The Big Bands on WFIU

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Tonight on The Big Bands it's "Georgie Auld: 1940-1945." Georgie Auld, a tenor saxophonist (primarily--he sometimes played alto and even, on occasion, soprano) came to renown in the late 1930s playing with the big bands of Bunny Berigan and Artie Shaw. When Shaw stormed off the bandstand in November 1939 and fled from the music business to Mexico, it was the 20-year-old Auld who took over the orchestra. We'll hear some of the sides the Shaw-less Artie Shaw big band recorded under Auld's direction, as well as some of his own leader dates from 1944 and 1945, with a band that included at various times Howard McGhee, Dizzy Gillespie, and Freddie Webster. (Auld's 1945-46 recordings will be covered in a future program.) The program airs at 9 p.m. on WFIU.

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Up for broadcast in just a minute.

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Tonight on The Big Bands it's "Duke Ellington: The Treasury Shows, May 1945." In May 1945 World War II ended in Europe, and we'll hear Ellington acknowledge that several times throughout this program in his pitches for U.S. war bonds on "Your Date With the Duke," the Saturday-afternoon radio show sponsored in 1945 and 1946 by the Treasury Department. With an invasion of Japan appearing imminent and necessary, the "Mighty Seventh" bond drive was begun, with a goal of seven billion dollars. This edition of The Big Bands draws from Ellington's broadcasts throughout May, including arrangements of Ellington songbook-classics "Solitude" and "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing" that feature all four of the then-current Ellington vocalists (Kay Davis, Joya Sherrill, Marie Ellington, and Al Hibbler), lesser-heard numbers such as "Everything But You" and "Teardrops in the Rain," features for trombonist Lawrence Brown ("I Miss Your Kiss" and the little-known "Blue Cellophane") and interpretations of pop hits of the day, including "I Should Care" and "Sentimental Journey." The program airs this evening at 9 p.m. (7 p.m. California time, 10 p.m. NYC time) on WFIU.

Next week: "The Clarke-Boland Big Band."

Edited May 6, 2005 by ghost of miles

[ghost of miles]

Up for broadcast in several minutes.

[kinuta]

Any progress on archiving the big bands programmes? Obviously the time difference for Japan rules out listening live. Thanks for all your splendiferous efforts and may the force be with you.

[ghost of miles]

Any progress on archiving the big bands programmes? Obviously the time difference for Japan rules out listening live. Thanks for all your splendiferous efforts and may the force be with you.

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Still working on it--it all hinges on a weird bureaucratic/HR problem that's still pending and has nothing to do with the show or me whatsoever. If it's resolved, most, if not all, of the shows will be archived within a week. Hope you don't mind, but I passed along your note to my station manager!

Clarke-Boland this week; Sam Donahue next.

Edited May 19, 2005 by ghost of miles

[kinuta]

Great. Thanks a lot.

Dave

[ghost of miles]

Clarke-Boland on The Big Bands tonight. I'll be playing music from HANDLE WITH CARE, NOW HEAR OUR MEANIN', the Gitte Haenning record, and the Europe 1 1969 concert. (Much more Clarke-Boland to follow in future programs.) The show airs at 9 p.m. (7 p.m. California time, 10 p.m. NYC time) on WFIU.

Next week: Sam Donahue's Navy Band.

Edited May 20, 2005 by ghost of miles

[ghost of miles]

Tonight on The Big Bands we'll hear Duke Ellington's Treasury Department broadcasts from June of 1945. Ellington was on the road promoting the war-bond drive, and some of this program's selections come from a June 16 Evansville, Indiana concert. In addition to "Indiana," we'll hear the Ellington orchestra performing "Body and Soul," Ellington's extended instrumental "New World a-Comin'," the title song from his musical Jump for Joy, the "Blues Cluster" (a romping pre-Newport version of the "Diminuendo/Crescendo" medley) and classic Ellington songbook numbers such as "What Am I Here for?" "Jumpin' Punkins" and "Warm Valley." The program airs at 9 tonight (7 p.m. California time, 10 p.m. NYC time) on WFIU.

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This week on The Big Bands it's "A Summer Song," featuring music from Benny Carter, Frank Sinatra, Quincy Jones, Nat King Cole, Woody Herman, Julie London, Artie Shaw (with an epic version of "Summertime") and--believe it or not--a collaboration between Stan Kenton and country music star Tex Ritter. "A Summer Song" airs Friday, June 10 at 9 p.m. on WFIU (7 p.m. California time, 10 p.m. New York City time).

And btw, I am very close to finally having these puppies archived. Comments, feedback, rotten tomatoes, etc., welcome as always.

