Everybody -- watch the show "JazzBox"

[Aaron Saunders]

It's a show on the Bravo channel, at 6am EST, on Tuesday mornings. Now, I know this isn't exactly the best time slot, it's an awesome show. There's another show on at 8 called Jazz Soloists (I think), where they profile...jazz soloists. Now, while I've never seen them profile a bassist on it, every time I see Jazz Box, there's a monster bass player playing. The first time I saw it was the guy who plays with Jesse Cook, and then the next week was a female bassist/singer. While her singing wasn't my cup 'o tea, she had monster chops and slapped her bass like mad.
I hadn't seen it for a few weeks 'cause I'm never awake at this time usually, this time, they had a pianist named Patricia Ford. While she was (to me) entirely musically unremarkable, her bassist was a total monster on the upright! He took a few solos during the show, and they were all awesome. The drummer was good, etc. but once again, I must reiterate: The bassists on this show are awesome. It's the only "live" music (recorded live performances, hence, not actually live) where the bassists not only take a solo, but MULTIPLE solos, and they're all awesome and not wanktastic. Plus, none of the instruments are ignored. I remember the percussionists for Jesse Cook (there was a drummer and a misc. percussionist who used various shakers, hand drums, boxes, etc.) had this absolutely wild solo while the rest of the band took out drum sticks and clicked them at the beat to keep time while the percussionists did awesome, crazy beats and stuff.
Plus, there's half an hour of jazz music videos in between JazzBox and Featured Soloists: The Jazz Sessions (I think that's the name), and some show I've never watched filling up the other half hour.

Sooo...in summary, watch Bravo on Tuesday mornings for awesome, awesome jazz programming.

Also, question -- does anyone here get CoolTV? It's a jazz channel on ExpressVu...I don't have it yet, but it sounds super-duper-awesome.