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

Kenny Burrell - Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most

Barney Kessel Performing Black Orpheus

Freddie Green

A web site devoted to Freddie Green [link]

Who was Freddie Green? To quote from his obituary in Downbeat:

Freddie Green, guitarist with the Count Basie Orchestra for half a century, died March 1 in Las Vegas of an apparent heart attack. He was 75. Green was the last surviving member of Basie's "All-American Rhythm Section" which included Basie on piano, Walter Page on bass, and Joe Jones on drums. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Green was introduced to Basie by record producer John Hammond, who had discovered the guitarist playing in a Greenwich Village nightclub. Green was not the Basie band's first guitarist, but he remained with the orchestra far longer than anyone else after joining it in March 1937. He rarely took solos, concentrating instead on rhythmic accompaniment. His playing, in the words of music critic George T. Simon, was "wonderfully light yet propulsive". Green also recorded several albums under his own name, as well as with Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, Benny Carter, Lionel Hampton, and many others.

And another bio

Johnny Smith [link]

A Talmage Bio

[link]