Google loves jazz

Alex Ross recently posted a list of the top music searches on Google. Doing the same exercise for searches coming to On An Overgrown Path from Google is interesting. Among the top results are:

Jan Johansson - whose Jazz på svenska (Jazz in Swedish) sold more than a quarter of a million copies. The Swedish jazz pianist tragically died in a road accident in 1968 at the age of just 37. Despite making Sweden's best selling jazz record he is relatively unknown outside Scandinavia, and there is little on the internet about him. My October 2005 article Sweden's best kept secret - Jan Johansson is one of the few hits returned by Google. Jan Johansson was a superb musician, if you don't know his music why not click over to my article which also has some audio samples?

Radka Toneff - interestingly another Scandinavian jazz musician who is also sadly no longer with us. The Norwegian singer (picture above) made one exceptional album, Fairytales, which is certainly a jazz classic. Her interpretation of the title track from Kurt Weill's 1949 opera Lost in the Stars is, for me, one of the greatest single tracks ever recorded. Fairytales, made in 1981, is fiendishly difficult to get hold of, and there is little about Radka Toneff on the internet. My July 2005 article Fairytales - an album beyond words attracts a lot of readers via Google, hopefully some of them will be tempted to search out a copy of this extraordinarily beautiful album.

Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Image credit - Radka Toneff from
Jazzpages.com
Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. If bandwidth is a problem with your permission I will host your image.
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Journey with Jack Reilly - who is very much alive and jazzing.

Comments

Pliable said…
Although not strictly jazz another article that has a lot of referrals from Google is the Nick Drake piece A troubled cure...for a troubled mind.

I have revisited Nick Drake several times On An Overgrown Path. His unique blend of mellow folk/rock music (and life)are well worth exploring.

I have Patrick Humphries' excellent book Nick Drake - the biography on my "to be re-read" pile, and his CDs are often in the player.

Maybe I'll find time to write an in depth piece about him whan the radio stations stop giving away MP3 files ...

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