Ron and I collaborated with our dear friend Paul Schelly to create a long-distance video of one of our favorite jazz standards, “All of Me”!
We had the idea to do this about a year ago, and finally carved out the studio time to rehearse and record our individual videos.
Ron assembled the video and it is ready for your viewing and listening pleasure!
A bit of history about me and my contribution:
As a rock-and-roll lover since my earliest memories, I had never considered straight-ahead jazz — or even vocal jazz — to be very exciting. Then my band director in high school (I think I was a Junior) said that he wanted me to play tenor sax (and flute) in his newly formed jazz band. Well, would have been stupid of me to say “no” because I was working my way up to the coveted position of playing piccolo in the orchestra! So there I was, honking away on the sax in Mr. Scheuer’s favorite jazz tunes, next to a fabulous sax player, Dana P, who could improvise really well. It was humbling but I learned a lot in a non-threatening band environment, haha.
Cut to me in the early 90s. I was living in Santa Monica, California, and I decided — completely randomly — to take a jazz improvisation class. Rather than play my flute, I worked on “scatting,” which is vocal improvisation. It was really fun, but humbling again, because there was a middle-aged woman who smoked the room.
Synchronistically, about six months later, I was taking a music theory class at Santa Monica College and I met a young guitarist who wanted to form a jazz trio with me on vocals. We started checking out CDs from the library and listening to crooner-era jazz songs several hours each week. We even rehearsed a dozen times or so before I left SaMo and moved to Northridge with my then-boyfriend (Ron).
Ron and I started adding jazz classics to our repertoire of pop, rock, and original eclectic music. This was a very musically expansive time!
I was enthralled with the inimitable Billie Holiday, and hers was the first version of “All of Me” that I’d ever heard.
I tried and tried to emulate her style, but it was impossible. So, I have my own verve, and that’s what I plough into, haha!
I have also worked for the last couple of decades on improvising on flute, guitar, and keyboard. It’s a big playground, people!
Ron and Paul and I used to play together in a trio that we called Super Eclectic Acoustic Electric.
We performed and recorded many styles of music, including rock, pop, country, blues, and jazz. We all played guitar and sang, and Paul and Ron played bass. We sometimes used an Alesis drum machine, or the Yamaha QY-20 that had programmable music instruments and drum sounds. We had A LOT of fun!
Check out these Black & White photos of us youngsters striking poses on the California State University Northridge campus. A student photographer did the shoot and the developing.
It’s been a real treat for us to bring back the excitement of playing [almost] together!
By the way, this was my first time improvising with my flute on “All of Me”!
I hope you enjoy the video. Feel free to share it if you please.
Wishing you all joyful, life-affirming creativity in your life!💖
Lovely, Sharine! A very nice interlude to all the intense reading I've been doing today. Thank you (all of you)!
How fun was that!! You have a lovely voice. Thanks for this. ^_^