Show Notes 3/26-29

Cool, calm & collected

Count Basie did it the right way - the hard way. He practiced. Learned his instrument. He paid close attention when he heard music he liked. He sought out instruction from pianists he admired, most notably Fats Waller. And he watched the music business, learning the ins and outs, what worked and what didn't. So, when his boss died and left the band without a leader, Basie was ready. 

He trimmed the Bennie Moten band down to a 9-piece group and started playing gigs in Kansas City and the surrounding area. Walter Page (bass) and Jimmy Rushing (vocals) came aboard early on. Herschel Evans was already there playing tenor sax. He was joined shortly by Lester Young. Then, trombonist/guitarist/arranger Eddie Durham was added. And finally, guitarist Freddie Green completed the All-American Rhythm Section, and the core Basie lineup was in place. By the time the band opened in New York in 1937, Buck Clayton was in the trumpet section. They still had a lot to learn, but they were on their way. 

The Basie band was never a hotbed of drama or controversy. Although the rules for "performers of color" were unfair and often humiliating, Basie ran his outfit with class, always pragmatic, fair and even-handed with his men.

What Basie's band did produce was excitement in generous portions. Tenor saxists Herschel Evans and Lester Young were happy to provide it nightly, inspiring one another to ever-greater musical heights. The Basie combination of southwestern blues and Harlem stride, with a much-needed layer of polish, became the trademark of the Basie sound for the next fifty years or so. 

We start the show this week with a 20-minute sampling of some of our favorite recordings by the Count Basie Orchestra. We include the iconic 1937 Decca recording of the band's theme, One O'Clock Jump, which features  tenor solos by both Evans and Young. We'll also hear famous vocal turns by Jimmy Rushing and Joe Williams, along with some great examples of the band's instrumental prowess from the 1930s, 40s and 50s.The perfect accompaniment as we shelter in place.

Equally satisfying is our Spotlight feature on Erskine Hawkins and his orchestra, which kicks off Hour 2 of this week's show. Hawk was Birmingham, Alabama's greatest contribution to the Swing Era. A trumpet student of renowned Birmingham music teacher and band director Fess Whatley, Hawkins was possessed of an impressive high register and the willingness to use it. These were the qualities that earned him the nickname, "The 20th Century Gabriel."

He was also a composer and arranger, contributing many familiar numbers to his band's book. His most famous composition, Tuxedo Junction, was adopted as his band's theme song in 1939. Up to that time, the band's hallmark had been Swing Out, another Hawkins original. 

Erskine Hawkins put together his first band while a student at Alabama State Teachers' College, now Alabama State University, in 1936. Most of the band members were local guys, many from the Birmingham area. Some of the original players stuck with Hawkins into the 1950s, when he downsized into a combo. They were a talented bunch; several band members collaborated with Hawkins in the writing and arranging of Tuxedo Junction, Gin Mill Special, Rock the Joint, Bobby's Bounce and others.

Singers in the Hawkins band included boogie-woogie pianist Ace Harris, who delivered most of the novelty numbers,alto saxist Jimmy Mitchelle, and most notably, Laura Washington, "The Girl with the Bedroom Voice." Miss Washington, a Birmingham native, became an overnight sensation in the mid 1940s with her sultry delivery on songs like I've Got A Right to Cry, I'd Love to Make Love to You and I Had A Good Cry. After the glory days of the Big Band Era, she spent the rest of her life in Birmingham, singing at churches and nightclubs.  

We will hear a select handful of the best recordings by Erskine Hawkins and his Orchestra this week, mostly from original shellac 78 singles on file here in the World's Greatest Record Library.We only play the noisy ones if they're really good!

This week, in addition to our Swingin' Spotlight features on Count Basie in Hour 1 and Erskine Hawkins in Hour 2, In the Mood serves up some memorable appearances from the best of the Big Bands, including Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Larry Clinton, a particularly well-played 78 from Tommy Dorsey (still sounds better than the LP re-issue),and even songwriter Harold Arlen singing one of his earliest hits way back in 1930. Another entry from 1930 is Ring Dem Bells from Duke Ellington, featuring a growling muted trumpet solo from Mobile, Alabama's Cootie Williams and a teenaged Charlie Barnet, who wheedled his way into the session, ringing the orchestra bells. For Charlie, it was the Best Day Ever! We'll hear some of the great Band Singers like Snooky Lanson, Billie Holiday, Kenny Sargent, Bing Crosby, Helen Forrest and others. 

We take the greatest of care in preparing and presenting these historic recordings. Coming up in the not-too-distant future, I'll create a blog post that details our record-cleaning and -playing process, and how we optimize each and every recording for broadcast. Watch for that one. It'll be a Record Geek's Delight, guaranteed. 

