Thursday, January 17, 2013

Blues School


Earl's Tune - Errol Garner by boberwig

 I had no idea Errol Garner was a brother. One of the ladies at the rest home asked for this tune, Earl's Tune, and now I'm schooled in the playing of blues. If my father was Garner or Ray Bryant or even merely listened to Garner or Bryant, then I'd play like this today. But no, I got a psychotherapist and now earn a gold medal for mentally masturbating. So I've got 40 more years to devote to playing in this style. (or about 8 if I die when Garner did)


I'm not a Jazz snob. Misty is a song I've probably tried to play for ten years. I took a piano class once and this was the song I was supposed to accompany a singer with. It was terrible. And I remember reading Errol Garner as the author and not researching anything about him. I figured he was white because the lyrics are real margarine flavored. (Garner didn't write the lyrics) But no, now I see him playing his own melody and I understand. To discredit songs like Moon River is to discredit Garner because while Mancini isn't a blues musician he wrote during the same period and all those songs are lumped together. Misty is one of the all time classics with All of Me and Ain't Misbehaving and Some Enchanted Evening. You can't play lounge piano without knowing this song. You probably won't play it like Garner but you have to appreciate the tradition of lounge piano. I will post my recording of it when I get to the real piano at the old folks home.

Don't Shoot The Piano Player





I tried about 10 takes of this song hoping one would be good enough to put it rest but invariably I fumbled over one of the licks. I'll memorize before I can actually play it right...but for now this is the "before" video to compare what I will play in a few weeks of practice so I can go to the press room and impress the jazz snobs.

Creative Commons License
Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.