About Us | Contact | Subscribe

Home: 20's Jazz

I Can't Believe

Blue Horizon Jazz Band

20sJazz Original Production, Stan McDonald

Subscribe to 20's Jazz

Navigation:

Home

Back

More videos like this

The Blue Horizon Jazz Band perform "I Can't Believe (That You're In Love With Me)" at the Sherborn Inn, in Sherborn, Massachusetts on November 20th 2012 featuring Jeff Stout cornet, Gerry Gagnon trombone, Stan McDonald soprano sax, clarinet, & leader, Ross Petot piano, Peter Gerler guitar, Al Ehrenfried string bass, and Dave Bragdon drums.

*"I Can't Believe, That You're In Love With Me" was composed in 1926 by Jimmy McHugh, with lyrics by Clarence Gaskill.

Born August 28th 1935 and raised in Needham, Massachusetts, Stanley Montrose McDonald Jr. would develop a keen love for nature and the outdoors during his youth. A life long fly fisherman and environmentalist he was drafted into U.S. Military service during the late 1950's and it was there that he received his only formal training on the clarinet. Stan had developed a deep love for jazz and while attending college in Paris he got a chance to perform with Mezz Mezzrow and even visited with jazz legend Albert Nicholas in his apartment where the two men played records and drank cognac. Ironically during his time abroad Stan never did get to meet with Sidney Bechet the man who would ultimately influence his music the most. Unfortunately, although he had contacted Bechet in advance, and he was expecting Stan's visit the soprano saxophone legend died before the two could ever connect. Like the late Bob Wilber, who was once revered as Sidney Bechet's protege, so too would Stan come to be known as one of very few men with the ability to play and improvise in the same style, with the same emotional content and phrasing as the legendary jazz man. In 1971 Stan became a founding member of the "New Black Eagle Jazz Band" before leaving to form his own "Blue Horizon Jazz Band" ten years later. Sadly, after a life spent providing his own virtuoso brand of traditional jazz to the masses Stan McDonald passed away on Thursday May 6th, 2021, at the age of eighty-five.
-Matt Chauvin