Joe Venuti

The Swing Cat has quite a few upcoming projects up his sleeves - after all he has four of them.

Filmmaker Larry Stair's lovingly made short film "Thank You Joe" will soon be available on video from Swing Cat. This film first brings you into Joe Venuti's home, where you watch him fix himself a cup of instant coffee, sit down in his living room and then pick up his violin for some wonderful solo improvisations. He then drops in on the New Deal Rhythm Band for some swinging hot fiddle numbers. It's a beautiful film, and one you're sure to enjoy.

We are in the process of listening to our collection of live cassette recordings of Joe Venuti for possible release on CD. In addition we are scrutinizing some rare limited pressings of both LPs and 45s of Joe's playing in the hopes of issuing them in the near future. These recordings include some downright silly stuff as well as some breathtakingly hot fiddle.

On the instructional front, we will soon make available annotated reprints of the extremely rare Joe Venuti notebooks. These notebooks contained the beginnings of a jazz violin book that Joe was working on when he died. Paul Anastasio will continue Joe's work and use these notebooks as the basis for a more comprehensive text which will incorporate much of what Paul learned while studying with Joe.

Hot Swing Fiddle and Venuti Stories: The Joe Venuti Quartet Compact disc: Swing Cat CD 1494 Cassette: Swing Cat 1494
	Sample of cut in RealAudio (download RealAudio player): That's A'Plenty, 8 KHz Stereo, 350 KB
	Paul Anastasio had the good fortune to study and perform with the inventor of jazz violin, Joe Venuti, who was as legendary for his practical jokes as he was for his definitive and much imitated virtuosity. Joe lived for the last twenty years of his life in Seattle with Helen and Bill Fischer, who were huge fans and helped Joe in many ways, setting the stage for his comeback onto the jazz scene. After Joe's death the couple gave Paul a huge suitcase full of priceless memorabilia: many of Joe's records and photographs, the sheet music to several of his original compositions, and, most important to this narrative, the master tape of a recording Joe had made in Toronto in 1969. This recording had been issued briefly in Canada but never in the United States, and it features some of Joe's best playing interspersed with a recounting in his own words of many of his most fabled practical jokes. Folks familiar with Bing Crosby's radio show remember Joe and Bing's hilarious repartee, but until this recording there was no first-hand telling of the legendary Venuti stories by Joe himself, although innumerable barroom hours have been enlivened by the telling of the famous "Trigger" story and many others by those who knew Joe. While Joe never quite gets around to telling about Trigger (this being a G-rated recording), he tells of calling 46 tuba players to meet at a Manhattan intersection for an imaginary gig, nailing the shoe of a foot-stompin' piano player to the floor, and sending Wingy Manone on a 200-mile goose chase to get to a gig that was only a few blocks down the street. These tales and many others are heard here straight from the mouth of Joe Venuti - the original wild man, who was wilder than all the crazed rock-and-rollers put together and did it first - way back in the 1920s. Here are the tunes and the stories on the recording: That's A'Plenty Pit Falls of Show Biz (story) Furniture as Firewood (story) Tap Room The March of the Weasels 46 Tuba Players/Nailing the Shoe (stories) Doughnuts & the Milkman's Horse (story) Momalega Someday Sweetheart Orchid Salad/5000 Watt Baton (stories) A Swim on the Links with Bing (story) Jazz Me Blues One Finger Joe Long Way to the Gig (story) Gentle on My Mind (Joe really makes it swing!) This recording features, in addition to Joe, Lou Stein on piano and a fine rhythm section. A nice clean reissue with all of the original liner notes and several photos from Joe's private collection. Great music and a lotta laughs - what more can we say? Available only from Swing Cat.