About three years ago I saw Ronnie Laws at the Bethesda Blues and Jazz Club, after hearing him promote the show on WPFW earlier that day. Something went wrong. The house was half empty, and he didn't show up for the first set. It looked to me like a labor strike. After waiting a while the band played the first set anyway. They took advantage of the situation to live out their fantasies. One who absolutely could not sing took the microphone and belted out a song like they were Maroon 5. At the end of it a lady sitting next to me was looking perplexed and speechless. I said, "That guy can't sing." And she snapped out of her shocked state and said, "That guy can't sing!"
That's weird; it's like you can never find out why that happened. I didn't know he still did live shows - seems like he's mostly done session work for the last 20 years or so. It's funny that the Blue Note Records site (a label he was with on and off for a number of years) says that he "has a nice soulful sound on tenor, but has never seriously pursued playing jazz". They consider him to be more of an R&B artist apparently.
The original version of a song covered many times since, pretty much a standard now.
About three years ago I saw Ronnie Laws at the Bethesda Blues and Jazz Club, after hearing him promote the show on WPFW earlier that day. Something went wrong. The house was half empty, and he didn't show up for the first set. It looked to me like a labor strike. After waiting a while the band played the first set anyway. They took advantage of the situation to live out their fantasies. One who absolutely could not sing took the microphone and belted out a song like they were Maroon 5. At the end of it a lady sitting next to me was looking perplexed and speechless. I said, "That guy can't sing." And she snapped out of her shocked state and said, "That guy can't sing!"
After years of searching the internet for evidence of some early childhood memories involving my Dad and his musical life as a jazz piano player I finally got some results. One thing I remembered was that he played with a band called Bill Wood and the Woodmen. I also have a vague memory that they cut a demo album. Yet until now I could find not one whit of information on the entire internet. It turns out that the band leader's son recently put up a Bandcamp page of the demo album after digitalizing the vinyl version. It also provided me with some cool photos of my dad as he looked when I was just a baby. A bonus for the family archive!
After years of searching the internet for evidence of some early childhood memories involving my Dad and his musical life as a jazz piano player I finally got some results. One thing I remembered was that he played with a band called Bill Wood and the Woodmen. I also have a vague memory that they cut a demo album. Yet until now I could find not one whit of information on the entire internet. It turns out that the band leader's son recently put up a Bandcamp page of the demo album after digitalizing the vinyl version. It also provided me with some cool photos of my dad as he looked when I was just a baby. A bonus for the family archive!
After years of searching the internet for evidence of some early childhood memories involving my Dad and his musical life as a jazz piano player I finally got some results. One thing I remembered was that he played with a band called Bill Wood and the Woodmen. I also have a vague memory that they cut a demo album. Yet until now I could find not one whit of information on the entire internet. It turns out that the band leader's son recently put up a Bandcamp page of the demo album after digitalizing the vinyl version. It also provided me with some cool photos of my dad as he looked when I was just a baby. A bonus for the family archive!
The Tom Waters Trio from London, UK played in our village two evenings ago. Excellent. Over the top for 18 year old musicians..... All three are students in the Purcell school for young musicians. Tom's father is Ben Waters.
