The Daily Tonic: Jazzbitch

Thanks for your stories of the jazz greats. Today we’re going to switch genres and make a similar request, but this time we want your most metal stories. Whether it’s outrageous live shows, backstage hell-raising, studio mischief or weirdly dull domestic tales – we want to hear the best anecdotes, fables and legends of the metal scene.

Send your stories in to hello@popbitch.com and we’ll dish out some digital goodies for the best of them.

According to his old tour manager, the reason that Louis Armstrong used to dab his face so frequently with a white handkerchief while playing wasn’t just because he got so hot and sweaty under the stage lights.

Those hankies of his were dusted in pharmaceutical-grade cocaine. Every time he brought it up to his face he’d actually be taking a re-energising little toot.

When late jazz singer George Melly was singing with the Mick Mulligan band in the early post-war years, a game evolved on their band’s bus where George would sit in the passenger seat, cock in hand, and try to successfully crack one off between two chosen points on the map.

The rest of the band would then try to put him off his stroke by shouting the names of old landladies, or reading aloud items of the menu from the B&B they were due to stay in.

AF writes:
“My favourite jazzer story: saxophonist and bossa nova king Stan Getz was a notoriously difficult and often unpleasant man. Soon after he died his daughter answered the phone at the family home to someone asking to speak to her dad. ‘I’m sorry, but he died recently,’ she explained. The caller offered his condolences and rang off.

“A few minutes later, the phone rang and the same person again asked to speak to Stan. ‘I’m sorry, but I thought I explained that he died recently,’ said his daughter.

“‘I know,’ replied the caller, ‘I just wanted to make sure it was true.'”

AC writes:
“Was at a party in Qatar with a drummer who played with one of the all-star acts at the Doha outpost of Jazz at Lincoln Centre. He was extremely drunk and kept on pestering me for tips on accounting jobs, as jazz drumming was a dead-end career only good for junkies.

“He later tried to take a shit in the back of my car when I gave him a lift back to his hotel.”

Today’s ten tracks come from pop stars who have turned their hands to jazz, with varying degrees of success. Most are interpretations of the classic standards, with one dogshit original tucked in there for good measure.

As always, you get a point for naming each song you can hear and a further point for naming the recording artist/s. There are a couple that are technically duets, but we won’t be sticklers for that – so leave it to you to decide how fair to be when marking.

Ten songs, twenty points.

[Brace yourselves]

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