Saturday, August 6, 2016

BOSTIC BINGE

The local jazz station recently changed their line-up and came close to fucking things up entirely. Gone was my favorite show, Jazz West Coast, and gone were the late night jazz freak out shows. One plus is that they now have a three hour show, Saturday Night Fish Fry, that's all vintage R & B, forties and fifties. Yeah baby, the good shit, just before rock 'n' roll was hatched. Maybe it's just me, but there's nothing quite like walking around your neighborhood listening to Big Mama Thornton, or Jackie Brenston on a tinny transistor radio. Knowing that you can do it for three hours every Saturday night is worth planning things around. Or not. Since it's on broadcast radio, anyone in my neck of the woods can listen to it anywhere as long as they have access to an FM radio. (Anyone not in the vicinity of San Diego can listen to it streaming online, but that isn't quite as cool.)

Tonight, because he was the featured artist, they played a ton of Earl Bostic. You know him; you should at least know "Harlem Nocturne". Great as that song is, he's got a whole lot more. When the show was done, I wasn't. I was just getting started, so I went looking. Bam! Right out of the gate, 140 songs at Internet Archive



Bostic was no slouch. This is what Art Blakey had to say about him "Nobody knew more about the saxophone than Bostic. I mean technically, and that includes Bird [Charlie Parker]. Bostic could take any make of saxophone and tell you its faults and its best points. Working with Earl Bostic is like attending a university of the saxophone." And Blakey should know.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~
Listen:
Earl Bostic - Harlem Nocturne mp3 at Beware of the Blog
Earl Bostic - Rockin' and Reelin' mp3 at Internet Archive
Earl Bostic - Jungle Drums mp3 at Internet Archive
The whole shooting match:
Earl Bostic - 140 songs at Internet Archive  NOTE: At Internet Archive scroll down to "Download Options" in the right hand column. Click on "VBR MP3" for individual mp3s.
Visit:
Earl Bostic at Wikipedia

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