Music with George Barrett | Offstage LIVE Ep. 25

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Offstage Live. My name is Byron Stripling and I'm sitting here playing music, which is my dream to do during these tough times, and we do it for you also. We hope the music soothes your soul, we hope it lifts you a little bit higher, like they say, your love is lifting me higher and higher. And we have a couple of quick hellos because here's some people that lifted us higher. First of all, Olivia Riley, thank you for joining. Linda Landis, we love you so much Linda and wish you were here with your trombone. Rosemarie Lipson Litzinger, we love you, you are the biggest jazz fan in the world, always there. And Doug Fingstag, who says hi Bobbi. He did not say hi Byron, he said hi Bobbi. Let's just be clear about that. But I have a crush on his mom Charlene and we love you guys from the Fingstag family. I have two amazing musicians standing next to me. On bass we have the great Andy Woodson and we love Andy so much. In fact, if you're an aspiring bass player or you've been playing a little bit and you want to get better, he's the guy to go to. You can just go right to Facebook, look up Andy Woodson, look for a guy with a bass and you can take some private lessons. You could do like a Zoom lesson with him, something like that, Zoom and FaceTime too. So I might be calling you for my bass lesson. But if you're interested in that, just message Andy and he will be there for you. One of the great bass players that you'll ever hear and truly a person we so value hearing right in Columbus. Standing next to him, sitting next to him, it's the great Bobby Floyd. I must say one more time, Bobby Floyd is the way we say it. And we've heard him with everybody from Ray Charles to Dr. John to his own solo performances all over the world. He truly is a star. And Bobby, it's great to have you here and we're glad you joined us a little bit. And we want to quickly let you know if you are interested in our summer jazz camps. Now our jazz camps is at any age group, you know, like seventh through twelfth grade. So it's instrumental and vocal. So if I wanted to sing a little bebop, could I come in here and do one of those? All right. And would they teach me like standards and things if I wanted to sing? And the same thing on a horn. Now how do I do this? Is that through Zoom? I would take those. So I could just go to jazzartsgroup.org and if I'm like, there might be a suggested price but if I couldn't pay, would you let me in anyway? You would. I'm talking about me personally, but I would have to pay is what you're saying. But others, they pay as you like. If you can afford it, then we'll work with you. We're here to serve everybody because our idea is that we should have kids learning about jazz. And so anybody who wants to do that, I encourage you to go to jazzartsgroup.org, pay what you can, just go to our website and we look forward to having you there. We have an amazingly special, amazing special guest. I first met this guy in, I think the first time I met him was in the lobby of the what they used to call that theater where we had Jazz Moves, the Riffe. They used to call it the Riffe, what do they call it now? Yes, it's the Capitol Theater. I met this guy in the lobby and he was with this guy named Doug Krier. And Doug said, oh by the way Byron, he can sing too. I was like, no he can't, he's too pretty to sing. And then they said, oh no he can sing. And I said, well what kind of thing? And then I heard him and it's kind of like, it's like Chet Baker with Sinatra meets James Taylor and maybe throwing in a little bit of grease in there too. If you put a little grease on top of that, that would be how this guy sounds. But he was former CEO of Cardinal Health and maybe we're going to talk about that for us. But we want you to hear him sing and we want you to be inspired by his great sound, the great sound of his words. Would you please welcome to the stage the great George Barrett right here.

Come rain, come shine, and the great George Barrett right there. One of the classic songs from the American Songbook. I think that was Harold Arlen if I'm correct on that one. And George, what do you want to do next? I know you and Bobby have played this next one together before. It says here, Marvin Fisher. It says Moms Mabley, should we go with that?

