what’s in a name?

So I decided to see what would happen if I took Shakespeare’s original words and turned them into jazz songs.

Accordingly, I loaded various speeches into Suno, used my Dave Bombeck progressive jazz patch, and let the musicians loose.

The results surprised us. Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter works remarkably well with jazz rhythms, and the old boy turns out to be quite a songwriter.

So I tried ten famous speeches. Suno rejected five of them as copyrighted material, which is pretty funny considering Shakespeare has been dead for well over 400 years.

But five did manage to get through, and they’re terrific!

We’ve got Hamlet, Richard III, Shylock, and the seven ages of man, all performing live on KING Radio from the Globe Theatre in 1601.

Same Shakespeare, same words, entirely new music.

Give them a listen. You might discover that Shakespeare swings!