The Japanese Pianist Plays aka Erroll Garner, Dreamy

Let me introduce some Japanese Jazz pianists. Those people learned jazz at US military camps in Japan after the WW2. Yes, they were the first generation. Their crest was during 1960es and some to early 70es. The first big band who played at jazz festival was Sharps and Flats in 1968 at Newport Jazz Festival. It could have been 67, I am not sure now. And the ting is that I was there,

They brought shakuhachi, a bamboo flute, that had been used exclusively for Japanese folk music. That was quite impressive. The band leader was one of them, I mean one of the graduates from US army camp.

Now, this person, Mr. Sera is another example. The MC, Ohashi has been popular figure up until 90es. He retired to Canada now. They are talking about the jazz scene of after the WW2. Then Ohashi asks Sera to play aka Garner and Sera did Dreamy.



After the play, Ohashi started to talk about Ray Brown, bassist with Oscar Peterson. One day Ray was talking with Ohashi and said that he wished to play with Garner. Ohashi replied to him that he should not make complaint playing with Peterson. Ray should be feeling utmost happiness doing it.

But Ray said that he wanted to ride along Garner's rhythm. The set up had realized, Ohashi says. Ray Brown looked ecstatic playing with Garner. Sera's play does imitate Graner nicely though, Garner is much more earthy than Sera and this play characterize Japanese jazz scene of later part of 20th century.