jazz singles that became hits

[gord]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aONiEn8NHQA&feature=fvst
this was a hit i seem to remember. gord

 

[Mat]

Cheers, Steve. Here's a couple more:

Carmichael's Georgia On My Mind
Tizol's Caravan
Timmons' Moanin'
Coltrane's Giant Steps
Donaldson's Makin' Whoopee
Weill's Mack The Knife
Chaplin's Smile

 

[escher]

Woody Herman's Early autumn (composed by Ralph Burns) with Stan Getz on sax
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29VVabTj4Wk

 

[gord]

hi escher. woody hermans early autumn is one of my all-time favorite recordings.thanks. gord

 

[methodistgirl]

George Bension with On Broadway, and Give me the night. I love his
fancy guitar work on those jazz songs.
judy tooley

 

[GoneBaroque]

Cheers, Steve. Here's a couple more:

Carmichael's Georgia On My Mind
Tizol's Caravan
Timmons' Moanin'
Coltrane's Giant Steps
Donaldson's Makin' Whoopee
Weill's Mack The Knife
Chaplin's Smile

Great selection Mat. For the record Weill's Mack The Knife did not start out as a Jazz number. It is a number (arguably the hit number) from Die Dreigroschenoper or The Three-Penny Opera a musical (play with music) composed by Weill in 1931 in collaboration with the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht as an adaptation of John Gay's 18th Century composition "The Beggar's Opera. Brecht's play was concerned with a look at Capitalism from a Marxist viewpoint. Within two years of its first performance it had been translated into 18 languages and been performed 10,000 times throughout Europe. By this time both Weill and Brecht had been forced to leave Germany by the Nazi regime.

 

[Mat]

That's interesting, Rob. I didn't really know the story behind it. Thanks for sharing.

And since I'm here again, why don't I throw in a couple more:

Gillespie's A Night in Tunisia
Ellington's It Don't Mean a Thing
Jobim's One Note Samba
Green's Body and Soul

 

[gord]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hamup2cGTLU
this was a hit in the 50s. gord

 

[stu]

Night Train. I remember that one. The riff was recorded first by a Johnny Hodges small group in 1940 before Duke Ellington used it as an introduction to his 'Happy Go Lucky Local', then tenorist Jimmy Forest made quite a big hit with it in the fifties.

 

[southernparks]

The Pink Panther theme song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OPc7MRm4Y8

 

[Mat]

^^ How could I forget that? It's one of my favorites.

 

[Latona]

The Ramsey Lewis Trio's take of 'The In Crowd' did very well in the charts if i remember correctly, a wonderful version...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsFST-7Hx-Y

 

[White Knight]

I remember that work well, in addition to Hang On Snoopy, from my teen aged years. Their album, along with one by Ahmad Jamal, were amongst the first jazz LPS I bought.

 

[OLDUDE]

Herb Alpert had so many hits that I always considered as Jazz.
But were they? What does the Forum think?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=z_KDPUTyDyQ

 

[Latona]

Herb Alpert had so many hits that I always considered as Jazz.
But were they? What does the Forum think?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=z_KDPUTyDyQ

Yeah, technically I don't think you can really argue that a song like isn't jazz, even if it is a quite smooth and chart-friendly version of jazz. From '66 was it? It's interesting to hear the electric bass already up in the mix there, while many 'traditional' jazzers were holding out against the turning of the tide - but it wouldn't be long until pretty much all of them would include electric bass. The rise of soul, funk and chart-friendlier jazz sounds would make it financial too hard for most jazz musicians to hold onto their earlier styles and sounds even if they wanted to.
Guys like Miles and Donald Byrd were all-too-willing to change of course, and run with the new fusion sounds wherever they took them... but that's a another 'is it jazz?' question. :grin: