The Brush Book Joe Morello Never Wrote

We can complain about algorithms all we want, but they often find interesting things for us.  Because of the videos in the last post about Mel Brown playing through Brush Artistry YouTube recommended to me a series of videos by Jon Hazilla, who I'm not familiar with, but apparently teaches at Berklee.

Jon studied with Joe Morello, and later developed his own approach to Master Studies using brushes to develop facility with lateral strokes.

I've been revisiting Master Studies lately myself (with sticks, that is), so I think I'll be giving this a try soon.

Mel Brown demonstrating Philly Joe's "Brush Artistry"

In a recent excursion down the YouTube rabbit hole I came across a YouTube playlist of Portland drumming legend Mel Brown demonstrating each of the patterns in Philly Joe's venerable book Brush Artistry.  These are short, sweet, and to the point if you have any doubts about how the material in the book should be executed.

As the book is many years out of print, I can't see how there'd be much harm in sharing the fact that a scanned copy of it can be found here.  We certainly wouldn't want it to be lost to time.

Coincidentally, Mel was recently interviewed by Christian McBride on NPR's Jazz Night in America.  Check it out below to find out more about Mel and hear him play with his organ group.

Solo Transcription - Stan Levey, "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To"

My buddy, Pedro Velasco, from Machimbombo, has been posting a lot of transcription videos lately and asked me to collaborate with him on one.

Here's Stan Levey and Lee Konitz trading fours on "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To", from the album Originalee Konitz.

Dig This - Jack Sperling playing brushes

I recently stumbled across this video of the great Jack Sperling playing some burnin' brushes with singer/guitarist Caterina Valente.  Jack spent the majority of his career as a sideman to some of the biggest singers in the biz; Tex Beneke, Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Bobby Darin just to name a few.  He also did a fair amount of studio work, appearing on the soundtracks to big name films and TV like Peter Gunn, Rawhide, The Days of Wine and Roses, Bonanza, Charade, and Hogan's Heroes.

Caterina Valente was a lovely surprise for me.  I was not familiar with her before seeing this video.  She was born and raised in Paris, and at 88 years old it appears she still lives there.  Not only is she a killer guitarist and singer, but she does so in 11 different languages, and can actually speak six of them.  The interweb also tells me she's an actress and dancer, but I haven't checked that out as of yet.  What you should check out though is this video of her and Jack playing together on "That Old Black Magic".  Dig the big ol' Rogers kit, too.

Quick Lick - Edu Ribeiro

As I was doing my nightly gawking on YouTube this little lick happened to catch my ear, and I thought it would be a nice addition to any player's jazz vocabulary.  For the first two bars I've split the hands into two lines: right hand on top moving in circles with a pulse on each beat, and left hand on the bottom.

Edu Ribeiro is one of the baddest Brazilian cats out there; actually he's one of the baddest cats out there, period. I've got some more in-depth posts about him and his work coming soon. But for now, do yourself a favor and YouTube him, but prepare to feel very slow.