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Great links. Wow, I loved that medley, utterly beautiful...thanks, Wolf.

youtube is a pretty useful resource, I found some really awesome Bill Evans performances a while back.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bill+evans

I found some nice free video piano lessons on it too! One was on Blues/BLack Gospel (some of it was pretty basic but there were some good tips on blues playing in the lessons).

I am afraid I have another addiction to add to my piano addiction and music in general addiction. I am seriously addicted to youtube...
stayed up until almost 2am last night. Caught a video of Billie Holiday I really liked also.

youtube is awesome! I am so happy I have high speed internet now and a new machine; next project is setting up a way to make piano recordings myself.

I will have to check out the Bill Evans videos.

Longlive youtube.... way too much good stuff on it.
Wolf

Wolf,

OK, now you've got ME going

Here's Louis Armstrong doing Mack the Knife...gosh I was looking for this since forever but didn't think to look for it on utube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZRQFGy2ThI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPTqYi7LicE

Still the best mack in my opinion...have started fooling with this song but can't do it justice yet...

I tried to find a youtube of Ella & Louis.... I'd love to see them do the "Let's Call The Whole Thing Off" by Cople Porter.

I bet somewhere on the web there would be a video clip to see it.

Now; I'm gonna check out the Louis Armstrong clips above.

BTW I found some great Duke Ellington clips there; many with Ella together with him.
The youtube search engine is most helpful... just plug in a name of any artist or song... and away you go. A great resource for those of us into popular songs from 30-40s.

See you all later... gotta get another youtube fix. LOL

The Mack Knife video of Louis is great. I'm listening to it now as I type this.

Some nice piano comp work going on in the orchestration also.

"Oh the shark dear... has such teeth dear... and he shows them... pearly white..."

Yum.

Now I wanna just go and grab my trumpet...

I think youtube is taking the internet to aanother higher. Lot of music gems there... it is like visiting a museum of music or a college music library (only better).

Sorry for the double post... I was driving under the influence of youtube and lack of sleep.

Now... who else should we hunt for over there?
What songs might we try to find?

So many videos and so little time...
What to do?

Lots of vocal musicality going on in this video on youtube even if it isn't strictly piano related.... between Ella & Andy Williams.
Feast for the ears. It is a very fast swingy jazz duet with scatting, and some rather high tweets by Andy. If you like birdies; the tunes is about singing and tweeting like a birdy. Lawd... I don't know the name of it and I forgot to look it up. It is late I guess. Enjoy!

The link to the video is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN6L4diXrSI

Actually it is a melody starting out with Sweet Georgia Brown.... by the end of the video they are singing of birdies... really.

Man, they were really jamming, holding nothing back, lol, I had a big grin on my face by the end of it.

..It seemed some of their best work was in Europe.

You've got me hooked on Ella now, I just knew her name before, that shows how ignorant I am...


Ella in Italy 1960 - Tenderly

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbcF96qMC2o

Ella in Berlin 1968 - For once in my life:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl4z_QHlnmk

Ella sings "Desafinado" Sweden 1963

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zPUNoKAz68

Ella sings "Cry Me a River" with Joe Pass 1975 German TV (I love this song!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHVMxBkW0CQ

Ella doing Mack the Knife, what a lovely woman and singer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouF4J45Mn5s

One as a musician can really learn a great deal about making music from watching Ella; even non singers can learn from watching what she does with a song.Ella had so much musicality it whenever she treated a wonderful song her way, it's like one cannot see Ella doing anything ordinary. Music and Ella are two words that seem to naturally go together.

---------------
NOW If you loved Ella you may also love this gal froma more recent era.

Well this gal singer is a good one... Eva Cassidy. This gal grew up listening to Ella and Billie Holiday. Unfortunately she died at 32 of Skin Cancer; but had a chart topper in the UK with her Songbird Album (bird themes tonight?).

