You should have no trouble locating any of the Montaro Ensemble albums. If the thrift stores don't have them, cheap used copies are plentiful online. Some Montaro recordings, including the Swing album, are available as downloads.
Danish guitarist Jorgen Ingmann has already been introduced via a post back in April. You can read more about him there.
Swinging Guitar was released in 1959 (on Metronome in Ingmann's home country and on Mercury in North America), two years before Ingmann's recording of Apache was a huge hit in the U.S. and Canada. As mentioned in the earlier post, he was heavily influenced by the multitrack recordings of Les Paul. That's readily apparent on this album, which contains mainly tricked up versions of standards like Blue Moon. Listen to and/or download from the link below.
Blue Moon
Blue Moon was one of the 101 selections released on Danish Guitar Ace, a difficult to find four-CD retrospective of Ingmann's recordings for Metronome from 1953 to 1976. The excellent German mail order company Bear Family apparently was the only place you could get it when I made the original post in April, but it now appears to be out of stock.
There are plenty of Jorgen Ingmann tunes, including Blue Moon, available for download. However, it's a case of buyer beware as many of these are undoubtedly dubbed from vinyl. Listen before buying.
Here, from YouTube, is another of Ingmann's Metronome recordings, El Bandito (The Bandit). Britain's The Shadows also did this one.
Yet another release that begs the questions who, where, why and when. There is absolutely no information other than song titles on this cassette release -- no artist, no details about where or when it was recorded.
There is not even a release date on the packaging of this tape, which was distributed in Canada (and possibly in the U.S.) by Madacy, a Quebec company. But judging by the song titles, it was in retail stores in the mid to late 1970s.
Country Sunshine, for instance, was a 1973 hit for Dottie West. Here's a link to the instrumental version from Country Guitars.
Country Sunshine
By the way, Country Sunshine began life as a Coca-Cola commercial.
Country Guitars is a pleasant enough listen for the most part and for instrumental completists is worth picking up for versions of Groovy Grubworm (remember Harlow Wilcox & the Oakies?) and Guitar Boogie (Arthur Smith). Thrift stores are probably your best bet.
Ray Charles showcased his orchestra on several LPs for his Tangerine label in the 1970s, beginning with the 1970 release My Kind of Jazz.
Well, it appears it was definitely HIS kind of jazz because none of the other musicians were credited on the original album release despite some excellent solos on jazz standards like trumpeter Lee Morgan's Sidewinder (which is on the flip side of this 45), I Remember Clifford and Bluesette.
Booty Butt, which garnered some airplay as a single and made it to No. 31 on the pop chart, is the odd track out on this album -- a Charles original with some multitracked vocal interjections by the man himself. Here's a link to listen to and/or download the track, which is taken from the original 45.
None of the tracks included on the My Kind of Jazz LP appear to be available as legal downloads. However, the album's 10 tracks were tacked on to Rhino's 1997 reissue of Charles's earlier release on Impulse, Genius + Soul = Jazz. It's out of print but easily obtained through the Amazon Marketplace and other sources.
The combined albums were issued again on CD in 2009 by Concord. This version was a two-disc set that added volumes two and three of My Kind of Jazz. As a bonus, the musicians involved in the My Kind of Jazz sessions were identified.
The tenor sax work on Booty Butt is by Andy Ennis.
By the time this album came out on the budget Design label in 1959, bandleader, pianist arranger and composer Claude Thornhill (1909-1965) had largely been forgotten.
After making a name for himself with arrangements for the orchestras of Paul Whiteman, Benny Goodman and Ray Noble, Thornhill put together his own band in 1940. Although it was basically a dance band, the orchestra began attracting the attention of the jazz world after the addition of arranger Gil Evans in 1941.
A progressive post-war band put together by Thornhill retained the services of Evans and utilized soloists such as alto saxophonist Lee Konitz and trumpeter Red Rodney. This band's sound and arrangements influenced the development of the cool jazz that emerged in the late 1940s, in particular the 1949 sessions of the Miles Davis Nonet that produced the legendary Birth of the Cool recordings.
Thornhill's discography is extensive and it's difficult to figure out just where Play for Dancing fits in. As was the norm for budget recordings, the album notes give no indication when or where this was recorded. It also doesn't indicate any of the musicians involved, outside of Thornhill of course.
The sound of the recording indicates it was probably recorded in the 1950s, perhaps even especially for Design, although their products were often resissues of much earlier recordings. From the original vinyl album comes Where or When. Listen and/or download below.
