Nightnoise - Night In That Land

Nightnoise is one of the most famous Irish jazz ensembles, combining jazz with traditional Irish themes.  As we come hard into St. Paddy's Day, this seems a fun kickoff that a bunch of you should like. 

Tatiana Eva-Marie & Avalon Jazz Band - La Mer

11 Million views can't be wrong. 

Louis Jordan - You Can't Get That No More

Is this plausibly the first rap song?  Probably not because it's actually a fun listen. 

Spotted by The Queen Of The World.

Vince Guaraldi Trio - O Tannenbaum

CBS didn't like this soundtrack, and predicted that the show A Charlie Brown Christmas would be a flop.  It was wildly popular, and the soundtrack won a Grammy.  For obvious reasons.

George Gershwin and DuBose Hayward - "Summertime" from Porgy & Bess (sung by Ella Fitzgerald)

Porgy & Bess was first performed in 1935 and sadly has peaked.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was popular in the Soviet Union during the Cold War as a display of American repression - the 1980s film White Nights showcased this..  It seems that the Usual Suspects who control popular culture are not subtle enough to line this into their repertoire of  anti-American art, but whatever.

This is without doubt the most famous song from that opera, and has been recorded by pretty much everybody - Janis Joplin & The Holding Company may have been the most unexpected of these.  Here's Ella Fitzgerald with what approaches the Platonic Ideal performance of the song. 

Autumn Leaves

This is the platonic ideal of this song, in my opinion at least.

Michael Bublé - Beyond The Sea

I love this song, and this is a particularly good rendition.

John Barry - Theme to Body Heat

Body Heat was a 1981 remake of the classic 1944 film Double Indemnity.  Known mostly for the skin showed by Kathleen Turner, about the only thing really superior about the remake is John Barry's spectacular Film Noir score.

Django Reinhardt - Stardust

This is the kind of music that would be playing when I got home from High School.  You wonder what else Reinhardt would have recorded had he not died so tragically young.

Tony Bennett, Lady Gaga - I've Got You Under My Skin

You have to listen for a while to appreciate Lady Gaga - well, I did, but came around to her as a credible singer of one of the all time great Big Band songs.

Stan Getz - Walk On By

Stan Getz recorded a whole album of Burt Bacharach's songs.  Rest in peace, Burt.  Thanks for all the great music.

 

Amy Grant and Marc Martel - The Christmas Waltz

I heard a jazz version of this by Jeff Goldblum.  Who knew he could sing?   Spoiler Alert: he really can't.

But this is a fine song, well done by Amy Grant (Mrs. Vince Gill) and Marc Martel.

Vince Guaraldi - Linus and Lucy

This is, of course, from the A Charlie Brown Christmas special.  The Studio Execs were nervous about the show: the explicit Christian themes, the use of child actors, the lack of a laugh track.  Of course, the show was a sensation: almost half of everyone who had the TV on that evening had it tuned to that show.  This year is the show's 55th anniversary (!).

And yes, the music is as iconic as everything else from the show.

Nina Simone - I put a spell on you

Get ready for an enchanting Halloween with Nina Simone.

Louis Armstrong - A Kiss to Build a Dream On

It's autumn, the leaves are turning and temperature is falling.  Curl up in front of a fireplace with your sweetheart this weekend.



They sure don't write them like this anymore.

Chet Atkins - Nuages

Atkins said that Django Reinhardt (composer of this song) was one of the ten greatest guitarists of the 20th Century.  Jeff Beck called Reinhardt "superhuman", which is pretty funny since the Nazis who occupied Paris during Reinhardt's career had a very different idea of that word.  Willie Nelson has played this song for a long time.  I can see why.

The first steam locomotive - 215 years ago

On this day in 1804, Richard Trevithick debuted the world's first self propelled steam locomotive at the Welsh iron mill at Pen-y-Darren.  It pulled five cars loaded with ten tons of iron and around 70 iron workers nine miles, at a speed of five miles per hour.  It was so heavy that after three trips its weight broke the rails and it ended its life as a stationary steam engine.

It was followed with other - and better - locomotives: The Rocket, The Flying Scotsman, The Mallard, the Shinkansen and the TGV.  But it was the first, which is what we remember.  This is a reproduction.



There is a magic to all of this.  Castle Borepatch lies near (but not too near) a trunk line and it's possible in the dead of night to listen to the horn of the Night Train.  It's the sound of nostalgia.  Sure, airliners get you there faster but I'm not sure that anyone ever wrote a song like this for a Boeing.

Ike Quebec - Blue and Sentimental

Born on this day in 1918.

Duke Ellington - Autumn Leaves

The leaves are turning color near Castle Borepatch.  This has for years been one of my favorite songs about the autumn.



It has perhaps the greatest jazz violin of all time, by (sometimes trumpeter) Ray Nance.  Ozzie Bailey does a spectacular job on vocals in both French (written by poet Jacques Prévert) and English (by Johnny Mercer).  The music was composed by Joseph Kosma.

Fun fact: this was Yves Montand's signature song.  Just about everyone recorded this (Sinatra, Doris Day, Andy Williams, Miles Davis, Joan Baez, and Nat King Cole who recorded it in Japanese), but I love this version.

And just to show how the absurd can rise to the sublime, here is Nat singing this in Japanese.  I'm not sure that anyone other than him could have pulled it off, but he did pull it off.

Wild Bill Davison - That's A Plenty

Dixieland jazz, baby!