but i couldn't find the recording online and there doesn't seem to be a realbook chart of it either.
There are 36 comments, leave a comment.
a night in tunisia, caravan, and cantaloup island are usually crowd pleasers as well as being hip for musicians. also i usually get a good reaction from fats waller's jitterbug waltz.  
i'll add more if i think of any.
blue skies
so are you looking for ballads?  if so, i love "you must believe in spring" - michel legrand (and just about any other tunes he wrote, like windmills of your mind - check out the sting version - very cool)
how about "stinkfist" by tool? or for real i always like jobim and you have some of his there but a couple more that i really like: "one note samba", "how insensitive", and "waters of march". not liking ballads so i assume you don't want anymore, i am coming up a little dry now. i remember listening to some of your own stuff from your site that seemed pretty damned good, too, so include a lot of your originals.
come rain or come shine
night and dau
there'll never be another you
green dolphin street
september in the rain.
all the things you are
some funkier stuff that goes over ok and can be fun:
    "chicken" by pee wee ellis and a lot of people have covered.
     "tune 88" by jeff lorber.
     "birdland" by weather report takes a little longer to get together but you will be surprized how many people recognize it and get into it.  fun to play and ends up being worth the effort if your ensemble stays together for any length of time at all.
willow weep for me - tatum version


couldn't find that fats waller tune, but when i do honeysuckle rose, i include the authentic transcribed solo of his (it's only the bridge and one chorus).

i've also done ain't misbehavin' (with authentic fats solo), but not with the band - because it's designed as a piano solo and there's not really any room for a bass player with that style of stride.

listen:  
https://piano-lessons-riverside-ca.com/jeffbrentplaysfatswaller.mp3

or not ...
viper's drag is another that i heard a guy play and then decided to learn it. but i don't remember it now. could probably get it up to snuff in an afternoon. but once again it's not really a "band song".
  

wasn't that the theme of the claritin commercials?


i don't consider the original song or sting's rendition to be jazz, per se. sorry, if i've offended you.


about halfway through stinkfist, it gets really interesting. i was captivated by wondering what the guitarist was going to do next. and it did not disappoint.

although i can make my guitar sound like that, i probably wouldn't use that song in the club i'm at. i don't consider this rendition to be jazz either i'm afriad.

thanks for the recommendation though.

one note samba: i do it on guitar. thanks for bringing that one up. i'd forgotten that i knew it.  

never learned the words though. maybe i ought to. i sing both corcovado and agua de beber in portuguese, so why not this one too?
"how insensitive"

what's the original name, please.
jeff, i don't consider wonderful world jazz either, but then again to me jazz is not defined by tunes as much as how the tunes are played.  many a gershwin or porter tune have been played by jazz greats.  i think mg tunes are beautiful.,

as for caravan, there's a joey d version with gadd on drums that's pretty cool, but of course the object for you would be to create a "7" version...in fact why not do it in 7/4?  now that cold be a cool signature tune for your trio:)

and yes, i was slightly offended by what i considered a sarcastic response regarding "windmills.." but i'm over it...now that i've handed it back to you:)
*mg = mlg = michel legrand*
how insensitive = insensatez
prelude in em.
there is this song aquarela do brasil which kind of reminds me of caravan and is way easier to play, other songs i find fun to play are  
desafinado,chega de saudade,samba de orfeo, mas que nada.
  
cole porter can sound cool too , like just one of these things or what is this thing called love can be soft ballads and also 200 bpm blizzards
come rain or come shine
night and day
there'll never be another you
green dolphin street
september in the rain.
all the things you are  

frank,

i'll definitely have to check out come rain or come shine, there'll never be another you, and september in the rain.

i love "night and day" but unfortunately the cd i play during the breaks is "everybody digs bill" which has a version of "night and day" on it and i would hate to steal bill's thunder.

green dolphin street is a tune that i could never get off the ground, maybe i'll have another look at it.

all the things you are is (imho) overplayed and i don't really have a version worked up that kicks every other versions ass.

thanks, bro!
"

never heard "chicken" or "tune 88" gotta find 'em and see if they float my boat.

"birdland" is a number that back in the 80's my coke dealer told me i had to learn. so i did.

my version is a hybrid of the original and the manhattan transfer rendition (plus a bit of me too).

in order to provide a bunch of fodder for soloing in the middle of the tune, i stuffed a simile of the grateful dead's "china cat" in the middle (just two bars of g and then two bars of f over and over), this sets up a nice groove to run a mixolydian jam over and also gives me the opportunity to play heavy guitar power chords in a jazz club setting.

people love it.

the words seemed a bit odd to me, especially the line "bird would cook, max would look".

the jazz trivia quiz is "why would bird be cooking and max would merely be looking???"

from another forum the response was that this refers to a fairly famous photo where bird is playing (with max roach) and max is looking at bird with rapture.

