Today’s Roots Monday tune takes us on a musical journey through rhythms and moods of contemporary jazz. The Jon Weiss Trio features pianist and vocalist Jon Weiss and jazz vocalist Rochelle Thompson, along with drummer Al Hicks and bassist Fred Zabin. I’m not sure why that doesn’t make them a quartet, but maybe it’s the Jon Weiss Trio, featuring Rochelle Thompson.

Regardless, Jon, Rochelle, Al, and Fred have played with many jazz greats and you can hear their solid chops on this album, “Migrating Songbirds”. Today’s toker tune is entitled “Ridin’ High”, and reminds us all how the cannabis culture in America had its roots in the jazz of the 1920’s and 1930’s. So get hep, vipers!

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The Jon Weiss Trio
“Ridin’ High” (mp3)
from “Migrating Songbirds”
(BOGUE /MAGIC CITY RECORDS)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
More On This Album

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This week has been a little alternative for musical breaks in that I’ve been looking at some of the older marijuana music and marijuana music in genres other than rock and rap. So I couldn’t end the week without a bit of jazz from Louis Armstrong.

This tune is called “Song of the Vipers”, and you need to remember that “vipers” in jazz slang meant tokers, daddio, ya dig?

Armstrong was not shy about his love for “gage”, “muggles”, “tea”, or his favorite lady, “Mary Warner”.  Later in life, Armstrong famously said,

“If we all get as old as Methuselah, our memories will always be of lots of beauty and warmth from gage. Well, that was my life and I don’t feel ashamed at all. Mary Warner, honey, you sure was good and I enjoyed you ‘heep much.’”

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Today we continue a week of somewhat alternative musical choices with The Funnies. I’d tell you more about The Funnies, but the Google will only give me information on comic strips. They used to have a website at http://thefunnies.info, but it seems to have disappeared. If anyone out there knows more about The Funnies, let me know in the comments.

[UPDATE: Ask and I shall receive: here's The Funnies MySpace page...]

What I do know is this tune is from the album Masters of the Universe, which wins me over right there (”by the power of Greyskull!”).  The tune is called “Spelunking in the Ganja”, and if you don’t know, “spelunking” is cave exploring.  So I imagine this tune playing as a soundtrack to a long dolly shot through the canopy of an enormous cannabis garden, buds so thick and leaves so broad the light from above flickers through like lasers piercing the lush sea of green in the frame.

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It started in 2001 with a simple premise: take acclaimed musicians from a shared hometown but very different musical backgrounds, put them in a funky recording studio and have them create spontaneous art. From that humble thought came the Mighty Oak known around the world as the Philadelphia Experiment and hot on its heels the underground classic Detroit Experiment. And now after 4 years of crafty deliberation some of the best musicians from New York City have emerged with what is fast becoming the most anticipated record of the year – The Harlem Experiment.

The group includes Carlos Alomar (David Bowie), Ruben Rodriguez (Tito Puente/Eddie Palmieri), Don Byron (Vernon Reid), Eddy Martinez (Run D.M.C.), Steve Berrios (Chick Corea), Queen Esther (Duke Ellington), Steven Bernstein (Sex Mob), Taj Mahal, James Hunter, and Olu Dara.  Here they are with their cover of the Cab Calloway classic, it’s The Harlem Experiment with “Reefer Man”.

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I know what you’re thinking.

“Which one is Spartacus Jones?”

I assure you it’s the cowboy, not the white horse.

So I’m trying to follow Karri by putting up a blues song on Monday, and this song is kind of bluesy.  Spartacus Jones writes all sorts of songs, some country, some “patriotic,” but this one has a jazz flute (insert witty Anchorman reference here), and that makes it more blues than anything.

Spartacus is from New York and if you head to his website, you will notice that he loves horses.

I guess that’s cool if you’re a cowboy but … man, that’s a lot of horses.

For more Spartacy goodness, check out his myspace and his blog.

You can also check him out on music.podshow.com.

mp3 download  

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Well…the economy is a bit shaky, and I felt to get us in the right mood to enjoy the weekend I better call up some old friends to cheer us all up. After a long dry summer, our favorite Reefer Jazz heads, The Tall Brothers, are back with some nice advice in their toker-tune, “Cool Out”. My favorite BC buds are actual brothers, Thomas and Bill Small, and along with their legendary Vancouver, BC band they bring new fans into the cannabis culture. Bill helped launch the British Columbia Compassion Club Society that provides low-cost, high quality organic medicinal marijuana to anyone with a doctor’s prescription. Tom started writing music at the age of 8 and both brothers have a long musical history. The Tall Brothers reefer tunes are gleaned from the archives of Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and others. The band’s name comes from an old reefer jazz tune called “Man with the Jive” where a line exclaims “Light up baby and get real tall!” When things look dire, sometimes all you can do is get real tall then tackle the situation with a new perspective. For more great music from the Tall Brothers, please visit their myspace page to sample and download the best jazz music you’ve enjoyed in a long time. You can also visit their website, 420tunes.ca to purchase their amazing CD. I already feel better! Thanks Thomas and Bill!

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