Last week I wrote about a long-lost video from the Jazz Goes to College series. That series is all but unknown now, and the only reason I came upon it was that someone in a Facebook Pat Metheny fan group posted a link to a audio-only YouTube video of a 1976 Gary Burton group show featuring Pat Metheny, and one of the related links was of Gary Burton as part of the Stan Getz quartet.
As most people know, YouTube is often like that – while we often go there for a specific video or song, we tend to keep exploring links (often for way too long) and sometimes even find something surprising.
But imagine a site that sent along a new link at least once a day of a small gem of a video to celebrate a specific artist. Maybe it is their birthday, anniversary of their death, date of their biggest recording, or just a cool find. Now THAT seems like a useful service – and that is exactly what ‘Jazz On The Tube’ delivers.
I have been on their mailing list for quite a while now, and every day I look forward to hearing and seeing some small hidden gem – and I am often surprised that I don’t know the song, or even that the artists recorded together! Here is the site description:
Before the advent of the Internet and online video the only reliable way to SEE jazz was to go to a live show.
This is still the best way to see the music, but if you want to see the many great musicians who are no longer with us (and the living ones who aren’t playing tonight in your town), we’ve created Jazz on the Tube as the Internet’s search engine for jazz videos.
Here are a few recent gems:
Long lost bassist Henry Grimes:
Michael Brecker from 2001 (we lost him to cancer in 2007):
Ron Carter playing piccolo bass:
Gary Burton playing Afro Blue:
Paco De Lucia, John McLaughlin, and Al Di Meola simply burning through the tunes:
Head to JazzOnTheTube.com for more information and to sign up for their daily emails. You can also check them out on Facebook.