This album isn't available in a digital format, but used vinyl copies turn up now and then on auction sites. The prices will probably deter all but the most diehard Thornhill fans.
As a composer, Thornhill's most famous song is Snowfall, which has been recorded by dozens of artists and has become a standard since its introduction by the Thornhill band in 1941.
Enoch Light (1907-1978) was leading a big band in the 1940s and 50s, but is best remembered today for his groundbreaking stereo recordings that began when he founded Command Records in the early 1960s and continued through the 70s on the Project 3 label. Light established that company after he sold Command to ABC Records, which in turn was bought out by MCA. Command ceased operations in 1970.
Light was among the first producers to exploit the full range of possibilities of the relatively new stereo technology, especially on his albums Persuasive Percussion and Provocative Percussion. He often utilized what was termed "ping pong stereo," in which the music jumped from speaker to speaker.
Enoch Light and His Orchestra at Carnegie Hall Play Irving Berlin, which came out in 1962, is not, despite its title, a live album. But it does have a dozen excellent renderings of Berlin standards, including Alexander's Ragtime Band.
ABC reissued the Irving Berlin album in 1972 and there was a horribly pressed, truncated version issued on the budget Pickwick label in 1978. It did not include Alexander's Ragtime Band. All 12 tracks surfaced on a 1987 Project 3 CD retitled as The Music of Irving Berlin and featuring the nondescript cover pictured below.
Three leaders -- trombonist Kai Winding, trumpeter Fats Navarro and tenor saxophonist Brew Moore -- contribute four tracks each to this compilation on the Savoy label that documents the early days of the jazz style known as bebop.
Some of the performances, recorded between 1946 and 1948, are a bit raw and the recording quality is not all that it might be, but there's no denying the excitement this music generated. For me saxophonist Moore, with the help of pianist Gene DiNovi, comes off best with his more laid-back performances.
Moore (1924-1973), who was heavily influenced by Lester Young, never changed his style of playing throughout his entire career. Unfortunately that cool style went out of favour and he spent the last dozen years of his life in Europe. Here, then, is a sampling of that style from 1948.
In the Beginning...Bebop was first issued by Savoy on LP in 1957. There was a 1994 CD reissue that is now out of print. However, used copies are available at a reasonable price in the Amazon Marketplace. Individual tracks from this collection may be available as downloads, but the album itself is not.
To finish things off here's a recent YouTube posting of Five Planets in Leo, from a 1956 performance by the Brew Moore Quartet.
Presenting another in the endless series of anonymous instrumental albums that have come out of Europe over the past several decades.
This one emanated from The Netherlands in 1992 on the Point Productions label. This company's releases turned up quite frequently in the bins of cheap CDs and cassettes at discount stores like Wal-Mart and K-Mart.
The insert manages to credit the the album cover designer but not the musicians or anyone else involved with the project.
18 Golden Piano Hits 1 (one wonders whether there was ever a second volume) is a quite enjoyable listen for the most part, with a song selection comprised mainly of easy listening standards. A real orchestra backs the piano soloist (whoever he or she may be) for the most part. Here's a sample. The MP3 is taken from a cassette.
I haven't seen this album for sale anywhere on the web, although it's listed in several CD databases. Perhaps it's available under another title. I have, however, seen it several times in thrift stores, so if it appeals to you don't give up the hunt.
Les Brown (1912-2001), who led his jazzy dance band through seven decades, recorded hundreds of songs for major labels like RCA, Columbia, Coral and Capitol. So you'd think that just about everything of his would have turned up in the digital age, or at least on an LP when vinyl was still king.
Not so for Boola, a 45 single (Say It with Music was on the flip side) released by Coral in 1958. It never graced one of Brown's long-players and it hasn't turned up on CD or as a download either despite the declaration in Billboard magazine on Feb. 23, 1959 that "Boola by Les Brown and Happy People of Monterey by Dick Jacobs (both on Coral) are big [disc] jockey favorites."
But you can listen to, and download this hard-to-find Brown tune if you so desire, from the link below. The MP3 is taken from the original 45.
Brown is remembered by most people today for his 1944 hit Sentimental Journey, with Doris Day as the vocalist, and for his many years serving as the bandleader for Bob Hope. But he never really retired, making his last appearance in 2000, the year before he died at age 88.
Here, from YouTube, is a vintage Les Brown performance (date and venue not stated) featuring vocalist Butch Stone.
.jpg)
