Les Baxter Seminar at Tiki Oasis 2022

Greetings Exoticats,

I will be conducting a seminar this year to celebrate 100 Years of Les Baxter. Lots of cool photos, rare music, and videos will be presented. I will even have Leslie Baxter as my special guest! I have been collecting and archiving Les Baxter for 40 years now and it's time to share my knowledge!!

Hope to see you there!! :)

Cheers and Mahalo, Jeff

Jeff, that is some delightful news - glad to hear it!

For anyone who wasn't aware, Leslie Baxter runs the Les Baxter Family page on Facebook, which you can find here: https://www.facebook.com/therealLesBaxter/

Getting excited!! less than two weeks to go!! :)

NOTE: Leslie Baxter will not be able to attend for health reasons but her son Tom will be there and I'm working on another cool guest!!

Thanks, Jeff

This looks super cool, and I wish I could attend, but it conflicts with my volunteer shift. Congrats in advance, because I'm certain everything will be great.

[ Edited by Hamo on 2022-07-27 19:04:07 ]

Would love to see this on YouTube if you are able to make a video.

Man, I sure wish I could be there! I'm still in the US, but over on the other side--Boston. Have a great one, Jeff! Please share a link if there's a video of the seminar!

Thanks Tim!!! I had a great time and the best thing of all is 45 minutes before I started my seminar Leslie texted me and said "I'm in the lobby." She didn't tell anyone, not even her son, just to surprise me!! Totally amazing to finally meet her. Oh, and get this, Randy Wong drove her from the airport to the hotel!!

I will post some pictures soon.

Cheers and Mahalo, Jeff

Sorry for the big delay in this response, but that's AWESOME!!!

I heard it was a fantastic seminar, would have loved to have been there myself.

In honor of Les's 100th, Waitiki 7 performed a bunch of new arrangements of some of his tunes at the Retro Cocktail Hour's 25th Anniversary, and we played an updated arrangement of Tropicando that incorporated a string quartet. I tell ya, it was so incredible, I was floating!! I hope we get to do more with his material. Bringing it to life on stage is fantastic!