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4/4/16


On September 3, 1958, I interviewed George Shearing in a studio at WCAU, Philadelphia (then a CBS station), where I produced and wrote a weekly documentary-type radio show called Accent on Jazz. I had immigrated to the U.S. less than a year earlier and was still acclimatizing myself to working in the real radio world. Compared to a small quonset hut military station in the barren wilds of Keflavik, this was the big time. My interview with Lester Young, in that same studio a week before had not gone so well, but Mr. Shearing gave this one its relative smoothness.

6 comments:

  1. Terrific interview, and glad to see a new blog by you, Chris!

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  2. Thank you, Ehsan. It's good to see that you're still around and dropping by. I have been neglecting this blog, somewhat discouraged by the DivShare service going out of business without alerting its customers. Many audio/video embeds were "disappeared" in the process--I am trying to restore them, little by little.

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  3. Fascinating to hear this - for all sorts of reasons. The way Shearing changed his way of speaking over the years; the way he harks back to the very first quintet as the most tightly integrated musically; his dislike of Toots Thielemans' nickname, and of Bechet's vibrato. Thank you very much for making this wonderful historic interview available.

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  4. I just found this blog and i'll be back often. I saw George Shearing in concert years ago with Joe Pass. Good times. Thanks for posting this.

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  5. The third artist on that bill was Joe Williams.

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