Jazz and a chat
rick from Boston | 03/19/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This is a fantastic and very unusual cd. Taken from a series of tv shows done back in the early 60's, it's a song and chat session similar to the Mary McPartland radio series. The first tracks have Jimmy Witherspoon and Ben Webster with a brief interview with Witherspoon. Spoon is in fine voice and Webster is Webster, magnificent. Spoon performs some of his more popular tunes and the band features Vince Guraldi of "peanuts/charlie brown" fame on piano.
The real gem is the Jimmy Rushing session, which features Rushing playing piano and talking about his life. The anecdotes are fascinating as Rushing basically gives you a capsule musical biography of his life. Oh, he sings some great old songs too, and plays a decent blues piano. Now I have to get the video of this."