And not that electronic-type of jazz, with the free-form rambing and the non-melodic overtones… this is classic jazz club stuff, the kind of music you could picture playing in the background of a smoke-filled speakeasy while you’re playing cards with Frank Sinatra.

Every year or so, Mike Jones makes a point of visiting Chicago, and reconnecting with the kind of music that made him fall in love with jazz in the first place. This past July, he was playing with Larry Kohut on bass and Eric Montzka on drums, and the music flowed so well, and the audience and musicians had so much fun, that Mike decided to make the performance available to everyone!

I’m listening to it right now, as I type this, and this Mike guy is a genius. Not just for his piano skills, which are amazing… this man really knows how to tickle the ivories. No, also for his marketing skills. By offering this CD for free, he’s already made at least one sale: me. I liked this performance so well that I already bought another of his albums. Go ahead and give it a listen – I think you’ll really like it.

On to the technical stuff – his site isn’t very fancy. You can’t preview any of the tracks before downloading, and you can’t pick just one or two of the songs. The entire CD is a single .zip file. I used WinRAR to unzip it, but any unzip program will do the job – Mac users need not despair.

The files, once you unzip them, are standard mp3s, and I was able to play them easily in Windows Media Player and in my iTunes library. I found no DRM at all, so burning copies for your home or office stereo or copying them to your iPod or your car’s sound system should be no trouble. Enjoy!