Swing Guitar

Dedicated to pre-bebop jazz guitar.

Friday, March 30, 2007

More Swing Guitar on Youtube

Here are a couple other videos of note on swing guitar on youtube:

Count Basie - "Twenty Minutes After Three" - From Ralph Gleason's Jazz Casual series from the late 60's. While I generally try not to get into Freddie's ideosyncrasies - because he could do stuff none of us can pull off - and especially not his later stuff, because late Basie stuff has a straight-ahead rhythmic feel - real laid back. That is not the same as pre-1950 Basie, which is "Swing" with a capitol "S", which is what this website is about. Still, this example gives us a pretty good glipse at Freddie Green and we can hear him really well. Also, check out another from that session, here. Dig how Basie quotes a little bit of "Splanky" in there. Another on "I Don't Know." (by the way dig the way Sonny Payne juggles one of his brushes in one of his fills at the end.)

Fats Waller - "Ain'tMisbehavin' / Honeysuckle Rose" - A soundie of Fats Waller, whose band featured the fantastic Al Casey. Besides recording the milestone "Buck Jumpin'", you can hear Al pretty wellin a c0uple fills on "Ain't Misbehavin'" and he gets a full chord solo on "Honeysuckle" which is awesome.

Also, I should be noted that a lot of great videos have been removed from YouTube so here are a couple from Daily Motion. By the way, it seems like the video sync is way better on Daily Motion as well.

Marty Grosz - "Porter's Lovesong to a Chambermaid" - One of the only people who keeps alive the Carl Kress school and tuning. He seems pretty goofy and perhaps not the best singer, still those all describe Fats Waller too. More important is the guitar solo, which is straight out of the Carl Kress school. Also check out "Swing that Music!" which is also really badass. By the way the tuning is Bb, F, C, G, B, D, which is basically Tenor banjo with two extra bass strings.

Bing Crosby - "Dinah / Please" - Here are a couple of Eddie Lang's movie appearences right before he died. Oh and here's some Eddie Lang w/ Joe Venuti.

I'll put some more up soon. Thanks.