Coffee Music Live

We are still assembling "headliner" videos of me and Brooke, but here is a solo version of Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg's "If I Only Had a Brain"

jk solo here on "'Till There Was You," from Meridith Wilson's The Music Man.

I'm the guest this week with a solo rendition of Duke Ellington's "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" ©1942.

All my favorite players are on vacation, but I've dug up a golden oldie from last year. I played at my cousins' wedding reception:

Mazel Tov Mosh and Annabelle!

And special thanks to rustyvision.com for this video and buckets of good advice and technical direction. All the cool things you see around here are his, all the mistakes are mine.

Something about a Telecaster® and a Cole Porter tune: "I've Got You Under My Skin."

Music by Henry Mancini and lyrics by Johnny Mercer -- how you gonna beat that?

My Dad played piano and once told me that all the great players viewed this as their favorite tune: great changes, pretty melody. John Blackburn and Karl Suessdorf are not exactly household names, but in a just world they would be for writing "Moonlight in Vermont."

The crimsonburst telecaster gets another workout on Buddy Johnson's "Since I Fell for You."

[Note to wardrobe: don't schedule the red shirt with the red guitar again. Maybe a maple colored shirt with a black pickguard or something...]

How Red the Guitar! How Strong the coffee!

How long we gotta talk like this?

What a great old Johnny Burke tune. My favorite version is from New Orleans trumpet master Leroy Jones but I snuck in a little homage to Louis Prima ("Sunshine and Ravioli").

I used to sing this song to my friends' cat. Now I understand Alfie has gone to kitty heaven after 17 years.

Neither my feline friend nor I ever made it past the first eight bars, so I had to learn this tune for the coffeehouse's first special dedication.

It's an unusual and pretty song from Burt Bacharach and Hal David in 1966.

In a just world, Greg Keelor and Jim Cuddy (you bet I had to look that up) wold be household names for this wonderful tune.

I'm my own guest this week. I found some old video laying around that my friend Byurhan had shot with his new camera. He bought it when he was visiting from Ireland 2003-4, sometime around then. Here's Errol Garner's Misty:

It is "our song" and it is fun to see the old house and my lovely bride's clapping with two hands. Can't say I remember the shirt -- but it goes with the Cinema Verite, n'est ce pas?

Edith Piaf's classic, La Vie En Rose. I started using the "Kindhearted Woman" intro and thought if I was going to play it as a blues, I better get out the telecaster.

Here's one for you Angel fans. "If I Ruled the World" by Leslie Bricusse and Cyril Ornadel,

Keep them Sammy Cahn tunes coming! Sammy Cahn and Jimmie Van Huesen's "All the Way."

Gotta get Brooke into the coffeehouse to sing it, but in the meantime...

Mister Jerome Kern

Harold Arlen's bewitching melody. (And those are E Y Harbirg's lyrics running in your mind.)

A beloved relative was over and picked up my Johnny Mercer book, It is truly amazing how many incredible songs he enlyriced.

Rodgers and Hammerstein (South Pacific, 1949). Too sad to sing, so here's an instrumental:

Longtime fave. Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields ©1930

What a great song. I heard a terrible elevator-music version in a Chinese restaurant and the tune stuck in my head. (You should have heard their version of "Whiter Shade of Pale.")

The coffeehouse muse ran down the tune for me. It was written by John D. Loudermilk.

The standard of standards: Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Girl from Ipanema."

It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.

I always liked this Bob Dylan tune. And we needed a little more blues around here...

Erroll Garner's classic -- our song.

Can't have a coffeehouse with no Dead tunes, it's in the rules. This is one of my favorites.

Watching the Tour de France, and the "King of the Mountains" is awarded a Polka Dot jersey by two attractive young French women in Polka Dot dresses.

Made me think of this great Jimmy Van Huesen-Johnny Burke song: