(It’s almost 8:00am. I finally managed to get tired enough around 4:45am to go to bed, only to wake up a couple hours later coughing due to an itchy throat caused by post-nasal drip. I’ve been like this for at least three weeks now… 🙁 )

There are 4 videos embedded here; 1 from Twitter and 3 from YouTube. Beware in case they autoplay.

So… I realize I missed this past Monday’s Great Guitar Solo, and I haven’t brought the Astronomy Picture of the Week series back. Hopefully I’ll be fixing that this coming Monday and Wednesday, respectively. In the meantime, I have another music post for y’all, this time highlighting the supremely talented Hazel Scott.

How I stumbled on her is actually really funny. I’m a huge fan of this podcast called The Read. So naturally, I follow the hosts, Kid Fury and Crissle, on Twitter. After the debacle that was Mariah Carey’s NYE performance, I was very very curious to see what they had to say. Sadly, they didn’t say anything. However, I did find a pretty funny tweet that Kid Fury had retweeted…

#2016Faves RT @_Chickenist: Beyonce: I’m holding auditions for a new pianist on the #FWT

Me: pic.twitter.com/v8Ksh5XBS1

— Petty Wright (@KidFury) January 1, 2017

As you can imagine, being a Keith Emerson fan, I absolutely needed to know who that was. Obviously, I was very quickly pointed in the right direction, to Hazel Scott, and I now I can stop watching videos of her playing piano on YouTube.

Here’s the full video of her playing two pianos:

And here’s her playing a song called “Takin’ a Chance”:

And here’s a video essay called “Whatever Happened to Hazel Scott”:

And finally, this link is to my search for Hazel Scott on YouTube, where you can see so much more…

This has led me to wonder… did Keith Emerson know about Hazel Scott? How about Rick Wakeman? John Paul Jones? Did Oscar Peterson know her? Did Hazel and Oscar play piano together? Does Hazel Scott’s influence reach forward more than we know?

And how in the hell have I not known about her until now?!?

(Incidentally, Crissle and Kid Fury stan for Beyonce, and, for some reason, I’ve managed to catch that. So now I’m a really big fan of Beyonce, too.)