Swing That Music Part 4

This week on Big Band Bash, I am continuing with music from the CD box set "Swing That Music." This is a great set which, unfortunately, is no longer available. I have to acknowledge a mistake that I have made on the previous three parts. A listener pointed out that I have been calling the producers of the set the Smithsonian Institute when, in fact, their correct name is the Smithsonian Institution. I hope you enjoy the music from Duke Ellington, Bob Crosby, Glenn Miller, and many others from "Swing That Music." Thank you for listening and for downloading.

Here is a couple photos of Ivy Anderson who is featured on two numbers on the show today. One of them is "I've Got It Bad and That Ain't Good" which is a personal favorite of mine.

Swing That Music Part 3

Part three of Swing That Music has a lot of hits from the golden age of the big bands plus three songs that were unknown to me until I listened to this set. Billie Holliday was a member of the Count Basie Orchestra from March 1937 until February 1938. During this time she was not on any of the studio recordings made by the Basie band. It was a simple explanation - she was under contract to Brunswick and Basie to Decca records. But someone recorded some of their performances off the radio and we have three of those songs in this set. Also, we have Frank Sinatra and Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Rushing and Count Basie and Anita O'Day with Gene Krupa.

Swing That Music Continued

This week I am going to continue with part two of Swing That Music. This four disc set was produced by music crtitc and writer Martin Williams for the Smithsonian Institute. Released in 1994, this set focused on the Big bands between the years of 1928 and 1950. Today we will be hearing from Benny Goodman, Harry James, Jack Teagarden, and Jimmy Dorsey to name a few of the bands. I hope when I am finished presenting the music in this set that you will have heard something from your favorite bandleaders. Sadly, this set is no longer being sold. I hope that if you enjoy this set that you are downloading the podcasts. So let's start week two with some foot tapping music from Swing That Music Part 2.

Swing That Music Parts 1 - 5

Throughout the years, the Smithsonian Institute has produced some great collections of Jazz and Big Band music. My first three sets were collections of Duke Ellington's music from the years of 1938, 1939, and 1940. The liner notes were very extensive along with the nice packaging. While looking through the music library at the radio station, I came across a set that I haven't seen in a while. It was produced in 1994 and was called Swing That Music. I say was because it is no longer available. The set consisted of 4 cds from the years of 1928 to 1950. It is full of hits from the big band years as well as some that weren't as well known. For the next 5 weeks we are going to be listening to these great sides so get ready to go into the past as we Swing That Music. Here is a review of the set from AllMusic.com:

The Smithsonian's four-disc tribute to the swing/big band era, compiled by the late, great Martin Williams, offers as comprehensive a look at the genre as possible from a general perspective. Williams featured great and lightweight bands, highly popular vocalists like Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, dubious ones with large followings like Bob Eberly and Doris Day and underrated ones such as Al Hibbler and Helen Humes. Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Woody Herman and Benny Goodman are well-represented, but so are Harry James, Glenn Miller and Bob Crosby. The sound quality is first-rate and the liner notes are informative, and the material is nicely divided between familiar cuts and obscure tracks. The Smithsonian's sets are sometimes attacked for emphasizing one style over another or not representing each era of a genre; that cannot be leveled at this anthology.

A D-Day Anniversary Rememberance

This June 6th, 2017 is the anniversary of the invasion of Normandy better known as D-Day. It was a day that many American service men lost their lives. To pay tribute to those who served during that fateful time I would like to present some music from Glenn Miller and his Army Air-Force Orchestra. In order to get the timing right I've picked four numbers and two live radio remotes. Glenn's show was called "I Sustain The Wings". We'll be hearing a 13 minute show and a 29 minute show. There is some great music in these shows and I hope you enjoy it as we remember the many events that happened on June 6th, 1944.  Here is a little bit of information about the show from WikiPedia:

The radio show was initially on CBS from June to September, 1943. Glenn Miller was the host and conductor on the show, which also featured Ray McKinley, Jerry Gray, Johnny Desmond, and the Crew Chiefs, until June 10, 1944 when Harry Bluestone became the conductor. The Latin Sustineo Alas, "I Sustain the Wings", or "Keep 'Em Flying", was the motto of the U.S. Army Air Forces Technical Training Command. The I Sustain the Wings radio series continued until November 17, 1945.^[4]

^{When Band Leader Glenn Miller joined the military one of his first assignments was to form a large military marching band that would for the core of several service orchestras. One of these, The Band of the Army Air Force Training Command, was featured weekly as part of CBSs Service Band line up on I Sustain the Wings. From this core of musicians he was allowed to draw fifty to accompany him to England in the summer of 1944 where they gave at least 800 performances. The Orchestra of the AAF Training Command continued the weekly CBS broadcasts.}

