“LADY DAY” BILLIE HOLIDAY ON FILM – Dedicated to my photographer Fräulein Liphinchen Blass

We met yesterday in my favorite café at the beautiful Chlodwigplatz, and I brought a gift: Billie Holiday At Storyville, one of my favorite LP’s.

 

 

This is dedicated to you, Liphinchen.

Enjoy the show!

Sincerely,
Yours truly,
Brew

From the film New Orleans (1946) with Louis Armstrong:

With Count Basie & His Octet:

With Jimmy Rowles – “My Man” (Mon Homme), not “Billie’s Blues”

On Bobby Troup’s “Stars Of Jazz” show:

With Mal Waldron All Stars: Roy Eldridge, Doc Cheatham (tp); Vic Dickenson (tb); Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Lester Young (ts); Gerry Mulligan (bs); Mal Waldron (p); Milt Hinton (b); Osie Johnson (d) – From WikiPedia

At Art Ford’s Jazz Party (Part 1 & 2):

Here’s a full length film, featuring most of the above clips:

JOHN COLTRANE & KENNY BURRELL ASK: WHY WAS I BORN?

Hi there, swingin’ folks –

This beautiful ballad by Jerome Kern shall warm up your hearts.

The track can be found on the album Kenny Burrell & John Coltrane, and it was recorded on March 7, 1958.

All best for the weekend,
Bruno

SIR GEORGE SHEARING & HIS QUINTET + LATIN PERCUSSION – “CALI MAMBO” – 1958

George Shearing’s “Cali Mambo” is one of the most modern sounds ever executed by the famous quintet.

As you may know, I’m always searching for modal tunes *before* the actual “modal” era in jazz began.

This track is certainly one of them (the same goes for Bud Powell’s Un Poco Loco (all 3 takes!), also played in a “modal” Latin mood, but seven years earlier).

Besides the wonderful music, is this probably the sexiest LP-cover among all Shearing covers. George Shearing, in his typical witty way, replied to the question on who’d chosen all those beautiful models for his front covers:

“I’ve chosen them myself … with braille.”

Cast: George Shearing (p) Emil Richards (vib) Toots Thielemans (g) Al McKibbon (b) Percy Brice (d) Armando Peraza (perc) – Released in 1958 by Capitol Records.

The CD can be obtained @anazoom, the LP can be found on eeBuy, or HERE.

– And now?

Now, I leave you alone with the Latin Lady, and your hopeless dream of dancing mambo with her.

¡Olé!

Shearingly yours truly,
Brew

CALI MAMBO (transferred from my original stereo-LP)

Here comes Brew’s service for the Spanish speaking readers

P.S. — The very first Latin album by the quintet, Latin Escapade (also showing a brilliant female on the cover), sported another mambo in the Shearing mood, entitled “Mambo With Me”:

D-DAY AFTERMATH – SOME HEADLINES & A SANDWICH

OK, this is kinda crazy, but it’s something you won’t find anywhere but here:

The screenshot of the “Saving-Private-Ryan-D-Day-Sandwich” (rather a triple-sandwich with corned beef & swiss cheese?) and a couple of headlines from June 7, 1944, also screenshots, taken from a four-part TV-documentary.

Get ready for another travel back in time.

Peacefully yours truly,

Brewsk Litovsk

REPOST: IT HAPPENED 69 YEARS AGO: D-DAY ∽ JUNE 6, 1944

The President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, who has visited Germany four years ago, was in Normandy the next morning, for celebrating the day which helped to end World War II in Europe, then 65 years ago:

The day of the invasion, June 6, 1944, a.k.a. D-Day.

With this swingin’ little playlist, organized as kinda broadcast, I want to honor all soldiers of the Allied Forces who participated in this bloody but victorious battle for freedom and democracy.

All tracks are more or less loosely connected to this very day. I recommend that you’d listen closely to track #2 because it had been interrupted for a surprising announcement.

Harry James’ theme Ciribiribin is working as a bracket. It is taken from the famous D-Day-Broadcast with Harry James & His Orchestra; just like the beautiful arrangement of It Could Happen To You, sung by Kitty Kallen.

Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey’s Brotherly Jump is dedicated to the combined troops of Americans, Australians, British, Canadians, Free French, Norwegians and Polish under the command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower which landed at “Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword”, the five sections which divided the beaches of Normandy.

They were all soul brothers who fought for the same war aim: Getting rid of the nazi tyranny once and for all.

Count Basie’s On The Upbeat was one of the theme songs of AFN, the American Forces Network right after the war in Germany. The P.S. is played by Glenn Miller’s Army Air Force Band, a beautiful rendition of David Rose’s Holiday For Strings, which was broadcasted by the British Forces Network (BFN in Hamburg) in the weeks after the war.

It has a special, a very moving memory attached: This very theme became the liberation song of a very good friend and neighbor of mine, Mr. Ralph Giordano, a German best selling author & documentary filmmaker, former “Swing Kid” from Hamburg, and Holocaust survivor who is living right around the corner, here in the beautiful Bay-In-Valley, the South-End of Cologne.

All other tracks are self-explanatory and stem mostly from V-Discs.

More about D-Day here: Normandy, June 6, 1944 a.k.a. “Operation Overlord”

Here it is:

⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇

>>>——> Bruno Leicht’s ultimate D-Day Playlist <——<<<

It’s June 1 today, and again: We’re still not in MEMPHIS, but now we are *finally* IN joyful JUNE

– AUDIO-VISUAL PREFACE –

Quote:

This beautiful track was recorded for Standard Transcriptions in Los Angeles on some day in December 1945.

I can only give you the collective personnel which is a ‘who is who’ of the LA jazz & studio scene in the mid-, late 1940′s:

Ray Linn, Dale Pierce, Nelson Shelladay, Zeke Zarchy (tp) Britt Woodman, Ollie Wilson, Fred Zito (tb) Wilbur Schwartz (cl,as) Harry Klee (fl,as) Ralph Lee, Lucky Thompson (ts) Hy Mandel (bar) Boyd Raeburn (bassax) Dodo Marmarosa (p) Tony Rizzi (g) Joe Mondragon or Harry Babasin (b) Jackie Mills (d) David Allyn, Ginnie Powell (vcl) George Handy, arr.

George Handy’s arrangement is so outstanding in many ways that I’m almost unable to go into detail. Two things are very evident, though only very short:

#1, listen to the immediate Duke Ellington sound as soon as Britt Woodman starts to blow; and right after Dodo Marmarosa’s little interlude we have a very short Glenn Miller passage shining through, because here is the man on clarinet lead who was responsible for Glenn’s success:

Wilbur Schwartz the original Moonlight Serenader himself!

And now? Just close your eyes, and listen to that marvel of the past once again!

Here’s a June-full playlist with some of the greatest swinging folks who obviously loved to spend their times in Memphis during month #6 of the year:

MEMPHIS IN JUNE – Playlist

Lovely Ginnie Powell once again, lazy Julie London, the joyful Johnny Mercer, and lucky Lucy Ann Polk. — But not enough, below’s the sheet for you to sing along with Hoagy Carmichael’s marvelous
MEMPHIS IN JUNE.

𝄆 Sing it loud, sing it clear, ’cause June’ll be gone in 29 days from here. 𝄇
∽ Charles Dickens

Also Harry James: He loved to visit “Memphis In June”

P.S. — Say “bye, bye!” to May…

…with The May…or of Alabam’ & Jack Teagarden! …LOLL.

Here we go:

MR. THOMAS “FATS” WALLER = THE EPITOME OF SWING – 70 YEARS AGO: AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’ from STORMY WEATHER (1943)

Not many words, just a brilliant show in super-fidelity, featuring sidemen Zutty Singleton on drums, Benny Carter on cornet, and Slam Stewart on bass; furthermore we have Bill “Bojangles” Robinson’s dancing, and Lena Horne as the heart-stopping beauty in Stormy Weather (1943).

The composer, Thomas Waller himself, sings & plays: