Paul Edis (piano, vocals)
Lockdown Britain is a weird place where days merge into one another and weekdays feel like weekends. Ah, it's Friday! One o'clock, YouTube, meaning it's time for the sixteenth consecutive Friday of solo piano with occasional vocals for good measure by Paul Edis.
Richard Rodgers figured large this week - Thou Swell and I Could Write a Book with lyrics by Lorenz Hart and You'll Never Walk Alone, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein III - as a composer of popular song for the stage. Connecticut Yankee, Pal Joey and Carousel the vehicles, if Rodgers had a business head on him he no doubt laughed all the way to the bank!
Lennon and McCartney material doesn't readily lend itself to jazz, yet, in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing, it can work, and in the hands of Paul Edis Blackbird worked well with its gospel-like coda. Edgar Sampson's Stompin' at the Savoy (often credited to Benny Goodman) was less stompin' more soft-shoe stroll, DeRose and Gallop's Serenade marked Johnny Hartman's birthday (the underrated vocalist would have been 97 today).
Monk's Epistrophy (probably more Kenny Clarke than Monk, but he who is first to copyright the tune...), I Remember You, Slow Boat to China and today's closing number, Wes Montgomery's Four on Six, nudged the running total of tunes played without repetition to something like two hundred. More next week.
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