THE WILD ONE this week on "Night Lights"

[ghost of miles]

This week on Night Lights it's "THE WILD ONE: Marlon Brando, Shorty Rogers, and Jazz." THE WILD ONE, Brando's 1953 motorcycle-gang movie, was based on a real-life 1947 incident in which thousands of bikers, many of them blue-collar World War II vets from Los Angeles, descended upon a northern California town and terrorized its residents by drag-racing up and down the streets and hurling beer bottles through storefront windows.

Leith Stevens, who was commissioned to write the movie's score, was a regular at the Lighthouse jazz club in Hermosa Beach, California, where trumpeter Shorty Rogers frequently gigged. Stevens played Rogers' Capitol Records 10-inch LP MODERN SOUNDS for Brando, who was so impressed that he insisted Rogers be used on the soundtrack. Rogers arranged Stevens' compositions and brought in a number of fellow West Coast musicians to record them, including Jimmy Giuffre, Bud Shank, and Shelly Manne. The resulting "rebop," as one of the film's characters called it, was used to suggest a grimy but exuberant anarchy and rebellion.

More information on Leith Stevens can be found here. Some background on the movie and an extended summary, replete with many dialogue passages, is available at this site.

The program airs this Saturday night at 11:05 on WFIU (8:05 California time, 10:05 Chicago time, 11:05 on the East Coast). You can listen live on the web at WFIU, or listen to the program after it's posted in the Night Lights archives.

Next week: "Java Jive: Jazz Coffee Songs."

[ghost of miles]

"The Wild One" is now archived and available for listening.

[ghost of miles]

"The Wild One" will be re-broadcast tonight at 11 p.m. Same link as in the first post still applies, and you can listen to it right now in the archives... we had to grab a re-run because fund-drive ended 31 hours early!