I always liked Easter holiday. Such a welciome break from daily life in the middle of spring. A few days where everything slows down and gives you time to reflect and meet family and friends. This Easter was a little different of course but still nice in many ways. Since the day of the stream coincided with the birthday of Jimmy McGriff, finding a themee wasn’t that hard.
I thought I’d start with an uptempo blues of his, “Hello Betty”. It has the feeling of a theme song, thus a natural way to kick things off. After that one of his funkier tunes, “The bird”. I remember this song particularly from when I was doing military service. They had that vinyl in the library and I used to listen to it when I had the time.
An Easter tradition in Sweden is that children go around dressed as witches, hand out drawings of bunnies. chicken and witches and get candy in return. So I thought I’d have my own little candy handout in for of songs that has been requested. First up- Doxy. A nice tune that I used to play long ago.
Also, this week saw the birthday of Eric Clapton so I thought I’d play one of his songs. To slow things down a little, “Tears in heaven” was a nice choice.
And then for something completely different – another birthday this week was Herb Alpert. So, next on the set list, in his honor was Tijuana taxi. A fun song for sure, as someone wrote in the comments.
Earlier in the week I had my first online rehearsal. It was with the band Boheme, that will do a concert in the Jazz at the HQ series in he beginning of May. It was tso nice to revive songs repertoire of that trio so Idecided to put one of those songs in here. “Watching the river flow”, a Bob Dylan song, but played more in the style that Steve Gadd does on a record with Joey DeFrancesco, among others.
Next candy handout – “The vibrator” by Jack McDuff that had been requested a few weeks earlier. A song I hadn’t heard before. nice blues tune on a beat.
And then it was time to calm things down again. When playing with Kiralina Trio, she often sings “Nature boy”, and I always like the mood of that song.
And for the finish – a few more Jimmy McGriff tunes. One of my favorite records of his is “A bag full of soul”, and one of the songs on that album is “D.B. blues part I”. A gosply blues with some great block chords in the B section. Love that tune. And as an encore, maybe one of his most famous sngs – All about my girl.