even with that explanation, the words still seemed stupid, so i changed them to "bird would look, wrote the book".

the other line that i changed when i'm singing it is instead of "miles came through, 'trane came to" (i mean like trane was passed out and regained consciousness?)

i simply changed it to "miles came through, coltrane too".

hey, i can sing it however i want right?

what the jazz police are gonna come busting down the door because i left out max roach?

i might mention that i don't think that "birdland" is really jazz (any more than zawinul's "mercy, mercy, mercy" is. but at least it's a song about jazz. and the main theme sure is catchy ...
"

i do that tune, but only the jeff brent version ...
"

by whom?
" now that's a quotable quote!!!

eloquently stated, sir!

gotta find that joey d. francesco version of "caravan" !!!

i once wrote a song in 7/4, i called it "after six" (it sucked btw).
is french for "t-bone steak".
just remember, you heard it here first.
is an arabic word meaning "transparent" (ie. "invisible")

back me up on this nor!
but what the bloody heck is frim fram sauce?
thanks for the kind words.  i'm pretty sure pphilip was referring to the chopin prelude op 28 #4....it's a dang purty piece of music...would make a nice bossa too....had chopin lived in brazil in the 60s....who knows....what coulda happened.

i have my own ideas about frim fram sauce, but i'll leave them for the locker room:)
exactly.  i often weave how insensitive and the em prelude by chopin together.  i think jobim might have been thinking of op 28 #4 when he wrote how insensitive.
mercy mercy mercy -  (tribute to zawinul?)
caravan - gadd & friends featuring joey d:

i like : come rain or shine
also : mood indigo

ballads singimg :
my old flame
but beautiful

singing and playing:
poor butterfly
after you’ve gone
the more i see you
meditation
round midnight
sunny
killing me softly
nature boy
skylark
oh yes, skylark, as earl hines.


in the nat king cole vid here:  



he is clearly singing "oss-en-feh" (not "os en t").

"en fait" (pronounced "en-feh") in french means "as a matter of fact" or "in point of fact".

this is quite possibly a clever play on words changing "t-bone steak" to "just the bone."

whereas krall says it's sexual, i think it's the tale of a guy too broke to afford a meal. notice that in the video he sits ignored at an empty table and then finally asks for a check for the water.

the bit with the video machine is cool. mtv didn't invent the music video. hell, nat even had his very own syndicated tv show.


i'm sure that natalie must have around somewhere the secret family recipe that has been handed down through generations.

but since since she doesn't frequent this site, here is *my own* secret recipe for frim fram sauce:

1. hot water

2. ketchup

3. salt and/or pepper

4. saltines (on a good day)
in the last couple of days i've put together a passable version of caravan. inspired by the ventures and chet atkins.

the double harmonic works great over the initial misterioso vamp.  

although the ventures play it in a and chet plays it in e (or maybe the other way around), i do it in c (same key as the rb).

the double harmonic scale has two four finger positions that look and feel identical (very handy for noodling around):

c db e f

g ab b c

you can go crazy on those notes while the bass goes c c' db db', etc.

it's also cool to throw in diminished 7th chord that is diatonic to the 5th mode of the f harmonic minor scale:

e g bb db

the bridge reminds me of sweet georgia brown though ...
i never knew it was called double harmonic, but i use that scale all the time.  
when soloing on caravan, i like to use the c diminished scale:
c db eb e f# g a bb. i stole that idea from marcus roberts on wynton's "standard time" album.
once i tried playing caravan as a tango. it worked pretty good (on the head only).
next time i play caravan, i'm gonna play sweet georgia brown on the bridge just to mess with people's heads.
in spite of two votes here for "come rain or come shine", it doesn't really do it for me.

i listened to billie holiday, ella, sinatra, bette midler, etta james, and bill evans versions.

"september in the rain" didn't either.

the only ones i could find to listen to were sinatra, dinah washington and willie nelson versions though.


"there will never be another you" on the other hand, i've been having a ton of fun with. thanks, frank!

i'd actually done this tune as part of a rhythm section behind a tenor saxophonist, so i was already familiar with it but had forgotten all about it.

after listening to several versions (nat king cole, sarah vaughn, django, andrews sisters, jimmy smith, lionel hampton/wes montgomery, mjq, chet baker, oscar, rosemary clooney and george benson) it started to grow on me. especially since it is an "up" number.

"tune 88" is pretty cool, but i wonder how well it would do without the horns, and of course the bass player have to be kicking butt!

still a funky variation on a twelve-bar blues never hurt anybody. i'll seriously mull it over.

i'm slowly getting through this list you folks have assigned me to audition.

here i want to thank dr whack for the joey d. video. the man's got some fingers and fire, eh? i mentioned above that i put together a version of "caravan" that's some real fun, and that video convinced me to use a b3 sound on it. thanks, bro!
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