[ghost of miles]

Tonight on The Big Bands it's "Movin' On: Jimmy Smith and Wes Montgomery." In the early 1960s organist Jimmy Smith and guitarist Wes Montgomery both left classic jazz labels (Blue Note in Smith's case, Riverside in Montgomery's) to work with producer Creed Taylor at Verve Records. Both artists had traditionally recorded in small-group formats; Taylor placed them in big-band settings with saxophonist and arranger Oliver Nelson, and in 1966 brought them together for the sessions that resulted in the albums The Dynamic Duo and The Further Adventures of Jimmy and Wes. We'll hear music from those sessions, as well as Smith and Montgomery's separate efforts in front of a large ensemble, including Montgomery's "Naptown Blues," Smith's "Walk On the Wild Side," and more (Smith doing Nelson's "The Blues and the Abstract Truth," for one). The program airs Friday, June 17 at 9 p.m. on WFIU.

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This week on The Big Bands it's "Overtime: Dave Holland." Bassist Dave Holland is well-known for his small-group recordings with Miles Davis and the Circle Quartet, in addition to his own work as a leader (the Gateway Trio & other groups), but in the past several years he's charged to the forefront of jazz polls in a new category: big-band. His orchestra features musicians such as trombonist Robin Eubanks, saxophonist Chris Potter, and vibraphonist Steve Nelson. We'll hear selections from his new CD OVERTIME (released on Holland's own label Dare2), including movements from his "Monterey Suite," as well as Eubanks' composition "Mental Images." "Overtime" airs Friday, June 24 at 9 p.m. (7 p.m. California time, 10 p.m. NYC time) on WFIU.

Next week: "Duke Ellington: The Treasury Shows, July 1945."

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This week on The Big Bands it's "Duke Ellington: the Treasury Shows, July 1945." This edition of our ongoing Ellington Treasury series features performances from an Ellington appearance at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, including "Day Dream," "Carnegie Blues," and a medley of Billy Strayhorn tunes with Strayhorn at the piano. We'll also hear music from a Boston concert that includes the rarely-recorded "Bugle Breaks" from Ellington's musical Jump for Joy, contemporary pop hit "A Friend of Yours," "West Indian Dance" (from the Black, Brown and Beige Suite) and "The Magazine Suite." The program airs Friday, July 1 at 9 p.m. on WFIU.

Next week: "That Old Arlen Magic."

Edited July 1, 2005 by ghost of miles

[ghost of miles]

Tonight on The Big Bands it's "That Old Arlen Magic," an homage to American songwriter Harold Arlen. We'll hear performances from Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, the Sauter-Finnegan Orchestra, Billy Eckstine and Ella Fitzgerald (each backed by a Billy May-led big band), Gerald Wilson, and more. The program airs at 9 p.m. (7 p.m. California time, 10 p.m. NYC time) on WFIU. And... since our regular jazz DJ is on vacation this week, I'll be filling in for him on the two-hour program Afterglow that follows immediately after... Afterglow is devoted to late-night jazz ballads and American popular song, so I programmed Ahmad Jamal's "It Ain't Necessarily So," Mel Torme's "A Stranger in Town," Rickie Lee Jones' "Ballad of the Sad Young Men," Miles' "Summer Night," Dinah Washington's "Romance in the Dark," Dexter's "More Than You Know" off the Mosaic Select... it's that kind of show.

Edited June 2, 2008 by ghost of miles

[Big Al]

PLEASE hurry and archive these shows, dammit!!!

I’m too lazy and forgetful to remember to tune in when I’m supposed to!!!

Seriously, I’m sorry I haven’t been keeping up with this thread and these shows; I love the big bands, so I have no excuse for missing any of these!

Good luck with the archives. I can tell you right now that, once they’re up, they’re gonna have a regular daily visitor!

[ghost of miles]

PLEASE hurry and archive these shows, dammit!!!

I’m too lazy and forgetful to remember to tune in when I’m supposed to!!!

Seriously, I’m sorry I haven’t been keeping up with this thread and these shows; I love the big bands, so I have no excuse for missing any of these!

Good luck with the archives. I can tell you right now that, once they’re up, they’re gonna have a regular daily visitor!

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Your comments will be forwarded to the proper authorities, comra--er, uh, I mean, Big Al!

Seriously, I am hoping that we can archive these puppies now that I'm fulltime. Somebody who came up to our booth during a local arts fair asked for them to be archived as well... you can believe that I truly am passing these remarks along!

[Big Al]

Thanks bro! DEFINITELY pass along the last sentence of my last post, the one about the "daily visitor!"

[ghost of miles]

This week on The Big Bands it's "Duke Ellington: Treasury Shows August 1945." In that month the United States' war with Japan ended suddenly, and the war bonds that Ellington promoted every Saturday on "Your Date With the Duke" turned into "Victory Bonds." In this program we'll hear broadcasts of "Work Song, ""The Blues," and "West Indian Dance" from Ellington's Black, Brown and Beige Suite, "Creole Love Call," the World War II song "He's Home for a Little While," and "Blue Skies." The show airs Friday, August 5 at 9 p.m. (7 p.m. California time, 10 p.m. NYC time) on WFIU.

