The Big Bands on WFIU

[ghost of miles]

Well, all, I'm finally able to report that I'm being given a second jazz radio program at WFIU--or, rather, inheriting a longstanding one, The Big Bands, which airs every Friday night at 9 p.m. on WFIU here in Bloomington. I'll be taking over starting the first Friday of February, and suggestions, as always, are welcome. For Feb. I'm planning shows about Fletcher Henderson (there's a new bio by an IU professor), the Jubilee broadcasts, and Fletcher's brother Horace.

Thank God I can now write off all those Hep purchases as "investments"! B-)

[ghost of miles]

For those with an interest in Claude Thornhill, I'll be sitting in tonight on The Big Bands with a program devoted primarily to the latest Hep release, 1949-1953 Performances, including material from Thornhill's 1953 LP for Albert Marx's Trend label, with Gerry Mulligan arrangements that had gone unused by Thornhill's late-1940s band. (More information on the album here). There'll also be some music featuring Mulligan and others from the 1950 Chubby Jackson big band. The program airs at 9 p.m. (6 p.m. California time, 8 p.m. Chicago time) on WFIU.

[TheMusicalMarine]

Congratulations, you lucky sonofagun. Have fun with the show. Are you sticking solely to swing, or will you include sweet? Are you going to cover any of the lesser known groups? Boyd Raeburn, Sauter-Finnegan, Billy Butterfield, etc? Maybe Andy Kirk and his 12 Clouds of Joy?

[ghost of miles]

  TheMusicalMarine said:

Congratulations, you lucky sonofagun.  Have fun with the show.  Are you sticking solely to swing, or will you include sweet?  Are you going to cover any of the lesser known groups?  Boyd Raeburn, Sauter-Finnegan, Billy Butterfield, etc?  Maybe Andy Kirk and his 12 Clouds of Joy?

MM, it's a two-month scenario, after which we'll determine whether we retain the Friday night lineup as is, or shuffle again... but yeah, pretty much everybody you mention will show up if I stay in this slot. In fact, Kirk will make it into the first program in March, "The Ladies Who Swing the Band." I'm a huge Raeburn fan, and I'm not ruling out the sweet bands either... They were a large part of the 1930s/40s big-band story. Planning a Georgie Auld program for the first week of April... some Glenn Miller AAF and Sam Donahue Naval Band for the 60th anniversary of V-E Day... and some of the Ellington Treasury Dpt. broadcasts for Memorial Day weekend.

Re: Sauter-Finnegan, there's a great bar in Bloomington called Nick's that, once upon a time, still had the little tableside jukeboxes in each booth. They were loaded with old swing and 50's rock numbers, and my girlfriend always used to play a song called "When Two Trees Fall In Love." Out of curiosity, I looked the song up recently, and found to my surprise that it was Sauter-Finnegan.

Edited January 15, 2005 by ghost of miles

[SGUD missile]

Boy ..I'm glad I happened to pick right NOW to check out the BBS!

That Thornhill Trend album was one of my favorites back in high school!

( plus even better ..I got a chance to play with Thornhill during the summer of 59 during a college break ..and he was still using that book! )

I'll definitely be there at 6:00 PM!

[ghost of miles]

Up for broadcast now.

[ghost of miles]

  SGUD missile said:

Boy ..I'm glad I happened to pick right NOW to check out the BBS!

That Thornhill Trend album was one of my favorites back in high school!

( plus even better ..I got a chance to play with Thornhill during the summer of 59 during a college break ..and he was still using that book! )

I'll definitely be there at 6:00 PM!

Wow, I'm impressed! Thornhill grew up just down the road from here... in Terre Haute. I'm afraid we haven't done as much to honor his memory as we should have. His centenary is coming up in 2009--I hope to do whatever I can to commemorate it via the airwaves.

[SGUD missile]

**GREAT::: Show!

listened to most of it online while fixing dinner ..

( sure do miss Gene Quill )

Be sure and keep us posted when you do the Sauter/Finegan show ..

any chance of doing a Boyd Raeburn/ Spencer-Hagen /retrospective?

anything I can do to help your show, drop me a PM!

Phil Kelly

[alankin]

  ghost of miles said:

[...] For Feb. I'm planning shows about Fletcher Henderson (there's a new bio by an IU professor), [...]

What do you think of the Henderson book?

I've had a chance to browse through it and it looks pretty well done....

[ghost of miles]

  SGUD missile said:

**GREAT::: Show!

listened to most of it online while fixing dinner ..

( sure do miss Gene Quill )

Be sure and keep us posted when you do the Sauter/Finegan show ..

any chance of doing a Boyd Raeburn/ Spencer-Hagen /retrospective?

anything I can do to help your show, drop me a PM!

