When I was a little buy, my dad, a fine pianist, would play songs for me on Sunday.
Even though he was classically oriented, he'd knock me out with Pine Apple Rag, and a couple of other songs whose sheet music I'd like to chase down - if they indeed exist:
Kitten on the Keys - very jazzed up, I think a la Fats Waller, and
Melody in F - which starts out like the classic, but it gets wonderully jazzed up, too
These are probably corny arrangments nowadays, but I'd still like to get my hands on them. Can anyone steer me to a website where they have these tunes?
All three would just knock me out, and every Sunday I'd request them, and let my dad play whatever else he felt like. The concert would go on for an hour and a half or so, and he never relied on sheet music. But even as a kid, it was readily apparent he wasn't improvising, but playing sheet music from memory. I got to know the songs pretty well, and whenever he repeated a number, say, from last week (or month), he played it precisely the same as he did before. Remarkable.