The Bad Piano Player

Send us Fan Mail This Fortnight Tuesday, the Bad Piano player brings you an episode from the heart, getting to the heart of the songs, singing heartily. Every song a newly discovered classic song about the human heart. With some of our favorite composers, no less. Don't be heartless, tune in!

Send us Fan Mail This week, the bad piano player tackles one of the great topics: Marriage. Songs of love, songs of breakup, songs of contracts between two consenting adults. All done by the bad piano player and the singer of recent online distinction. Tune in for the nuptials, no Mendelssohn!

Send us Fan Mail This week, for episode 195, the bad piano player has a group of songs that deal with addiction. We cover alcoholism, drug addiction, and other pernicious afflictions of the lifelong cravers. Tune in for tunes, chord progressions and sober reflections of a long day's journey. 

Send us Fan Mail This week, the bad piano player presents a lyricist who died young, but not before producing some of the finest lyrics in the American songbook. Tune in to hear Grant Clarke's words, and some music, too, of course.

Send us Fan Mail This week, the bad piano player features famed tunesmith Jimmy McHugh! Composer of “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love “ which we did in our season one Dorothy Fields episode. A full slate of McHugh melodious on tap! Tune in and drink deep!

Send us Fan Mail This week, the bad piano player finally gets around to featuring the great Victor Young, song and score composer. Songs you know and songs you may not know. Tune in for both and be dazzled by Victor.

Send us Fan Mail This Week, The Bad Piano Player does an episode of slightly obscure jazz songs of the 1940s. We call it, Mostly Forgotten Jazz Songs Of The 1940s. Songs, Stories, a little Duke Ellington, a little Sunny Skylar, and a whole lot of diminished chords. Tune in for the resolutions. 

Send us Fan Mail This week, the bad piano player goes back to the 1970s, and finds some classics hiding in the cellar of the Billboard top 100. Hope you can drop by for the memories. Tunes ahoy!

Send us Fan Mail This week, the bad piano player returns to a topic that got the most downloads last season. And I’m not just doing it to enhance my popularity in Taiwan. Please enjoy Baby Songs Two!

Send us Fan Mail The Bad Piano Player returns to a stalwart, a composer everybody knows and nobody knows with our fourth Harry Warren episode. Seven fabulous songs from the master of melody and progression, with Lyrics by Johnny Burke, Gus Kahn, Al Dubin, Ira Gershwin, Edgar Leslie, Mort Dixon and Joe Young. Only the best for my listeners. Tune in for tunefulness!

Send us Fan Mail This week the bad piano player features lyricist Lew Brown, born Louis Brownstein in Odessa , Russia in 1893. He estimated that he had collaborated on more than seven thousand songs in his career. We’re learning a small percentage of those for this episode. Tune in!

Send us Fan Mail This week the bad piano player rights a great wrong and finally does a second Gus Kahn episode. The lyricist extraordinaire, who worked with literally every major popular song composer from 1915 to the early 1940s. First featured in season 1,  episode 11, he makes his encore appearance now in season 7, episode 186. Words for the tunes, my friends.

Send us Fan Mail This week, the bad piano player does his second-ever Blues episode, featuring composer Clarence Williams, 1893-1965. Six of his best, five provided by our special friend Norman. Tune in for some blues history and some great blues played by a bad pianist!

Send us Fan Mail This Fortnight Tuesday, the bad piano player returns to Broadway to feature a great composer who was active on the Great White Way for more than forty years. Tune in for the Cy Coleman story and stay for the songs.

Send us Fan Mail This week, the bad piano player pulls together six songs from the (kind of) miscellaneous file and makes a wonderful episode out of them. We call it Grab Bag Four. Tune in and see if you can spot your favorite!

Send us Fan Mail This week, the bad piano player goes even further back into obscure composers of the American songbook, to find George Meyer 1884-1959, born in Boston and wrote a lot of music, including the classic For Me And My Gal, which, you guessed it, we won't be doing. Tune in for the tunes, stay for the lyrics!

Send us Fan Mail This week, the bad piano player finally gives a songwriter a rare fourth episode. We had to find six really depressing Tom Waits songs, but luckily, he wrote a lot for us to choose from. No repeats fourth T Waits. Tune in and wallow in the Brechtian mood swings on this one, kids.

Send us Fan Mail This week the Bad Piano Player revisits Mack Gordon, the cigar chomping, fun loving American lyricist, and Harry Revel, the reserved British composer, for the third time. Are all the songs classics? Well if they aren't, kids, they OUGHT to be. Tune in for the sparkling gems of yesteryear!

Send us Fan Mail This week, the bad piano player features another famous sister act, the New Orleans close-harmony trio of Vet, Connie and Martha, the Boswell Sisters. Their unique sound - well, we won't be able to reproduce that - had a profound effect on the music of the 30's and 40's, and their influence as singers continues to this day. Tune in and hear their songs and story.

Send us Fan Mail To open Season 7, (!!!) The bad piano player and the improving singer brings you songs by the great unknown American composer Pete Wendling. Composer of Yacka Hula Hickey Dula. Which means, Tune In! in Hawaiian. Welcome one, welcome all! See you around the piano.

Send us Fan Mail The Bad Piano Player presents a special Christmas episode just for you. And you, and you, and you, too. I checked the list twice and you all qualify! We feature Holiday songs you may not know, some you might, and old-friend composers and lyricists like Gus Kahn, Jimmy Van Heusen, Johnny Burke, Meredith Willson. Listen to this one in front of the fire with a full stocking and a hot...

Send us Fan Mail For our Season Six Finale, the bad piano player and the improving singer revisit the composer Hoagy Carmichael, learning six songs never before done on the podcast. Some you might know, I'm guessing most you won't. Thanks for a wonderful season six. Christmas episode coming December 16th and season seven starts January 20, 2026! See y'all there!

Send us Fan Mail This week, the Bad Piano Player features the Kansas City Mozart, the vaudeville teenage improviser, the composer with the mostest, sometimes referred to as the "Female Gershwin". Finally in her own episode, the great Dana Suesse. Tune in to hear me try to pronounce her name!

Send us Fan Mail After featuring him in a team episode (with Irving Kahal) and several times with single songs in other episodes, Sammy Fain finally gets his very own episode. Six of the best from this incredibly versatile, completely self-taught composer. Tune in for great tunes!

Send us Fan Mail This fortnight Tuesday the Bad Piano Player does a special episode of songs that lay dormant for many years before bursting onto the charts. We call it Not Hits -- Hits! Tune in for the discoveries.