Martin Taylor Interview

An extensive interview with Martin Taylor, the remarkable British jazz guitarist.

Wes Montgomery - West Coast Blues - 1965

[Update:] The copyright owner must have complained, and Youtube took this video down. What a shame, this was SO GOOD. Even though the video is no longer on YouTube, this image remains, so I'll leave it here as a memory of this performance. June 1, 2006.

(p.s. in Firefox you'll see the first image from this video; in Explorer you may not)

Pat Martino

talking jazz guitar with some of his fans. [link]

More Jeff Beck

What really amazes me is that not only doesn't Jeff Beck use a pick, but he picks with his thumb and fingers.

YouTube

When I started this blog I didn't expect it to be dominated by videos from YouTube.com and similar video sites. In fact, I don't think I was even aware of YouTube when I made my first posting on December 14, 2005. YouTube was barely eleven months old at that time, and the flood of jazz videos that was soon to engulf it hadn't begun.

Nevertheless, as so often is true on the Internet, YouTube experienced astonishing growth, going from almost nothing to one of the top 20 web sites in the last six months. In fact, a graph of YouTube's traffic on Alexa.com shows that it took off in December 2005, the same month I started this blog. Once I began to realize how much that had been inaccessible to the world was being uploaded onto YouTube, this blog took a sharp turn toward videos rather than text. I get references to many of the videos by reading jazz discussion sites where members provide links to the videos. Don't ask me where they find them!

I know that many of the videos I post are copyrighted, but the owners of the copyrights can monitor YouTube and demand that YouTube take down a video that is copyrighted. If a video link in my blog doesn't work, you can reasonably assume that that's why. However, many copyright owners may chose not to interfere. After all, this is a form of advertising for the artists, and who is to say that viewers would have purchased the videos (assuming they even are available) if they didn't have access to them on YouTube?

If you want to learn more about YouTube, click here.

John Pizzarelli . . .

. . . performing I Got Rythm on a seven string guitar. Watch him snatch the guitar pick out of his mouth 29 seconds into the video. He was singing with it in his mouth until that point!

Joe Pass: Blues for Sitges

Joe Pass would write "Blues for ..." songs for many of his friends and acquaintances, and sometimes even for locations. Sitges is a city near Barcelona in Spain.

Russell Malone on Fire

Malone is unbelievable in this video