Hey Mister Jesse! May I have this dance?

As you hopefully already know, the May episode of the podcast Hey Mister Jesse that talks about swinging music is now available. If not, download May 2008 episode of Hey Mister Jesse. (~50 MB, mp3).

Read the show notes for Hey Mister Jesse May 2008 to see all the details.

I wrote to Jesse and Manu (as always) with some tips:

First tip is the album "With Thee I Swing" with New York singer Terry Blaine and pianist Mark Shane and a bunch of other fantastic musicians. It's a live album from a concert in Hamburg, Germany.

It has songs like "Getting Some Fun Out Of Life", "Mama Don´t Allow", "I Never Knew" and my favorite song from the album: "Why Don´t You Do Right".

Terry Blaine is touring with a new show called "Swingin' the Benny Goodman Songbook".

Second tip is the album "Swingin' with Humes". On this album from 1961 the former big band singer Helen Humes fronts a small group that has a light and laidback style. I like her version of "There'll Be Some Changes Made".

Bonus tip: When I listened to the interview with Catherine Russell in last the show she mentioned western swing. Although western swing is not my prefered jazz style, I'd like to recommend a pretty decent 4 cd compilation set called "Western Swing & Country Jazz".

I like the song "Gettin' That Low Down Swing" by the band Modern Mountaineers which has great lyrics.

Manu said that "Gettin' That Low Down Swing" probably was his favorite song ever. What about that! Yehaa! That kind of comments makes a dj happy.

What other things are there in the podcast?

Well, they have a good 8 count countdown of late night blues songs. But the list has a fatal flaw! It doesn't include any Jimmy Witherspoon song. You can't have a list like that without him. It's mandatory. I 've written before about Jimmy Witherspoon and late night blues and his great compilation album Jazz Me Blues in my series of posts called Late Night Music.

Several of the songs on Jazz Me Blues (like "One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer" and "Bad, bad Whiskey") come from his 1963 album "Baby, baby, baby".

The original abum is worth checkin out because it has many good slow late night blueses like "Rocks In My Bed" and "Lonely Boy Blues". Listen to clips from the album below.



What do you think of the May edition of Hey Mister Jesse? Tell me.

Review: Best of Van Morrison Volume 3

Katrina Alvarez over at Wiredset sent me the new album "The Best of Van Morrison Volume 3" for review. Thanks!

Van Morrison has had a long career and the songs from this double cd spans the years from 1993 until present. The album has an eclectic mix of music styles.

For me, the initial interest was to hear what Van Morrisons collaborations with blues artists like John Lee Hooker, BB King and Jimmy Witherspoon sounded like.

The album mostly contain what I would classify as soul songs (they somewhat remind me of Sam Cooke songs) mixed up with modern blues songs. A common musical theme through the album is the the use of Hammond B3 organ.

From a jazz (and dance) perspective there are only two songs on the album that are interesting: Moondance and Centerpiece. I've heard Moondance played at dances before and here is an uptempo version of the song. Centerpiece is the most jazzy song on the album and here Van Morrison is joined by singer Annie Ross. Annie Ross was a member of the vocal jazz group Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. Centerpiece was written by Jon Hendricks and it's my favorite song from the album.

This album is a little bit a departure from the cds I usually write about so be sure to listen to the songs at Amazon before you buy it. If you already are a Van Morrison fan, I think you will like this "best of collection".

Have you listened to "The Best of Van Morrison Volume 3"? What do you think of it? Tell me.

Jimmy Witherspoon: Ain't nobodies business

Late night music

There haven't been so much blues music so far in this blog, but now it's time for some slow blues: Ain't Nobodies Business If I Do with singer Jimmy Witherspoon together with trumpeter Buck Claytons band. This video clip is very suitable as late night music.



Jimmy Witherspoon is one of my favorite male blues singers. "Ain't Nobodies Business If I Do" was made popular by another great blues singer: Bessie Smith.

If you want one great record with slow blues music, I can highly recommend (as many other swing djs do) Jimmy Witherspoons compilation album: Jazz Me Blues. On that album there are a few mid tempo songs that you dance lindy hop to, but mostly it's fabulous, slow, "late night" blues.

What do you think of the video clip with Jimmy Witherspoon? Tell me.