Evening Distractions lead to Oliver Wakeman and Steve Howe and some great jazz guitar!!

So I came home tonight from being outside all day doing a percolation test in Howell Township, all ready to write about the albums that I listened to on the way to, and from the site, and then……


I was researching the album  
Ravens & Lullabies from Gordon Giltrap and Oliver Wakeman. As part of the research,  I went to Oliver’s page on Spotify and found a great album The 3 Ages of Magick-  wait Oliver Wakeman and Steve Howe?? The light bulb goes off over the dim old man’s head…….and at AllMusic I read this about the album……

It seems this album has been tailored for fans of Yes and particularly of their colorful keyboardist, Rick Wakeman. The latter’s son, Oliver, is at the helm of this project, which shares thematic similarities with dad’s Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Granted, there is something unfair about comparing Oliver Wakeman’s music with his father’s, but who could do otherwise? Everything he knows about music he learned from his father. He plays the piano, the organ, even the mini-Moog like him, using the same kind of phrasing and conveying the same conception of romanticism. And the fact that he recruited guitarist Steve Howe to grace half of the tracks on The 3 Ages of Magick will make any Yes fan feel at home.

So here’s YouTube Video for “The Enchanter” keyboard’s by Oliver (son of Rick) Wakeman and guitar by Steve Howe…..

Then I glanced over my shoulder and spotted Wes Montgomery’s album Down Here on the Ground, which made me think about one of Wes’ other A&M releases Road Song, so I thought was that I’d go “into the night” with a video of the title track of the album “Road Song” What I found at YouTube was a super group of guitarist playing the song. The group consisted of: Mark Whitfield, Chuck Loeb, Pat Martino and Russell Malone. The video took up 11 plus minutes of my time, when I was eating dinner, but it was worth every minute of it!!! It reminded me of how much I liked Mark Whitfield and Russell Malone and sent me scurrying to find out more about Chuck Loeb and Pat Martino, whose names, but not their music I know!!

So here is the video,  you can go “into the night” with the great “Road Song”, while I check out the two guys in the middle, and think about which albums from the guys on the ends, I want to listen to tomorrow!! So maybe you’ll read about Ravens & Lullabies and Rubidium by Mashine later or maybe I’ll just fall asleep while reading Cut to the Bone by Jefferson Bass, who knows….not even The Shadow….

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