“Speak Low”—Tony Bennett & Norah Jones, A Tribute to Piet Stokkermans

Earlier this month, on August 6th, one of the first Dutch members of our Classic Jazz Lovers group, bass player Piet Stokkermans, passed away, and our thoughts go out to his wife Ria and family.

Piet Stokkermans was born in 1931 and the teenage years of this jazz lover were hampered by the Second World War. As soon as that ended Piet took up guitar lessons. In those post war years, there were so many guitar players around that Piet -- wanting gigs where he could play and earn some money -- quickly switched to the double bass. First he played in Hawaiian bands and then Piet moved on to main stream jazz and Dixieland, the raucous yet sweet, stirring yet sentimental, bumpy music that gave the world the only rhythm recognized as strictly American.