Paul Edis (piano, vocals)
If it's Friday and it's one o'clock that can mean only one thing...Paul Edis live streaming from his London home. Pianist Edis has been entertaining his online audience for, wait for it...eighteen weeks! Today's edition, #19, would be the penultimate stream, next week (July 31) being the last one before our host takes a short break.
Ten numbers today ranging from Frank Loesser to Bud Powell with a couple of original compositions, a vocal number and an unlikely request the filling in between. Loesser's If I Were a Bell for starters, Kenny Dorham's Blue Bossa, typical Edis, typically brilliant. Horace Silver's Barbara stumped our online host as to who Barbara was. 'Babs' was none other than Mrs Silver.
Today's unlikely request came from an unlikely source. Lance Liddle, BSH's Editor-in-Chief requested Light My Fire. The Doors' psychedelic, bombastic opus hasn't figured much, if at all, in the eleven or so years of LL's award-winning online jazz journal. Perhaps LL would care to explain himself...
Cole Porter's You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To, Edis' There Will Be Time (requested by John and Kathleen), Coltrane's Syeeda's Song Flute (Edis noting the evident similarity to Monk's Well, You Needn't), we were deep into the hour-long performance and still without a repeat. Nineteen weeks and not once has PE gone for the easy option!
Merry Monk, a blues of sorts, came about when PE played a lunchtime gig at the Merry Monk pub just off Market Place in Bishop Auckland (BSH was in attendance that day, November 2019). Today's live stream was a world premiere of sorts, a cyberspace world premiere, a world some of us have inhabited for too long. Fear not, real, live gigs, gigs with an audience, are shortly to resume*
Two more numbers would take us up to the hour mark; Jerome Kern's Dearly Beloved (lyrics Johnny Mercer) featured Edis' vocals for the first and only time this week and, to close, our host set about Bud Powell's Bouncing with Bud and in the process produced a bop canon quote-laden finale. Tune in next week at one o'clock for more of the same, it'll be your last online Friday lunchtime appointment with Paul Edis for a little while.
* Abbie Finn is to play a gig on Sunday in the gardens of St James' and St Basil's Church in Fenham, Newcastle. Drummer Abbie will be joined by Harry Keeble (tenor sax) and bassist Paul Grainger. It's a three o'clock start, admission is free although a generous donation wouldn't go amiss.
Russell.
1 comment :
Well, it seems I've been called here. Will my two kings beat Russell's two aces? Maybe, maybe not. I like The Doors but, my choice of Light My Fire was based more upon the rich harmonies of the José Feliciano version and the powerhouse blast Woody Herman gave it on his LP of the same name. I visualised Paul treating it as a kind of Ramsey Lewis style interpretation which he did indeed touch upon. It didn't matter - I think it was a challenge which he handled admirably.
Russell, I'll draw one and raise you ten!
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