IN MEMORY OF TOM BAKER, WHO DID ALL THINGS WELL

I now have an opportunity to share with you some wonderful videos of the amazing musician Tom Baker (1952-2001) who lives on.

Below is a picture of our benefactor and generous friend, Enrico Borsetti, who took a video camera to the 2000 Ascona Jazz Festival and recorded treasures — some of which I have already posted, featuring Dan Barrett, Jeff Hamilton, Ray Sherman, Jon-Erik Kellso, Brian Oglivie, John Smith, Eddie Erickson, Joel Forbes, and Rebecca Kilgore.

Another magnificent band, led by pianist / singer Keith Nichols, was called The Blue Rhythm Makers — and here on YouTube you can see two incarnations with different personnel.  The one I share today features the immensely talented and much-missed Tom Baker (trumpet, trombone, reeds, vocal, and more I am probably leaving out), my friend-heroes Matthias Seuffert, Martin Wheatley, Frans Sjostrom.

Here you can learn more / see more about Tom, who made the transition at 49.

Here’s Tom’s very touching reading of ANNIE LAURIE, which I think unforgettable, especially thinking of such a brilliant man who is no longer with us:

and a searing I KNOW THAT YOU KNOW:

and a radiant version of Benny Carter’s ONCE UPON A TIME:

Since I believe that “the dead” KNOW, I send tears and reverent admiration to Tom Baker.  And let us not forget the living, to whom I send gratitude.

May your happiness increase!

EDDIE and THE GANG GO TO FLORIDA; STUFF HEATS UP THE ONYX CLUB

Yes, I’ve been eBaying at the moon when I should have been grading student essays.  But one brings more pleasure than the other, I write ruefully.

Concert ephemera from the Condon ensemble — and what a band! — doing Florida gigs in, I think, 1955.  If you can find it, there is a recording on the Pumpkin label (the gift to us of the much-missed Bob Hilbert) of that same band in Palm Beach, 1955:

And I do know that Eddie hated the word DIXIELAND, but he didn’t write the ad copy.  Here’s some beautiful contemporaneous music from the “Bixieland” session supervised by George Avakian for Columbia, with a chance to hear Eddie, Walter Page, and George Wettling in glorious sound — to say nothing of Wild Bill Davison, Cutty Cutshall, and Ed Hall:

and here’s an earlier piece of Americana that I’d never seen (nor imagined).  Why a football?  I don’t know.  But it’s great Stuff:

And the appropriate music, in two parts, mixing vaudeville, illicit substances, and Swing:

Aside from Stuff, that’s Jonah Jones, Clyde Hart, Mack Walker, Bobby Bennett, and Cozy Cole — a truly rocking band.  Listen to the great beat of that rhythm section behind the vocal jive:

Uh, uh!  Woof woof!

May your happiness increase!