We hope all of our listeners are healthy and safe from the viral pandemic threat. Perhaps we can provide a little entertainment and distraction from the Drumbeat of Doom by inviting everyone to tune in and share the program with those you care about. Of course, the "old folks" will appreciate it for its nostalgic value, but this music brings special gifts to the young music students, band students and players who will appreciate this repertoire for its timeless appeal and lasting influence on the Jazz of today.

As always, thank you for reading this long-winded deep dive into Swing. Please feel free to leave a comment, either here or on our Facebook Page. Be kind to one another, and Keep Swingin', my Friends!

 

Show Notes 3/19-22

A few sincere words

I tried very hard for several days to write something in this space. I wanted to share some interesting information about Benny Goodman and Lionel Hampton, our two featured artists on this week's show. But I've come up dry with each attempt.

I'm normally very diligent about the show; I turn out new episodes on an ambitious schedule. I make multiple Facebook posts promoting the show every week, I even write this blog! If that's not diligence, I don't know what is. But this week, I've been distracted. 

On Monday (a day when I normally record the first hour of the show each week), I was unable to record because of a scheduled CT Scan, the results of which would tell whether I'd beaten cancer with nine months of radiation, surgery and chemotherapy. No pressure! Late Monday afternoon, the phone rang, and it was my oncologist calling to tell me that I had received a clean report. No cancer, no more drugs, no more treatments. Just a routine checkup every three months, and a new CT Scan every six months for a while. Those who have had that experience can understand the weight that was lifted off of my wife, my family and me. Good day. A very good day.

However, it threw my production week a day behind schedule. I finally finished the show on Wednesday and scheduled the first few Facebook posts for the week. I was able to complete my writing for Facebook. But this blog post was another kind of challenge. 

I considered writing something about how isolated we all are from one another because of the Coronavirus scare. But then, I thought that people were likely sick and tired of hearing about that and needed some relief, some simple distraction. So, I decided to just stick to writing about the artists and the songs and give the people what they expect. But I just couldn't do it. I couldn't just press forward as if nothing were amiss.

We've got a great show for you this week. Why not use it to connect with your friends and family? Contact them and invite them to listen to the show along with you from wherever they are. Sing along with the familiar old songs. Reach out to a band student you know and invite them to listen with you. They NEED to hear this music! Invite the grandparents to tune in. They remember all this music and can share stories of where and when the y heard it, danced to it, and who know what else? Music unites friends, families, communities. Big Band Swing is an important (and fun) chapter in American music history. Let our program help you connect at a time when real close human contact is becoming more and more rare.

What's on this week's show? Hour One starts with about 20 minutes of the best of Benny Goodman's big band. We've selected a handful of original 78 recordings of the original Goodman band playing these magical arrangements by Fletcher Henderson, Jimmy Mundy and Eddie Sauter. Hour Two ushers in a Swingin' Spotlight feature on Lionel Hampton and the outstanding jazz combos he assembled in the 1930s and 40s. Hamp was always able to secure the services of the tippity-top jazzmen of the day, rehearse them on the arrangements, get them in the studio, and give them the chance to express their ideas within the confines of the three-and-a-half-minute 78 rpm single. The results were often compelling, sometimes brilliant. We will share a selection of these little gems from the World's Greatest Record Library at the top of Hour Two this week. 

Additionally, this week brings a listen to piano star Johnny Guarnieri's All Star Orchestra swingin' on a Savoy label 78 from 1944. We'll listen in on a live one-nighter with Duke Ellington and his Famous Orchestra recorded right on the bandstand in 1964, and we'll hear Bing Crosby singing with Paul Whiteman's orchestra in 1929. As always, the best of the Big Bands will be included, with appearances by Artie Shaw, Count Basie, Harry James, the Andrews Sisters, Kay Starr, Glenn Miller and many more.

Let's get together and share a couple of hours of great American Swing. We need In the Moods now more than ever! 

Here is the In the Mood Broadcast Schedule:

All times CDT (GMT -5 hours)
Thursday:
10:00 am - 12:00 noon: 920 WON The Apple in New York City https://www.wonnewyork.net/920-won-the-apple
Friday:
8:00 - 10:00 pm: WSSE-DB in Clarksville, Tennessee wsseonline.com

Saturday:
8:00 - 10:00 am: Jazz Hall Radio 91.1 FM in Birmingham jazzhall.com
3:00 - 5:00 pm: WKLF AM 1000/FM 95.5 in Clanton wklfradio.com
10:00 pm - 12 midnight: WSSE-DB in Clarksville, Tennessee wsseonline.com
Sunday:
11:00 am - 1:00 pm: SeaBird Radio seabirdradio.co.uk
3:00 - 5:00 pm: WVAS 90.7 FM in Montgomery wvasfm.org

8:00 - 10:00 pm: Jazz Hall Radio 91.1 FM in Birmingham jazzhall.com               

The above schedule includes Live Links, so you can click and go directly to the live stream of each radio station. 