A Blues Alley Live Concert (this tune is CHEEK TO CHEEK) with a really nice piano solo in it played on a Steinway Grand. Sorry I don't know who the pianist is but he looked like he was really having fun.

Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRxfOYFVjP4

youtube has a video of the nightline piece about this singer; I think if Ella had heard she would have liked her too.

That will never be another Ella; but this girl has some Ella like qualities in the way she treats songs like "Over The Rainbow" and "Cheek To Cheek".

*Warning one fellow choir member I played Evas CD went and bought all of Eva's CDS the next day!

I glad you are hooked now on to Ella; she is my biggest inspiration as a singer. Vocalists can learn from instrumentalists and vice versa. Ella once said something like; almost everything good she has done she had stolen from the horns. She is one of the best when it comes to scat singing; and when she does those fast tempo scats you'd swear that'd be some trumpet part.

If I were exiled to some deserted island--- and could only have one thing as a luxury item; I'd take all of Ella's complete body of work.I never get tired of listening to Ella's singing.

I think I found the name of Eva Cassidy's pianist on the Cheek to Cheek video... Lenny Williams. Night Line Show about Eva Cassidy (3rd part of 3 segments; they (ABC-Nightline) did a whole show on her one Friday night).

Wolf, thanks so much for this musical education (I think now I studied all the wrong things in college), wow! Heavenly, and yet another song on my to do list...

Eva singing the piece I'm working on, autumn leaves (devastating):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7-haKkFnT8&NR

Here's one of my favorite Ella songs.
The recording on the Verve album The Best of Ella Love Songs Album is even better; but it is nice to see her singing the song.

Ella on:

I'm Beginning to See The Light
Dianah Shore TV Show/ Lucille Ball
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k_r0ELjFp8

I was trying to remember who was the person working on Autumn Leaves... there is a really pretty piano solo in the middle of that.

I have the book... I had to order it from the UK.
I heard there is a wonderful CD with the backup tracks tom all the songbird songs (karaoke type)--- I'd love to have that cd and plug it into my PA and sing along to it.

Have you also noticed how well Eva plays fingerstyle guitar? We lost her at too young an age; such musicality in her.

Be sure to check out the nightline videos on Eva (3 parts at youtube). Bluenote really missed the boat by not signing her when she wanted to not just stick to one genre.

Isn't this fun? Youtube is like Christmas... so many musical gems there to find and listen to.

I continue to really enjoy this thread.

My wife is out of town for a couple of weeks, and I needed something to occupy my time, so I tripped back down to the antique mall and ... voila!

I picked up the following:

Stomping at the Savoy, by Benny Goodman.

The End ("... at the end of a rainbow, there is a pot of gold . . .") (1950s Sam Cooke type item)

I'll be Around (Mills Brothers hit, 1950s)

Song of India, Rimsky-Korsikoff (classic, I know)

----------------

Since I graduated from High School in 1959, "The End" and "I'll Be Around" were both played at all the HS dances, and were Top 10. So naturally I warmed up to them.

"Stomping at the Savoy" is going to be great fun. I'm already toying with it. This piano solo is about 5 pages of music -- price $1.00. In good shape, too.

The pricing on this old sheet music is weird. The dealer says he checks a reference price-listing book. Some wonderful stuff is very cheap, while some weird old stuff no one ever heard of is as much as $8 for two (facing) pages of music.

Some of this looks a little hard, like the Benny Goodman, but when I play it, it lays down under my hands real nice. Not a problem. I think those composer/songwriters worked a lot with the piano, and they wrote scores that are sensitive to a pianist's fingers.

Any comments?

Billy Taylor playing In A Sentimental Mood... one of my favorite Duke Ellington song to sing.
Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY89ewAx4wU

You are going to be busy.
Some great finds! Stomping At The Savoy is wicked... hope you are able to send a recording when you feel it is ready for the world.

The library of congress has many resources. One archive is at http://www.loc.gov/rr/perform/

But you can also go to the main page loc.gov, and put "sheet music" in the search box to find other collections.