Phil Kelly

Thanks much, Phil! Boyd Raeburn is definitely on the horizon (I have two of the Heps plus a single Savoy CD and a vinyl copy of the old double-LP JEWELS), as is Sauter-Finnegan; and funny that you mention Earle Hagen, as I've developed quite an interest in him of late... will definitely do something on Hagen at some point as well.

[ghost of miles]

  alankin said:

  ghost of miles said:

[...] For Feb. I'm planning shows about Fletcher Henderson (there's a new bio by an IU professor), [...]

What do you think of the Henderson book?

I've had a chance to browse through it and it looks pretty well done....

I just started it this past week and am only about 25 pages in. A modern-musicologist approach, which suits me just fine--very much influenced by Deveaux and THE BIRTH OF BEBOP. I'll be interested to see how he depicts FH's relationship w/his brother Horace.

[ghost of miles]

Just found out that in addition to overhauling our big-bands web-page, we'll also be archiving all shows that I record, so that--a la Night Lights--they're available to listen to any time on the web. Here's the schedule so far:

Feb. 4--"The Uncrowned King of Swing." Recordings of Fletcher Henderson, including the rarely-heard 1945 version of "King Porter Stomp."

Feb. 11--"Big Band Trane." John Coltrane's AFRICA/BRASS, as well as big-band versions of Coltrane material from Woody Herman, Gerald Wilson, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and others, plus George Russell's "Manhattan."

Feb. 18--"Jubilee." World War II broadcasts from the Armed Forces Radio Service program for African-American servicemen.

Feb. 25--"The Uncrowned Brother of Swing." Horace Henderson's 1940 big band, plus Henderson's arrangements for brother Fletcher's band, and a live broadcast from Chicago in 1954.

Mar. 4--"The Ladies Who Swing the Band." Mary Lou Williams, Melba Liston, Carla Bley, Maria Schneider.

Mar. 11--"Miss Peggy Lee Big Band."

Mar. 18--"The International Sweethearts of Rhythm + Ina Ray Hutton and Her Melodears."

Mar. 25--"Big Band Jukebox." A monthly look at hits and obscurities.

Apr. 1--either Georgie Auld or Jack Jenney.

Apr. 8--"Duke Ellington Treasury Shows 1." Broadcasts from April 1945.

Apr. 15--"Big Band Jukebox."

In May there'll be another Ellington Treasury show (broadcasts from May 1945), as well as programs about Sam Donahue's Navy Band and the Glenn Miller AAF. A show devoted to Mary Ann McCall is also on the horizon. All of these will be archived on the WFIU website.

Edited January 29, 2005 by ghost of miles

[ghost of miles]

"Miss Peggy Lee" tonight on The Big Bands, featuring Lee's recordings w/Benny Goodman, several of the Capitol transcriptions with Frank DeVol's orchestra (drawn from the Mosaic set), a rare radio side with Billy May, and selections from her 1950s Decca and Capitol recordings. The program airs at 9 p.m. (6:05 California time, 8:05 Chicago time) on WFIU. With luck, this and other big-band programs will soon be archived on a new page at the WFIU website.

[ghost of miles]

Up for broadcast in a couple of minutes... Marian McPartland's wrapping up Piano Jazz.

[Big Al]

DRAT! I missed it! Got the "Afterglow" show going right now, which is playing something that's all kinds a sweet!

[ghost of miles]

Hoping it'll be archived, Big Al. I'll post when the new Big Bands site is up and running.

[ghost of miles]

Tonight on The Big Bands I'll feature the music of two "all-girl" groups, the International Sweethearts of Rhythm and Ina Ray Hutton and Her Melodears. The Sweethearts of Rhythm were formed in 1938 at a Mississippi school for orphaned African-American students and went on to gain great renown on the black big-band circuit, playing at venues such as the Savoy and the Howard Theater in Washington, D.C. We'll hear broadcasts they did in 1945 and 1946 for Jubilee, the Armed Forces Radio Service program for African-American military members, as well as two pieces recorded for Bluebird Records. To learn more about the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, check out Sherri Tucker's SWING SHIFT: ALL GIRL BANDS OF THE 1940S and Antoinette Handy's THE INTERNATIONAL SWEETHEARTS OF RHYTHM. Ina Ray Hutton, known as "The Blonde Bombshell of Rhythm" and the half-sister of big-band singer/Pied Piper June Hutton, was hired by Duke Ellington's manager Irving Mills in 1934 to lead an all-female big band. The band appeared in several Paramount musical film shorts and made a number of recordings before disbanding in 1939.

Next week: "Songbirds," featuring big-band singers Kitty Kallen, Helen Ward, Helen Forrest, and Ella Fitzgerald.

