Crowd Pleasers

[AllanAllen]

The feel is different - the original Herbie version swings it more, the MS version is more funky/straight 8, plus he accents/phrases the turnaround differently, and of course the band shouts out "water melon man"


... sometimes very differentt



[Obscure jazz trivia alert: the bassist on the live one is Lee Smith, Christian McBride's father.]

There's also the Headhunters version, which might actually be the most crowd-pleasing-est way.

Got it, I thought you were talking about Headhunters v. Mongo, not Hard Bop v. Latin. That live clip is killer, sounds like a fun band to play in.

[pamosmusic]

Crowd pleasers kind of depend on the situation. Like what your role is.

Lots of the time jazz gigs are essentially background music gigs, at a restaurant or something. In that case you might want to really think about the singing. I generally think of the goal in those gigs to be playing in a way that people can listen to if they want or ignore if they don’t. Singing actually can be a bit intrusive.

Bar gig or a gig where folks are listening and stuff is a bit different.

And with instrumental stuff, the feel is a big one. Bossa, samba, sort of medium tempo shuffle-adjacent blues. Like sandu or Sonnymoon or something like that.

Specific tunes, folks have mentioned the big ones already. Ipanema, fly me to the moon, watermelon man, etc.

But honestly I find at most jazz gigs, folks don’t know the tunes no matter what. So just sounding good and knowing your role in the particular room you’re in is more important than the tunes themselves.

[AllanAllen]

The gig we played Saturday was a room of people looking right at us. Which made me think I should update my repertoire, and be able to accommodate being the show as well as the background. I've got the background jazz thing covered. I can be ignored like the best of them lol!