Artie Shaw - A Birthday Salute Part 1

When I was in the high school band, I played the clarinet. I first discovered the great music of Benny Goodman then but a year or two later I discovered Artie Shaw. Artie's band was different than Benny's. I am not going to choose sides because I like them both. May 23rd, 1910 is the birthday of the late Artie Shaw and I wanted to present those great sides of his as we learn about his career. All the songs on both shows were picked out by Artie himself for a 5 disc set called Self-Portrait. These are the original recordings by Artie and his band.  Here is a short biography of Artie from the site AllMusic.com written by Scott Yanow:

One of jazz's finest clarinetists, Artie Shaw never seemed fully satisfied with his musical life, constantly breaking up successful bands and running away from success. While Count Basie and Duke Ellington were satisfied to lead just one orchestra during the swing era, and Benny Goodman (due to illness) had two, Shaw led five, all of them distinctive and memorable.

After growing up in New Haven, CT, and playing clarinet and alto locally, Shaw spent part of 1925 with Johnny Cavallaro's dance band and then played off and on with Austin Wylie's band in Cleveland from 1927-1929 before joining Irving Aaronson's Commanders. After moving to New York, Shaw became a close associate of Willie "The Lion" Smith at jam sessions, and by 1931 was a busy studio musician. He retired from music for the first time in 1934 in hopes of writing a book, but when his money started running out, Shaw returned to New York. A major turning point occurred when he performed at an all-star big band concert at the Imperial Theatre in May 1936, surprising the audience by performing with a string quartet and a rhythm section. He used a similar concept in putting together his first orchestra, adding a Dixieland-type front line and a vocalist while retaining the strings. Despite some fine recordings, that particular band disbanded in early 1937 and then Shaw put together a more conventional big band.

The surprise success of his 1938 recording of "Begin the Beguine" made the clarinetist into a superstar and his orchestra (who featured the tenor of Georgie Auld, vocals by Helen Forrest and Tony Pastor, and, by 1939, Buddy Rich's drumming) into one of the most popular in the world. Billie Holiday was with the band for a few months, although only one recording ("Any Old Time") resulted. Shaw found the pressure of the band business difficult to deal with and in November 1939 suddenly left the bandstand and moved to Mexico for two months. When Shaw returned, his first session, utilizing a large string section, resulted in another major hit, "Frenesi"; it seemed that he could not escape success. Shaw's third regular orchestra, who had a string section and such star soloists as trumpeter Billy Butterfield and pianist Johnny Guarnieri, was one of his finest, waxing perhaps the greatest version of "Stardust" along with the memorable "Concerto for Clarinet." The Gramercy Five, a small group formed out of the band (using Guarnieri on harpsichord), also scored with the million-selling "Summit Ridge Drive."

Despite all this, Shaw broke up the orchestra in 1941, only to re-form an even larger one later in the year. The latter group featured Hot Lips Page along with Auld and Guarnieri. After Pearl Harbor, Shaw enlisted and led a Navy band (unfortunately unrecorded) before getting a medical discharge in February 1944. Later in the year, his new orchestra featured Roy Eldridge, Dodo Marmarosa, and Barney Kessel, and found Shaw's own style becoming quite modern, almost boppish. But, with the end of the swing era, Shaw again broke up his band in early 1946 and was semi-retired for several years, playing classical music as much as jazz.


His last attempt at a big band was a short-lived one, a boppish unit who lasted for a few months in 1949 and included Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, and Don Fagerquist; their modern music was a commercial flop. After a few years of limited musical activity, Shaw returned one last time, recording extensively with a version of the Gramercy Five that featured Tal Farlow or Joe Puma on guitar along with Hank Jones. Then, in 1955, Artie Shaw permanently gave up the clarinet to pursue his dreams of being a writer. Although he served as the frontman (with Dick Johnson playing the clarinet solos) for a reorganized Artie Shaw Orchestra in 1983, Shaw never played again. He received plenty of publicity for his eight marriages (including to actresses Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, and Evelyn Keyes) and for his odd autobiography, The Trouble With Cinderella (which barely touches on the music business or his wives), but the outspoken Artie Shaw deserves to be best remembered as one of the truly great clarinetists. His RCA recordings, which were reissued in complete fashion in a perfectly done Bluebird LP series, have only been made available in piecemeal fashion on CD.

1939-1940 Time Life - The Swing Era Part 1

For the next two weeks, I am presenting an encore presentation of Big Band Bash. This two part show originally aired in 2014. Today's program was part of a series I did on Time Life Record's ambitious project called "The Swing Era". It was a ten volume set with three records included in each volume. Today we turn to the years of 1939-1940. The songs were rerecorded by the bands of Billy May and Glen Gray. I have this set and I thought that instead of hearing the recreations that it would be interesting to hear the original recordings. So I'm borrowing the playlist and presenting the originals where I can. If I couldn't come up with the original recording then we'll hear the recreation. There are about 30 songs in this set so I'm going to break it up into two parts. I hope you enjoy the music.