Let us hear from you! You can leave a comment here or visit our Facebook Page. Remember to look out for one another, be kind, and Keep Swingin', my friends! 

Scott Michaels

     

Show Notes 3/12-15

Even Swing has its tragic stories

Roland Bernard "Bunny" Berigan

1908 - 1942

Bunny Berigan was one of the most exciting trumpeters to come along in quite a while. His sound was bright and energetic, leaping for high notes like a boy on the run hopping fences. He came out of the University of Wisconsin, where he had majored in music, even taught trumpet lessons to make a little scratch.  

At first, his tone was too bright; he failed his first audition for the Hal Kemp orchestra in 1929 because of what Hal later referred to as his "pea-shooter tone." However, Bunny kept working at it and was hired by Kemp after another audition later that same year. 

It was a faltering start to what became an amazing career. Bunny Berigan was a much-sought-after trumpet soloist who worked for many top bandleaders in the 1930s, including Abe Lyman, Rudy Vallee, Paul Whiteman, Benny Goodman, and Tommy Dorsey. For a while, he freelanced in the New York recording studios, playing on hundreds of commercial recordings with the Dorsey Brothers, Freddie Rich, Ben Selvin, Freddy Martin and many more. He was even there for Glenn Miller's first recording as a bandleader, playing on Miller's recording of Solo Hop in 1935.  

Although Bunny's solos were amazing, his drinking was even more so, and it was a big part of the reason he worked for so many different bands before striking out on his own in 1937. But a string of bad luck and Bunny's alcoholism kept success just out of reach. Although the band had some great players and swinging, up-to-date arrangements, plenty of radio exposure and excellent recordings, the pressures of leading a band drove Bunny to drink even more heavily, eventually forcing him to disband and declare bankruptcy in 1939.  He went back to work for Tommy Dorsey in the solo trumpet spot. But even that arrangement proved unsustainable.

Bunny was showing up late, and sometimes not at all, often in very rough shape. His boss and lifelong friend, Tommy Dorsey, pleaded with him to clean up his act, but Bunny just couldn't revamp his lifestyle. Dorsey let him go after six months. 

Berigan put together a new band in the fall of 1940, and led it, to one extent or another, with moderate success until early in 1942, when his health took a turn for the worse. Cirrhosis was discovered. Against doctors' orders, he returned to playing the trumpet and to drinking. Bunny Berigan died of a massive hemorrhage on June 2, 1942. He was 33 years old.

Bunny's musical legacy is in his many recordings, some of which are now recognized landmarks in Jazz.  In Hour One of this week's In the Mood, we will hear some of Bunny's most memorable performances with his own Big Band. 

Bunny Berigan: one of the Swing Era's many stories of a brilliant talent whose achievement was undercut and whose life was shortened by addiction. 

In Hour Two of In the Mood we'll hear some trendy, danceable sides from Gene Krupa and his orchestra. Gene's post-Benny-Goodman band of 1938-49 boasted a roster of excellent players and arrangers who gained recognition in the Krupa band. Two of them, tenor saxist Charlie Ventura and trumpeter/singer Roy Eldridge, became Jazz stars in their own right. 

Gene was blessed, too, with good singers like Irene Daye, Martha Tilton, and especially, Anita O'Day, whose non-singing exploits with the band are still the stuff of Jazz legend. Anita was paired very effectively with Roy Eldridge on several successful singles, most notably, Let Me Off Uptown, in which the two actually sang directly to one another, and addressed each other by name. The fact that Anita was white and Roy was black should have caused an uproar, but it just didn't materialize. The record, made in 1941, IMHO represents a kind of a first in American entertainment. The public didn't seem to mind, either; it was a Top Ten hit record. 

We'll hear Let Me Off Uptown, along with a handful of other notable Krupa recordings during the first 20 minutes or so of Hour 2 this week. We'll also include a couple of seldom-heard Krupa recordings. One is his theme song, Star Burst, recorded for Columbia in 1947. The only copy of it I could find was on a 1950 10" Columbia LP titled Theme Songs. It contains the theme songs of 8 popular bands, including Krupa's. The early microgroove LP was in pretty rough shape, both due to abuse and to wear. I had to take some aggressive measures to make the recording suitable for air, but I think the results are pretty solid. Star Burst is an unusual composition, it was the theme song of the Gene Krupa band, and chances are you've never heard it.  You'll also hear a romping version of I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles (!) recorded by Gene with a Dixieland group in 1950, while his Big Band was on hiatus. It's a return to Gene's roots in early Chicago style two-beat Jazz, and the players are all having a ball.

