December 28, 2006 - Playing Favorites: The Jim Cullum Jazz Band

Whether they’re performing at the Landing in San Antonio—or touring out on the road—The Jim Cullum Jazz Band gets plenty of requests to play audience members’ favorite tunes. But, did you ever wonder what tunes the musicians themselves would request?

This week on Riverwalk Jazz band members are calling the shots. We’ll hear the tunes they love to play—night after night—on the bandstand, and favorite recorded performances from the Riverwalk Jazz archive. We’ll hear pieces that have a personal meaning for them—and numbers they simply enjoy listening to.

Band members talk about their choices for this broadcast.

Jim Cullum (leader, cornet) In our version of "Queenie's Ballyhoo and Dance," a tune from Jerome Kern's Show Boat, the composition, the arrangement by John Sheridan, and the band's performance all came together in a remarkable alignment of forces. And the track "Pluckin The Bass," performed by the band with bass legend Milt Hinton in 1991, is a high-water mark for the radio show.

Don Mopsick (bass) "Gypsy Love Song," from an 1898 operetta by Victor Herbert, was the song we sang with the glee club for my 6th grade "graduation" from Elementary School #1 in Linden, NJ. Our version is inspired by the great Bob Crosby Bob Cats band of the 1930s.

Mike Waskiewicz (drums)  My choice is our version of Charlie Shaver's "Undecided," simply because it swings. 

Howard Elkins (banjo, guitar)     It's alway a lot of fun for me when Paul Mehling—a disciple of the great Django Reinhardt—shows up to record with us. For this show, I picked a quartet version of "Them There Eyes" and our duet on "Nuages," Django's best-known tune.

Jim Turner (piano) One of my favorites is the "modern classic" we recorded by Gerry Mulligan, "Night Lights."