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Re-Imagining Of Familiar Tunes

Jazz Unlimited for November 13, 2016 will be “Re-Imagining of Familiar Tunes.”  Great Jazz musicians are constantly re-imagining tunes in their own style.  We will examine three famous tunes, “King Porter Stomp,” “St. Louis Blues” and “Caravan” and hear them re-imagined in many styles that range from traditional to avant-garde.  The groups and musicians heard on this show include Jelly Roll Morton, our own Charles Creath, Fletcher Henderson, Benny Goodman, Teddy Bunn, Dizzy Gillespie, Bob Brookmeyer, Gil Evans, Wynton Marsalis, Bob Stewart, Air, Sun Ra, Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, Art Tatum, Earl Hines, Don Byas, Thad Jones & Mel Lewis, McCoy Tyner, Don Byron, our own Greg Osby, Duke Ellingtton, Ella Fitzgerald, Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey, Oscar Peterson, Abdullah Abrahim, the Either/Orchestra and James Carter.

The Slide Show contains my photographs of some of the musicians heard on this show.

The Archive for this show will be available until the morning of November 21, 2016.

Here is Abdullah Ibrahim playing "Green Kalahari" on solo piano at Heineken JazzAldia 2011.

Dennis Owsley has broadcast a weekly jazz show for St. Louis Public Radio since April 1983. He holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and is a retired Monsanto Senior Science Fellow and college teacher. His show, Jazz Unlimited, airs every Sunday from 9:00 p.m. to midnight. The show has the largest jazz audience in St. Louis and was named Best Jazz Radio Show in St. Louis for the years 2005-2007 and 2009 by the Riverfront Times. In celebration of his 25 years on the air, January 24, 2008 was proclaimed Dennis Owsley Day" in the City of St. Louis. He is the 2010 winner of the St. Louis Public Radio Millard S. Cohen Lifetime Achievement Award. Dennis is also a noted photographer, and his exhibit, In the Moment: Photographs of Jazz Musicians, ran from September 23, 2005 to January 21, 2006 at the Sheldon Art Gallery. He is a lifetime student of jazz history and teaches short courses on the subject. Dennis is the author of the award-winning book City of Gabriels: The History of Jazz in St. Louis 1985-1973, published in 2006.