[Roz R]

Just finishing up "Struttin' with the Ladies," which I've been doing with you for the last hour. Fun show with some of the lesser known recordings of the swing era. Thanks for the trip.

Roz

[ghost of miles]

  Roz R said:

Just finishing up "Struttin' with the Ladies," which I've been doing with you for the last hour. Fun show with some of the lesser known recordings of the swing era. Thanks for the trip.

Roz

Thanks for listening, Roz. I really hope I can get these archived soon!

[Roz R]

I'm looking forward to it. I'd like to hear the shows I missed.

Roz

[ghost of miles]

"Songbirds" tonight, featuring Helen Ward (her earliest sides with Benny Goodman and two she did with Krupa in '38), Kitty Kallen (music from her tours with both Jack Teagarden and Harry James' big bands), Helen Forrest (later recordings from 1949 and 1950) and Ella Fitzgerald (several with Chick Webb). It airs on WFIU at 9 p.m. (6 p.m. California time, 8 p.m. Chicago time).

Next week: "Duke Ellington--the Treasury Shows April 1945."

Edited March 26, 2005 by ghost of miles

[ghost of miles]

Up for broadcast in about five minutes.

[ghost of miles]

New webpage for The Big Bands, including lotsa links at the bottom to various cool big-band sites. There's a temporary university freeze on new logos and graphics, which severely restricted our ability to do much visually... hoping to jazz it up, so to speak, once the freeze is lifted.

This Friday on The Big Bands it's "Duke Ellington: The Treasury Shows April 1945." In the spring of 1945, as World War II finally began to draw to a close, Ellington began "Your Saturday Date With the Duke," a series of weekly broadcasts sponsored by the U.S. Treasury Department to promote the sale of war bonds. The sets featured classics from the Ellington songbook, pop hits of the day, obscure Ellington/Strayhorn compositions rarely or never recorded by the band, and pitches from Ellington and MCs to buy war bonds, along with occasional news bulletin interruptions. Ellington's 1945 band, removed only a couple of years from the celebrated Blanton-Webster era of 1940-42, retained superlative musicians such as Johnny Hodges, Ray Nance, and Lawrence Brown.

The broadcasts continued through the late autumn and resumed early the following year; the one-hour programs were edited into half-hour shows that were then distributed by the Armed Forces Radio Service. Ellingtonian specialist Jerry Valburn spent 30 years tracking down the original broadcasts and restoring them to their full length. The vinyl editions which appeared in the 1980s are now being reissued as 2-CD sets, supplemented with other live Ellington material from the 1943-1954 era.

From April through October of this year I'll devote one program a month to Ellington's Treasury Department broadcasts, in observance of the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II. The programs will roughly correlate with the month, so that you'll hear material primarily from April 1945 in April, May 1945 in May, etc. This week's program features "Blutopia," a composition commissioned from Ellington by Paul Whiteman; the little-known tune "Frustration;" a memorial broadcast for President Franklin D. Roosevelt two days after his death in which Al Hibbler sings "Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen"; Johnny Hodges soloing on the ballad "Mood to Be Wooed"; Ray Nance performing the Ellington wartime song "A Slip of the Lip Can Sink a Ship" and the pop hit "Candy;" Joya Sherrill taking vocal honors on Johnny Mercer's "Accentuate the Positive"; and Ben Webster stepping up on "Tonight I Shall Sleep," taken from a 1943 Ellington war-bond rally. The program airs at 9 p.m. Friday on WFIU 103.7 FM; you can listen live on the Internet. We are still hoping to archive the programs, but it's contingent upon a pending situation that is unrelated to programming.

Edited March 31, 2005 by ghost of miles

[ghost of miles]

Tonight on The Big Bands I'll inaugurate a new monthly feature called "Big Band Jukebox," in which you'll hear hits and B-side obscurities from the 1930-1955 era. The first program's highlights include an early live performance by Jimmy Dorsey of "Besame Mucho," with Bob Eberly and Kitty Kallen on vocals, as well as "Tangerine" and the World War II lament "They're Either Too Young or Too Old"; hits from Count Basie's often-overlooked late-1940s RCA Victor band (with future Ellingtonian tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves of Newport '56 fame soloing), charting ballads from Billy Eckstine's bebop band (an ensemble with a decidedly uncommercial reputation), and tracks from "sweet" big bands led by fellow North Carolina grads Hal Kemp and Kay Kyser. "Big Band Jukebox" airs Friday, April 8 at 9 p.m. (7 p.m. California time, 10 p.m. NYC time) on WFIU.

Next week on The Big Bands: "Georgie Auld 1940-1945." Music from tenor saxophonist Georgie Auld, who took over Artie Shaw's big band in late 1939 and led several big bands of his own throughout the 1940s.

[ghost of miles]

Up for broadcast in a couple of minutes.