[Dixielandjazz] Hawkins & Guarnieri

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

I must check up ken's reference.
As I recall, when Hawk's big band was not doing very well he was said to have gone on stage somewhat lubricated playing Body and Soul in B Natural and inviting others to join in. 
 
Guarnieri was wonderfully caught by engineers jamming in this key with Charlie Christian, 
 
The late Ken Gallacher told me that he once asked JG, who was sitting at the piano, how he could do the prestissimo Trolley Song. "You mean this?" JG asked and started playing, and  Ken said he was almost blown off his feet by the slipstream
When I gave a young German pianist of more modernist persuasion JG's solo and relatively late Ellington recording he was almost knocked off his feet by the Debussyan subtlety, which can be heard on the Classics CDs of JG's 1940s recordings. And there are all those latterday Hines licks in JG's playing on a lovely quartet CD with Vic Dickenson, and the inpersonator echoes of yet another maestro on "Basie English". 
That was one astonishing pianist.