Jazz Unlimited for Sunday, August 19, 2018 will be “Gospel Piano, Tributes to Jean Kittrell and Aretha Franklin Plus New Music.” This week’s Jazz Unlimited show will be in three parts. The Keys and Strings Hour will feature gospel piano with Ramsey Lewis, Les McCann, Hank Jones, Bobby Timmons, Mildred Falls with Mahalia Jackson, Gene Harris, and Johnny O’Neal in the first hour. We will play tributes to the Jean Kittrell, who died at age 90 on October 14 and Aretha Franklin, who died at age 76 on August 16 in the second hour. The third hour presents New Music by the Mikkel Plough/Mark Turner duo, Luciana Souza, the South Florida Jazz Orchestra, Judy Niemack with the Danish Radio Big Band, the vocal duo of Mark Winkler & Cheryl Bentyne, the Denny Zeitlin Trio and Miho Hazama & the Metropole Orkest Big Band playing Thelonious Monk compositions.
As I was working on the Aretha Franklin part of the show I came across a video of her singing “Nessun Dorma,” substituting for Pavarotti at the 1996 Grammies and learning the music in the 20 minutes before she went on stage. The story and video is found here: https://www.thedailybeast.com/when-aretha-franklin-sang-nessun-dorma-at-the-grammys-the-story-behind-the-greatest-award-show-performance-ever
The Slide Show contains my photographs of some of the musicians heard on this show.
The Archive of this show will be available until the morning of September 3, 2018.
This is a video clip with Jean Kittrell singing and laying piano on "Downhearted Blues" on a 2006 Caribbean Jazz Cruise.
