Friday, June 27, 2008

Sept. 2, 2007 - Luckey Roberts and Donald Lambert

The Influences:

A quick note on stride piano:
There's a great website called Stride Piano.com http://stridepiano.com/bios/gen1/jackson.html
This is a great place to start your research into the style. You'll also find a proper definition of the style and a much better description than I will give. You will also find some bios on many other lesser known but great stride pianists at the site.
My definition goes like this:
Stride is the proper way to play piano in jazz. If you have two hands, you should be using both of them!




Luckey Roberts
(Aug. 7 1887 – Feb. 5, 1968)

Along with James P. Johnson, Luckey Roberts is widely considered a founder of the stride piano style. For that alone, he is worth some study and recognition.
There aren’t many recordings of the man’s playing but what I’ve heard has been nothing less than fantastic. I’d highly recommend looking into these recordings and spending some quality time learning about the man.

http://www.mp3.com/artist/luckey-roberts/summary/
http://members.aol.com/midimusic/robertsbio.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luckey_Roberts




Donald Lambert (Feb. 12, 1904 – May 8, 1962)

Like Luckey Roberts, Donald Lambert didn’t make many recordings. In fact, he more or less shunned the limelight and all that goes with it, by most accounts. So, we have little to go on. But, the recorded material he did leave with us is very well worth the investment.
This guy can play! Read up on him and listen.

http://www.mp3.com/artist/donald-lambert/summary/
http://members.aol.com/midimusic/lambertbio.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Lambert


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Austin, Texas, United States
Music has been, at the very least, a truly notable part of most of my life. It was guitar in the late '80s through the '90s, playing the punk rock and death metal until the uilleann pipes came along to show me Irish music. Somewhere in the midst of the pipering madness, I decided to pick up a string bass. Next thing I knew, I was in Austin, TX studying traditional jazz and playing string bass full-time. Music has been good to me and continues to show me the good things in life. With this blog, I hope to share some of those good things (more than likely, I'll probably share some rants, too). I hope you get something from it, even if it's just a good laugh (with me or at me: your choice).