Tom Skovgaard - Ragtime & Swing Piano

If you like piano boogie you will love this! Young Lasse Jensen from Ringsted is already in the top league of European boogie pianists, and he has performed on boogie festivals in Switzerland, France, Germany, England, and other countries, and he hosted a great boogie show in Køge in October this year. Here he plays the authentic “Boogie Woogie Stomp” (Albert Ammons) from the Copenhagen Harbour Jazz Festival in September – enjoy!

Todays calendar is a tribute to a great stride piano player, Philippe Bas, who sadly passed away last week. Philippe Bas was a real stride piano player, dedicated to this style, and he inspired many pianists with his excellent play, including my friend Jean Baptiste Franc who told me the sad news. R.I.P. Philippe Bas – your stride piano will live forever.

This is a wonderful piece! James P. Johnson, a great pianist and the father of stride piano, in a wonderful piano duet with Clarence Williams – and with a story / cross talk! Maybe, in a way, the worlds first rap ever! 🙂 I heard this piece for the first time a few years ago from a tape with no information, but luckily my good friend Jørgen Møller could tell me its title and who was playing! Enjoy these swingin’ pianos!

Ok, I am sufficiently immodest to include one of my own takes in this XMas calendar 🙂 And this solo is from the Copenhagen Harbour Jazz “Piano Battle” in Nyhavn this summer. Enjoy “Ain’t She Sweet”, and enjoy Per “Rock” and the other dancers on this wonderful summer day in Nyhavn, July 2011.

This is where it all began! Scott Joplin was the first to write a ragtime piano score sheet, and his Maple Leaf Rag (1899) is the model piece of the old school original ragtime piano music – played here on a piano roll by .. Scott Joplin himself, it is told!

The marvelous honky tonk piano of “Crazy Otto” was, I think, the first piano jazz I ever heard in my life at the age of 2, and I clearly remember that I loved it already back then. Many years later some good jazz friends of mine could tell me that this “Crazy Otto” was the german pianist Fritz Schulz-Reichel! Thanks, Lis and Kurt! 🙂 Enjoy the unique style of “Crazy Otto” in “If You Knew Susie”.

Fred Astaire is of course know by everybody as the world’s most famous dancer from numerous entertaining Hollywood movies. But just check this!

Jean-Baptiste Franc is born into a jazz family and has played wonderful swinging piano jazz since he was very young! Jean-Baptiste excels in various piano styles, but I know that one of his favourites is Donald Lambert, and – believe me – no one can play Donald Lambert like JB! Just listen!

This is a very nice solo piano piece composed and played by the Danish jazz pianist Leo Mathiesen (1906-1969). Leo Mathisen was inspired in his youth by Fats Waller and the Harlem piano style and he became one of the biggest names in Danish jazz in the 20th century, as a band leader, pianist and singer, and a composer. Enjoy Leo Mathiesens “A Wee Bit of Swing”!

Let’s have some boogie piano! This is from a boogie afterparty in UK 2006 with the amazing german boogie pianist Jörg Hegeman who has such a powerful pumpin’ style of boogie – just look at his left hand, pounding fingers 4+5 on the base note to keep the boogie rolling! Hope to see Jörg in Denmark some day!