When I'm too idle to slot a CD into the machine I click on to KRML and I'm rarely disappointed.
Take tonight - a program on Jimmy Rowles, that most unsung of piano men.
Just heard a lovely version of Sunday, Monday or Always . Not only was Jimmy a fine pianist but he also had an appealing 60 a day voice that does full justice to the Burke-Van Heusen tune.
Save Your Love For Me with Michael Hashim on alto followed then it was Zoot and Jimmy on The Jeep Is Jumping followed by Restless.
I don't know this tune but it is a beauty - Zoot blows with a Websteresque romanticism whilst Jimmy lays the chords down like a feather bed before somnambulating on his own through a familiar chord sequence that I should recognise.
Zoot stays on for Blue Prelude - done up tempo it demonstrates just what a fine tenor player he was. No histrionic, demoniacal, harmonics just pure melodic development of Gordon Jenkins' fine tune.
This was great stuff until the DJ brought in Cousins by Woody's band with Jimmy on piano, of course, Al Cohn and Stan Getz also help out.
Do you know a better big band record? Of course you do but I bet you don't know many!
Life's a Take a nice trio number then the long overdue vocal emerged again - My Buddy from Stan Getz's The Peacocks. This is as majestic an album as the title decrees it should be an they do it justice.
Cottontail featured Jimmy in duo and, in the tradition of the tune, he built it up into a powerful work-out.
This was worth tuning into KRML.
Lance.
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