The Hippies, the Summer of Love and the Jazz Man!

Hi Friends, getting back into the gig email after a week of private gigs. It’s been fun and it’ll also be nice joining up with you back in the real world.

Setting the vibe up here at SpragueLand for this morning’s scribe, I have Charles Lloyd’s “Forest Flower” album filling up the air space. It’s a live recording from the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1966 featuring Charles on sax, Keith Jarrett on piano, Cecil McBee on bass and Jack DeJohnette playing drums. Amazing stuff and dig Keith’s opening line of his solo — pentatonic major heaven! The band plays the “Forest Flower” tune and the whole 2nd part “Sunset” is 11 minutes of a major chord vamp where they toy with all the outer limits of the major scale. It’s fantastic and the audience is right there with them. This moment takes place right around the same time of the Summer of Love, in the epicenter of where it was all going on. You can feel the hippies influencing the jazz man. I dig it!

In this month’s cover story for the San Diego Troubadour they illuminate the wonderful life of Rebecca Jade. Rebecca is the gal that sings up a storm on our “Planet Cole Porter” release and she’s one of my favorite vocalists, bringing together jazz and soul with a warm sound and impeccable pitch. It’s neat to read about her early years and how she’s rising to great things as we speak. Great detail brought forth by premier jazz writer Robert Bush.

Check it out here:

Also in the June San Diego Troubadour is an excellent, ultra positive CD review of Planet Cole Porter. Paul Hormick writes a bunch of cool stuff but this really stood out, “it is such a joy to review CD’s as good as this one. Planet Cole Porter receives my highest recommendation.” Yeah man, thanks amigo, how much do I owe you? Hah! Here’s a link to follow if you want to check out the whole review. 

And if you’ve been on the fence about checking the CD out for yourself, no worries we’ve still got copies over here at SpragueLand with your name already on them!

Up for live music this week, I’ll be joining pianist John Opferkuch on Friday night at Northern Spirits in San Marcos. Mack is on bass along with Charlie Weller on drums. Can’t wait!

And rounding out the week, brother Leonard and I are playing at the San Diego Festival of the Arts on Sunday afternoon right there on Harbor Boulevard in downtown SD. Super cool scene, we did it last year and the mix of sun, ocean breeze, good listening folks, and festival setting can’t be topped. We’re in!

Leonard and Peter jammin’ under the purple moon.

Happy summer good people, Peter