In 1961 pianist Horace Tapscott turned down a chance to have a high-profile career with the Lionel Hampton band and spent the next several decades in Los Angeles, leading several community-jazz bands and doing his best to extend the mentoring and teaching tradition that he had experienced growing up during the glory days of L.A.’s Central Avenue era. The underground jazz scene that he helped to create and sustain–a vibrant, multi-arts mix…
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Jazzwax master blogger Marc Myers’ mention of the late arranger Bill Finegan yesterday reminded me that I did a show about Tommy Dorsey’s post-World War II orchestra a couple of years ago when I hosted WFIU’s The Big Bands. As Marc points out, Finegan crafted some fantastic arrangements for that particular Dorsey ensemble. In an e-mail followup exchange he asked if the program was still available…
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Posted in WFIU Jazz Shows & Specials on May 24th, 2008
In part 2 of American Popular Song and World War II we’ll hear music from Louis Jordan (”You Can’t Get That No More”), Kitty Kallen with Jimmy Dorsey (”They’re Either Too Young or Too Old”), Sam Donahue’s Navy band (”Convoy”), a rare recording of Bing Crosby with Glenn Miller’s…
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Posted in WFIU Jazz Shows & Specials on May 24th, 2008
In honor of the holiday weekend, we’re posting both parts of last year’s “American Popular Song and World War II” Afterglow program, featuring special guest Michael McGerr, author, cultural historian, and Indiana University professor. We’ll hear some of the martial-spirited songs from the early months of America’s entry into the war (”Remember Pearl Harbor” and “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition”), as well as pre-war songs about the draft, songs about…
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Posted in WFIU Jazz Shows & Specials on Mar 10th, 2008
“Bix is jazz’s Number One Saint,” critic Benny Green once wrote of cornet player Bix Beiderbecke (1903-1931). In 2003 I produced a one-hour WFIU centennial tribute to the man who, in the span of six years and more than 200 recordings, left a legacy that still echoes through jazz today, as well as a troubled personal tale that continues to provoke scrutiny. Richard Sudhalter, author of the Hoagy Carmichael biography
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Posted in WFIU Jazz Shows & Specials on Feb 6th, 2008
The inspiration came from a late-night party, a convergence of Hollywood glamour and nascent civil-rights activism with one of America’s greatest jazz orchestras. In the summer of 1941, as Americans warily regarded a world war that seemed to be edging ever closer to their shores, Duke Ellington staged what he would later call “the first ’social significance’ show,” Jump for Joy. Jump for Joy was an all-black musical revue that Ellington said “would take Uncle Tom out of the theater and say things that would make the audience think.” It featured the Ellington orchestra in its so-called “Blanton-Webster” years, playing at the peak of its powers, and up-and-coming African-American…
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Posted in WFIU Jazz Shows & Specials on Jan 2nd, 2008
More from last Friday evening’s Afterglow program devoted to jazz and jazz-vocal recordings of the songs from Show Boat. Hour 2 features several very different versions of “Ol’ Man River,” including a contemporaneous …
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Posted in WFIU Jazz Shows & Specials on Jan 2nd, 2008
Last Friday evening’s Afterglow program, featuring jazz and jazz-vocal interpretations of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s songs for the musical Show Boat, is now available for online listening…
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