When Bibs checked his calendar and saw April 30 was International Jazz Day, he felt a playlist coming on. Check it! Bibs’ 100 Years of Jazz, Vol. 1 is on Spotify, below. Volume 2 coming soon!
Included: Ethel Waters, Louis Prima, Jelly Roll Morton, Catherine Russell, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Earl Hines, Django Reinhardt, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Anita O’Day
Happy 100th, Ella! Elizabeth somehow whittled down her favorite Fitzgerald tracks to 21 (not easy) and put them into a Spotify playlist. Enjoy!
The Hot Sardines are thrilled to bring their “liquor-drinking jazz”’ to Jason Moran’s Fats Waller Dance Party at Oakland’s Paramount Theatre on March 11. Called “joyous and foolish and graceful” by the New York Times, the Fats Waller Dance Party is a riotous celebration fusing early jazz with Motown, hip-hop and house.
Created in 2011, the Fats Waller Dance Party brings the party atmosphere of Waller’s performances in the 1920s and 1930s to a generation that’s gotten used to thinking of jazz as a serious genre. Moran explained, “Having a Fats Waller Dance Party is trying to understand how music engages an audience that shows up to actually get down, you know, not sit in a chair.”
Elmore Magazine debuts the title track from French Fries & Champagne today and interviews Elizabeth, who talks about working with Alan Cumming and what’s really going on in Louis Armstrong’s trumpet solos:
Summer dates for the French Fries & Champagne summer tour have been announced. All info at hotsardines.com/shows.