Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Rob Wasserman, 1952-2016: Saturday Music Club in memoriam

Rob Wasserman with the David Grisman Quartet: "14 Miles to Barstow"


Rob Wasserman Band: "Is Anyone There?"


Night Music, season 2, episode 15: Rob Wasserman & Bob Weir; The Modern Jazz Quartet; Nana Vasconcelos and John Lurie; Screamin' Jay Hawkins; Bongwater & the Fabulous Pussywillows; Artis the Spoon Man; archival footage of Dorothy Donegan, George Gershwin et al.

Rob Wasserman and Cheryl Bentyne: "Angel Eyes"


Rob Wasserman: "Ode to Casals"

2 comments:

Sergio (Tipping My Fedora) said...

New to me actually but anything with the MJQ s always exciting - all good stuff, thanks Todd.

Todd Mason said...

Wasserman, as I think you can gather, was a protean talent; and NIGHT MUSIC (known in its first of two seasons as SUNDAY NIGHT) was at its frequent best the best music series US television has seen, even given all the consistently and sporadically brilliant ones we've also had...the series was an NBC product that was run on Sunday late night/Monday early mornings on NBC's owned tv stations, and syndicated around the country to other stations, with NBC affiliates getting right of first refusal; Jools Holland's LATER is a pale if far more durable shadow of NIGHT MUSIC (Holland was co-host of SUNDAY NIGHT, and David Sanborn the solo amiable host and protean solid-talent accompanist to many of his guests in the second season).

The best episodes of NIGHT MUSIC often saw every guest on a given episode collaborate on a song at close, so, for example, the Sun Ra Arkestra and the Pixies (among others) would back up Al Green doing a rousing version of "Let's Stay Together"...