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Tonight on The Big Bands it's our monthly jukebox edition, entitled "Two Guys Named Les." In the early 1950s Les Brown was no longer with Columbia, home for so many of his 1940 hits. Instead he was recording for Coral, a Decca subsidiary that employed his friend and fellow former Duke University campus bandleader Sonny Burke. We'll hear singles such as "Back in Your Own Backyard" and "Bernie's Tune," as well as vocal collaborations with Herb Jeffries (reprising his Ellington-band hit "Flamingo") and Glenn Miller's Modernaires.

Around the same time another Les, Les Elgart, and his brother Larry, both veterans of the 1940s swing scene, formed their second big band and found success on the label Brown had left behind with "the Elgart sound," a tightly-synchronized blend of sax and brass with few solos and a piano-less rhythm section that often featured the guitar up front in the mix. We'll hear "Comin' Through the Scotch," "Heart of My Heart," "The Turtle Walk," and other selections from the Elgart compilation Sophisticated Swing.

Also on tap: music from the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, led by David Baker. The SJMO will be appearing at the Musical Arts Center in Bloomington on Saturday, August 13 at 8 p.m.

"Two Guys Named Les" airs tonight at 9 p.m. (7 p.m. California time, 10 p.m. NYC time) on WFIU.

Next week: "Freddie Slack in the 1940s."

Edited August 12, 2005 by ghost of miles

[ghost of miles]

Thanks bro! DEFINITELY pass along the last sentence of my last post, the one about the "daily visitor!"

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Al,

Your wish has been granted... I just now finally got the formal OK to start archiving The Big Bands. Many of the past ones & all of the ones going forward will be online within the next week or two.

[ghost of miles]

Tonight:

In the early 1940s pianist Freddie Slack, who'd been a part of the Will Bradley-Ray McKinley big-band boogie-woogie phenomenon, broke away to form his own big band. Although tinged by the boogie-woogie sound (one of the band's earliest recordings, "Cow Cow Boogie," became the fledgling Capitol label's very first hit), the band had a much broader range; it frequently featured vocalists Ella Mae Morse and Johnny Mercer, included Ellingtonian Barney Bigard for a spell, and in its postwar work began to incorporate bebop. Selections for this program include Mercer-written obscurities such as "The Air-Minded Executive" and "The H.C. Potter's Ball," as well as "I Lost My Sugar in Salt Lake City," Slack's theme song "Strange Cargo," and an instrumental, "Riffette," featuring blues guitarist T-Bone Walker. "Freddie Slack in the 1940s" airs this Friday night at 9 on WFIU. It will be archived sometime early next week, when we finally start up an archives section for The Big Bands.

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Tonight on The Big Bands it's the late-1950s music of composer, arranger, and bandleader Johnny Richards. Richards, best known for his work on Stan Kenton's Cuban Fire album, carried a diverse musical resume. He inherited his talent from his mother, a concert pianist who had studied with Paderewski. In the 1930s he wrote film scores for Hollywood, working as Victor Young's assistant at Paramount, and also studied with Arnold Schoenberg. He first led his own big band in the 1940s and went on to write arrangements for Charlie Barnet, Dizzy Gillespie, and Boyd Raeburn before putting in several years with Stan Kenton in the 1950s. He also wrote the melody for Frank Sinatra's 1954 hit, "Young at Heart." We'll hear Richards' later big-band version of that song, as well as his Third-Stream-ish "Annotations of the Muses Pt. 1," selections from his Legende Americana suite (a tribute to the American landscape), and "Omo Ado" from his work The Rites of Diablo. "Johnny Richards in the Late 1950s" airs Friday, August 26 at 9 p.m. (7 p.m. California time, 10 p.m. NYC time) on WFIU.

No archives yet--hope to have that up next week.

[ghost of miles]

This week on The Big Bands it's "Convergence," featuring classic music from a new compilation of Indiana native Claude Thornhill's post-World War II big band and modern big-band music from a musician who once played with Thornhill, our own Phil Kelly, whose 2003 album Convergence Zone received two Grammy nominations. Music from that CD will follow on the heels of Hep's eighth--and final--release in their Thornhill series, 1946-47 Performances V. 2. This collection features arrangements from Gil Evans (including "La Paloma"), the Thornhill band venturing into bebop-anthem territory with "Donna Lee" and "Yardbird Suite," and vocal numbers by Gene Williams--an audio snapshot of the convergence of classical, bop, and pop elements in the famous Thornhill sound. "Convergence" airs Friday, September 9 at 9 p.m. (7 p.m. California time, 10 p.m. NYC time) on WFIU. The program will be posted in The Big Bands archives the following Monday afternoon.

More on Phil Kelly here.

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Tonight on The Big Bands it’s “October’s in the Air.” We’ll celebrate the advent of autumn’s most spectacular month with music from Bobby Hackett, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, and a triad of Indiana big-band leaders: Claude Thornhill, Bobby Sherwood, and Al Cobine. “October’s in the Air” airs this evening at 9 p.m. (7 p.m. California time, 10 p.m. NYC time) on WFIU; it will be archived next Monday afternoon.

[ghost of miles]

"October's in the Air" is now archived.

Hoping to get some of this summer's shows--Gil Evans in the 1960s, the other Ellington Treasury shows--up on the web-page later this week.