All caught up!
I volunteer as a DJ for Charlottesville’s local independent radio station, WTJU Charlottesville, 91.1 FM, and am currently the every-other-week co-host of All That Jazz, which airs from 9:00–11:00am ET on Thursdays.
WTJU broadcasts locally and streams worldwide on the web, so you can tune in live no matter where you are, or you can catch the archived stream anytime!
All volunteers can sub for others, too. While I’ll mostly sub for Jazz shows, I may get to do the occasional Rock, Folk, or Classical one.
Whenever I host a show, I’ll drop its stream and a corresponding playlist on the blog, and I’ll write a little about what I’m spinning and why.
Hope you enjoy and hear something that inspires!
All That Jazz | Thursday, April 4, 2024
Public Spotify playlist:
Set 1: Fours
The date of this program was 4/4/24. That’s a lot of fours! So set 1 features tunes with “four” in the title.
Hey, it’s Joe Henderson again! Here he rips over the Miles classic, “Four,” with the Wynton Kelly Trio.
If you didn’t know, Nick Payton has a lot of opinions on the word “jazz.” In “Jazz is a Four-Letter Word,” he lays them out for you. And btw, this album is great—Nick plays keys and trumpet at the same time on it. Killin’ stuff.
Mingus’s “Four Hands” surprised me because he’s created for playing both keys and bass on the track (and record). I didn’t realize that people (especially jazz artists) were overdubbing back in ‘54!
“Four on Six” is another great standard, and this shred fest by John Abercrombie and John Scofield (a duo of Johns who are not to be confused with the Johns of They Might Be Giants).
Set 2: Bens
My brother in life and jazz, Brandon, and his wife, Eliza, had a baby the other month. Since, Brandon has triumphantly reported that he loves falling asleep to the music of Brian Blade. Appropriately, Brandon had been lambasting me for not playing music for his child, lol.
But, instead of playing what Ben already loves, I played a set featuring jazzmen whose names are Ben so that little Ben can subconsciously absorb the idea that, yes, he, too, can play jazz with a name like that! And there are Bens of so many different instruments to be influenced by!
Notes about some of these tracks:
“Young Bean”: Don’t know if ‘Bean’ is supposed to refer to Ben or a baby, but either way, fitting!
“Thursday’s Theme”: It was a Thursday! How about that.
A number of these tunes feature jazzmen from Philadelphia (notably, Benny Golson and the Philadelphians), which was a bonus because Eliza hails from the City of Brotherly Love.
“Songly Speaking”: The Ben here is Ben Williams on bass.
“Tennis”: I didn’t play this one, but it was worth keeping for the extra Ben.
I hope that little Ben enjoys this playlist forever! Or at least until the demise of Spotify.
Shoutout to Pat’s Dad
One of my favorite parts about DJing is getting screenshots of texts that my friend (and drummer for The Hard Modes) Pat’s dad sends to him while my show is on. This week’s was even more of a hoot, so I thought I’d share:
The Closer
The last Ben of the session is guitarist Ben Monder, who in accompanies vocalist Sunny Kim and percussionist Satoshi Takeishi in “The Dream of the Earth”. As the next show’s host pointed out, this song turned out to be a fitting transition to her show’s theme, “The Sun and the Moon”, in honor of then-upcoming eclipse.
I hope you find something new you love in these sets. Let me know in the comments!
Peace,
Greg
lol Pat's dad is funny. looking forward to the "shed" show :P