Beautiful, beautiful. The great George Barrett with When Sonny Gets Blue. We want to thank Stacy Board for checking us out here from Shadowbox. We love Shadowbox and look forward to going there as soon as they're open and ready to go. And Stacy says, looking and sounding good guys. Now I think she's probably talking about me. Yes. But you know, Stacy is going to, and one of you guys start getting ready for Shannon Doe. I think that's next. But Stacy is scheduled and we're going to deliver that promise to join us around the Christmas season and we'll look forward to seeing her. We also wanted to thank all the people that helped us out during the Big Give and that was amazing what you all did for us during that period of time and throughout the pandemic and COVID words I promise not to say but they're here, we're here, we're amongst it. But our audience has been so helpful to us during that period of time and so many others have helped us and that's why we stand here today. Otherwise we would have closed up shop here but you've really helped us so much during that. I want George to reach way back. This is like a folk song right? Sort of Americana but there are those that think that it was done by the sort of Canadian and American frontier people. But it's a song about longing so maybe sort of appropriate in the moment. Yeah. So by being, are you gonna, and the name of it is...

Shenandoah with the great George Barrett right there. We hope that you appreciate that. That's one from way back. We used to hear that when I was a kid a lot. The song I always liked that one. I like Danny Boy, those old folk songs like that always do it. So George, do you have a second to talk to me? I'm just wondering what you've been doing since, so you were with Cardinal. But here's what I can tell people already, that you have not stopped what you've always done and that's continuing to help people. And I know that through all this people look to you for questions and things and you were always there. And then I know that you're singing more. So do you have a second just to sort of share with us what you've been doing during this time?

Well, you've, you know, as I've said, you've continued to help people. But also every time I hear from you it's like, hey what do you think about this tune? Let's do that. Well, let's do that. So music is central. People, a lot of people didn't know, actually I think a lot of people didn't know that you were engaged in music always throughout the whole time. I think for some of us that's the thing that always keeps us sane, to have a song in our heart as you often do. We should mention we have Janet Qin who's listening and you're talking about mentors. You actually, George, took every arts organization and you basically mentored us all. You were helping me, you helping Janet, I know she loves you, Peggy, all of us. You just said, hey I'm here if you need us. And sometimes you just need somebody to talk to. It's like, you're like, George am I crazy? You're like, oh man. So we want everybody to know that George has always been there for the arts community and it's your love of great music that does that for us. You haven't stopped that. Hello from South Carolina. We have people watching. If you're from South Carolina, we love you. From San Francisco, just where I left my heart. Yes, because you say I have no heart until I go to San Francisco. Perfect. Oh Rico, I love Li. We used to vacation there, my wife and I. And if you go in August, everybody, when it's really hot there, you get a great rate on the Ritz Carlton. It's like, and so that's my plug for Puerto Rico because the people are great, the environment, the whole thing is great. So you got to go to Puerto Rico. We love you Puerto Rico. We got people from Florida and so we love Florida too. I was just in Naples a couple months, right before this in February, was in Naples. I love Florida. I love the people of Florida. So thank you all for tuning in to this. What are we gonna do next? Is this where's my thing? Oh, every time I hear you, you like George is sending me tapes of him playing guitar and since we're hearing all that, it's always fun. So we do some of this. Yes, it's Ellington but I think you know his alto player Johnny Hodges was also a co-writer on this. And so I don't know who's setting the tempo on there. It's a dude, but dude...

Beginning to see the light with the great George Barrett here. We want to once again thank Bobby Floyd there on the piano. We love you so much Bobby, you are a master at this. You know, whenever I work with Bobby I can sound horrible but he makes me sound good no matter what you do. Thank you for your musicianship. Thank you for the great Andy Woodson and for his great musicianship too. You are truly the anchor of any band that you perform with. And George, I'm going to impose and ask if you would just grace us with one more song. Well, what would this, wouldn't be, can you tell us?

That's George Barrett right there ladies and gentlemen. On the bass we have the great Andy Woodson. We have Bobby Floyd right there on the piano. Yours truly, my name is Byron Stripling. We hope that you'll join us here next week when we have a great surprise guest for you. But once again please join me in thanking the great George Barrett. I want to hear your applause out there a little louder. That's it. How about a standing ovation? Now I can ask for anything and everybody jump around and play the bunny hop, Lynette, whatever you want to do. But we love you all and we'll be back next week. Thank you so much for joining us. Remember to go to jazzartsgroup.org to see what we're doing and we will see you next time. Have a great week.