From Folk to Jazz: Six Decades of Performing
Mike Shaw’s talents have been honed over decades of performing, dating back to the 1960s as a folk singer at Kansas City’s revered Vanguard Coffee House. As did many musicians of that genre, Mike graduated to folk-rock music, a format that spawned the singer-songwriters and the music that dominated the next two decades and remains among the most popular and appreciated of American music. In New Orleans through the 1970s and ‘80s, he made the transition to jazz and worked with some of that city’s most admired players, including those in Metropolis, his jazz funk band that became one of the city’s most popular and respected bands of the time. He performs today at Atlanta jazz venues and night clubs, as well as for special events.
Mike’s repertoire is a mix of adaptations of such standards as Ellington’s "Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me," Carmichael's "The Nearness of You," and the haunting "Nature Boy," as well as arrangements of some of the best songs from the favorite artists of the singer-songwriter era, including Elton John, Billy Joel, Leon Russell, Randy Newman, the Eagles, and The Beatles.
When Mike moved from New Orleans to Atlanta in 1989, he turned his attention to the writing side of life. Still he remained active in music, reuniting with favorite players and performing as The Mike Shaw Trio at iconic Atlanta venues like Churchill Grounds and the Ritz Carlton Buckhead. In 2019, he recorded this haunting version of “Nature Boy” with saxophonist Chuck Schwartz, who also provided the inspiration for the character Hacksaw in Mike's novel, The Musician.
The Musician opens with protagonist Tom Cliffe seeking a chance to play for an audience, then discovering and becoming steeped in folk music, the most popular music of the 1960s, that “decade of discontent” when songs were expressions of young people’s deepest convictions. But Mike also spent some of his time on stage with a popular party band named the Blue Velvets, who recorded this Leonard Bernstein composition, with Mike on vocals, released by Damon Records in March 1965.