Hi Folks,
I am new to this forum but have been playing the whistle from a good few years now. I was wondering does anyone here play blues/jazz on the whistle?
I pretty much play blues/jazz exclusively now after starting out with Irish music.
Anybody else out there?
Well, there’s the whole Kwela (South African whistle jazz) school—search here and Google and YouTube—should that be of interest.
Best wishes.
Steve
Greetings Redgvh and welcome to the forum. Ah Greenloaning by the sweet Allan Water. I assume you’re pretty much in Session off the A9 territory geographically and musically there. Some years ago there was a member who posted here as “educciman”, he was a maker as well as a player and mainly interested in jazz applications for fipple flutes. He had a good few videos on youtube at the time playing freeform jazz but a lot of the links seem now to be dead. I don’t think he currently posts here but if you google “educciman”, I know he still has a website and there are several videos of him playing jazz pieces. Ditto if you use that search term in Youtube. I know this may not be much use to you if you’re looking for others to play with in deepest Perthshire but it might give you some ideas/inspiration? I’m of no use to you personally as I now live in Australia (tho’ I used to live in Bridge of Allan) and stick pretty much to the Scots/ Irish tunes. Anyway hope this helps in some way.
This might be of interest 
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/the-penny-whistle-tapes-john-coltrane-gambol-review-by-derek-taylor.php
educciman still posts here, there were some postings about his ongoing research into creating a whistlehead/flute chimera, not so long ago.
I was expecting John Coltrane to appear. 
Coltrane doesn’t show until well into the new year…
Best wishes.
Steve
Thanks for the reply I will need to check out the YouTube stuff…yes I do live just off the A9in Perthshire. Nice to have someone on the other side of the world who knows where Greenloaning is…!!
I play jazz/blues in a duet with a guitarist who also sings. We mainly play old blues songs and jazz standards we also have played a bit of kwela too. We have posted a few videos on YouTube . If you search for “Rev Dgh” you will get an idea of the type of stuff we play.
Thanks again and regards
Hey Rev Dgh. Listened to a couple of your YouTube recordings. Great stuff, and very similar to what I’ve kind of stumbled into. I started playing whistle and improvising with three of my neighbors that play guitar and it ended up working really well. Then I went to the local open mic and just randomly asked some of the guitar players if I could jump in on a tune with them and that worked well too.
I did play baritone sax in jazz band in high school, so I’m not new to improvising, but that’s been quite a while ago.
I was just playing along with your “Money Getting Cheaper” recording.
Thanks for sharing!
-Brett
Yes, I figured it was inevitable, so just wanted to go ahead and get that out of the way early on..
Hi Brett…thanks for getting back to me. Glad to hear you like the stuff on YouTube. Like you I also play baritone sax but I wanted to try doing something “different”. The turning point for me was meeting a blues & jazz guitarist/vocalist who was into the same music as I was.
I think the whistle works quite well on jazz and blues… particularly blues IMO.
One of the biggest issue I faced when I started playing whistle with a band was getting a decent microphone set up. I have now solved this problem with a clip on sax mic and a novel way of mounting the mic on the whistle. I can send you details/photos if you are interested?
All the best
Rev Dgh
Now that would be something…“Giant Steps” on tin whistle…!!!
Les Leiber immediately came to mind he has clips floating around YouTube.
https://youtu.be/3vuKRiyXdxI
Today is a jazz day.
Check out https://vimeo.com/63243672 for blues on a low whistle. Awesome stuff.
Les Leiber and educciman are all you
can find from the viewpoint of a studied
approach. Most examples are simply
noodling at best and those being feeble
attempts at imitation. Here’s some examples
on recorder. Not that it’s improvisation per se,
but much farther along conceptually.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz7LvCS1oXM
[Thread revival. - Mod]
Here’s an update on this guy. The previous posts
were him playing solo transcriptions on recorder.
Here he is playing his own composition with a killer band
and improvising as well.
https://youtu.be/vGAD8apc_qs