Other highlights on this week's show include a reminder that Billy Eckstine was a great trombonist as well as a great singer, some genuine a Capella Barbershop-style harmony from the Mills Brothers, a wild ride with Basie on Blee Blop Blues, and Charlie Barnet's 7-minute version of Cherokee in spectacular Stereo.

If you've read this far, it's probably safe to tell you that our Jazz band, the Usual Suspects, is getting back together this Sunday the 15th for the first time since my cancer treatments began last fall. I have dearly missed playing and singing with this great group of guys and gals, and now that I'm all done, I hope everybody has got their chops up, because I've been practicing, and I plan to smoke it like a Chesterfield on Sunday. 

Thanks for hanging in there with me! As always, feel free to leave a comment here, or on our Facebook Page. Scroll through the posts there, and you'll find a complete list of days, times and stations where you can hear the show, along with Live Links to the stations' live streams. Leave us a comment or a request. And Keep Swingin', My Friends!

Show Notes 3/5-8

The secret(s) to success

Woody Herman was a very successful bandleader. In fact, he enjoyed one of the longest careers of any of the Big Bandleaders, stretching from the early 1930s almost up to his death in 1987. How did he manage to do that when nearly all of his contemporaries had thrown in the towel decades earlier? 

Woody wasn't the world's greatest sax or clarinet player. His singing was good, but nothing sensational. Many of his musicians outshone him as a soloist. So what was it that made Woody Herman so special? IMHO, it was a combination of three things: 

(1) He loved the music

(2) He was a collaborator 

(3) He believed in encouraging young musicians and embracing their ideas. 

Unlike some bandleaders of the day, Woody was a veteran performer at heart, having grown up performing on the Vaudeville stage since the age of six. By the time he was out of his teens, Woody had seen the demise of Vaudeville coming, and had switched gears to music. He left his native Milwaukee and headed for the West Coast, where he found work in the dance bands of Tom Gerun, Harry Sosnik, and later, Isham Jones, one of the most successful songwriter/bandleaders of the 1920s. By now it was 1936 and Mr. Jones decided to retire (a decision he later reversed). The band members formed a cooperative, patterned after the bands of Glen Gray and Bob Crosby. Woody was elected president, and they settled into their new repertoire of bluesy swing numbers, with Woody taking the reed solos and sharing the vocals with Frances Wayne.

Being one of Woody's sidemen was not so much like working for him as it was like working with him. Band members were encouraged to call their own rehearsals to try out their  ideas for solos or new arrangements. It just made all the guys work harder. Maybe that's why Woody was one of the most well-liked bandleaders of the era. 

This week, In the Mood begins Hour 1 with some sides by Woody's pre-Herd band (pre-1944) as well as a few sides from Herman's First Herd, the group of young upstarts that burst onto the scene with exciting, progressive tunes like Caldonia and Bijou. 

We kick off Hour 2 this week with a nice retrospective on Frank Sinatra's early years of success with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. Tommy hired Frank away from the Harry James band (Frank's first big break) in 1939. Frank was only halfway through a two-year contract when Harry graciously released him to accept the job with Tommy's more successful band. 

Frank was with Dorsey for a little over three years before he struck out on his own. During that time, he was featured on some of the biggest hit recordings of the time, including I'll Be Seeing You, Delores, and I'll Never Smile Again, which Victor pressed until they wore out the master. 

When Sinatra did leave Dorsey's employ, he was still obligated to the bandleader by the terms of his employment contract with him, which stipulated that Dorsey was entitled to one-third of Frank's income for the rest of his life. Needless to say, this was a contract that Frank desperately wanted out of, but Dorsey;s attorneys were adamant. Unconfirmed legend has it that a couple of thugs had to show up unannounced at Dorsey's posh suburban home at 3 am and "negotiate" Frank's release. But we will never know the truth of the matter; all the parties involved have long since departed this mortal plane 

We'll spin some delightful Dorsey sides that feature the young Sinatra, both in ballad settings and swinging sessions. It's especially interesting to hear Sinatra evolve as a singer over this period.

Other highlights in this week's In the Mood include the original hit recording of Blueberry Hill (hint: it wasn't by Fats Domino), a lesson in trombonics from Jack Teagarden, a sample of Billie Holiday with the Artie Shaw band, and Ella Fitzgerald live at the Crescendo in Hollywood. As always we include the best of the Big Bands of the 1930s, 40s and 50s with appearances by Sammy Kaye, Duke Ellington, Harry James, Erskine Hawkins, Bert Kaempfert, Count Basie, Glenn Miller and many others. 

We'd love to hear your comments about the show! Please feel free to leave your requests and comments here or on our Facebook Page. And Keep Swinging, My Friends!