Greetings Good Folks!
The samba continues on and as I write, Dori Cayymi’s song “Amazon River” is playing. If ever there was beauty in sound measured in pounds this track would be breaking the scale. Gorgeous everything — melody of bliss, chord changes supreme, groove right in there, lush orchestration, and all of it in a wonderful blendo.
Do you know Dori Cayymi?
Dori is a guitarist, vocalist, composer, and arranger. He was born in Rio de Janeiro to parents who were musicians, his father Dorival Caymmi was a famous composer and his mother Stella Maris was a singer. He had a full on career going in Brasil and then in the late 80’s, early 90’s he lived in Los Angeles recording and playing gigs. I got to meet him and heard him play live many times.
One of the sounds that he features is him singing without lyrics, as if he’s a horn.
It’s that sound that leads us into this week’s main event — a new Live(ish) From SpragueLand livestream concert on YouTube on Sunday evening.
On Sunday night we’ll be broadcasting live from SpragueLand and the focus will be the beautiful music composed and played by Dave Grusin and Earl Klugh. Both of these musician’s records were on heavy rotation at our house in Del Mar and each added a unique influence to modern jazz.
Dave Grusin not only plays jazz piano but also a huge part of his career has been dedicated to composing music for film and TV. His score for the movie “Havana” is one of my favorites —lush orchestral moves, gorgeous chord changes, and stellar melodies is his stock and trade. One of my favorite songs from that album is called “Hurricane Country” featuring Dori Cayymi on wordless vocals. It’s the sound that I was referring to earlier and for our version Tripp carries the melody on sax.
Earl Klugh was one of the first featured guitarists to break in on the scene playing nylon string guitar instead of electric guitar. There was Charlie Bird before him but actually no one else in the jazz arena. It was a unique sound and it inspired me to put down the pick and get those fingers acclimated to the nylon strings. Earl has composed some wonderful songs too.
We played this music live last Sunday and we had a blast. Super glad to get to do it again!
The band includes some of the best with:
Peter Sprague — guitar
Tripp Sprague — sax and flute
Danny Green — piano
Justin Grinnell — bass
Duncan Moore —drums
YouTube link
Price of admission? Actually the concert is free but we will have a “virtual tip jar” complete with PayPal, Zelle and Venmo info for you to donate whatever you feel good about. Also, old reliable snail mailing checks works too. You folks have been super generous with this and it makes us happy.
Paypal: peter@petersprague.com
Be sure when asked “Paying for an item or service” to hit the Change button and select the “family or friends” option to bypass the fees.
Venmo: @PeterSprague
Zelle: Peter Sprague peter@petersprague.com
mail checks via snail mail to:
Peter Sprague
311 East Glaucus St.
Encinitas, CA 92024
A few notes:
You don’t have to watch the show live. The same YouTube link will bring up the recording for you to view anytime. If you do watch it live (and we recommend this), you can participate in the live chat during the concert as long as you have a YouTube account.
That’s it and see you in the great algorithm of the sky, Peter