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Jazz with John Hellings

Music: Jazz & Blues: Jazz

John Hellings

A selection of the best in jazz music with John Hellings.

Jazz with John Hellings: Bebop 60 years on and a ‘silent’ film about jazz

Bebop 60 years on and a ‘silent’ film about jazz

BBC Local Radio - Jazz with John Hellings, Bebop 60 years on and a ‘silent’ film about jazz

A British band playing bebop like Dizzy Gillespie and a new silent film about Satchmo.

A band full of British musicians led by Pete Long with some great music from a time when bop was a new music and musical genius was around in so many places.

It’s a band called Gillespiana. At around the same time that bop was top of the list in the US, pure trad was big in the UK being led by the likes of Ken Colyer who wanted it all to be like New Orleans. 

He, though, was playing popular songs of the day — even the Happy Wanderer got into his repertoire! Stan Getz and Chet Baker fell out big time when they toured Europe in 1983. 

We have an item from the Stockholm concert from that year with a Getz quartet part of the proceedings. Chet Baker, although he’s not on this selection is on a little dance piece that we’ve included. 

Chet Baker, Jim Hall and Hubert Laws turn in their version of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Sophie Smith is a young singer who has taken a Dave Frishberg, Bob Dorough composition and updated the words just a little.

George Shearing plays Bud Powell and Keith Jarrett’s new recording ‘Rio,’ recorded in Rio 40 years after he’d made his debut there, is released. 

The London Jazz Festival showed a film about Louis Armstrong last week. The film itself was ‘silent’ but there was a real live ‘pit’ orchestra to make sure the music was there all the time.

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Bebop 60 years on and a ‘silent’ film about jazz

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