At the Jazz Band Ball

AJBB Extra! Bubber, Bix, and Hoagy Carmichael and His Orchestra. "Rockin' Chair" (1930). What a band: Benny Goodman (Saxophone, Clarinet) Bud Freeman (Tenor Saxophone) Tommy Dorsey (Trombone) Jimmy Dorsey (Alto Saxophone) Jack Teagarden (Trombone) Bix Beiderbecke (Cornet) Bubber Miley (Trumpet) Joe Venuti (Violin) Irving Brodsky (Piano) Eddie Lang (Guitar) Gene Krupa (Drums). Enjoy!

The Father of Stride Piano. Featuring: Carolina Shout, Harlem Strut, The Charleston, Jingles, Blue Spirit Blues, You've Got to be Modernistic, Snowy Morning Blues, Yamekraw.

Featuring collaborations with: James P. Johnson, Alberta Hunter, Elizabeth Handy, Herman Autrey, Una Mae Carlisle, The Deep River Boys, Myra Johnson, Lee Wiley, Ada Brown.

Music's big bundle of joy. Featuring: I Ain't Got Nobody, Carolina Shout, That's All, Sugar, Squeeze Me, (What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue, Ain't Misbehavin', Honeysuckle Rose, Then I'll Be Tired of you.

Bessie Smith (1894-1937), the Empress of the Blues. Featuring: Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out, St. Louis Blues, Beale Street Mama, Cake Walkin' Babies From Home, Backwater Blues, After You've Gone, Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl, Gimme a Pigfoot (and a Bottle of Beer).

A prevalent American surname, ”Smith" also shows up frequently in jazz. Assembled together in one show, Bessie, Pinetop, Willie "The Lion," Viola, Stuff, Clara, Mamie, Trixie... make up an extraordinary lineup.

Great jazz trumpet playing from the 20s, 30s, and 40s, featuring: Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Bubber Miley, Roy Eldridge, Jabbo Smith, Hot Lips Page, and others.

A loving look at the career and times of The First Lady of Song, Ella Fitzgerald. Featuring songs: Love and Kisses, A Tisket-A-Tasket, Flying Home, How High the Moon, Stompin' at the Savoy, Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most.

Live and early recorded jazz from Cleveland, OH. Featuring Andy Kirk, Woody Herman, Bix Beiderbecke, Will Marion Cook, Noble Sissle, Artie Shaw, Art Tatum, Perry Como, Tad Dameron, Sarah Vaughan,

Early music video soundtracks, 1940-1946, featuring: Louis Jordan, Duke Ellington, Roy Eldridge, Anita O'Day, The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, et al.

Louis Armstrong's earliest recorded solos resonated with personality, charisma, and rhythmic swing — enough to transform both instrumental and vocal jazz. Featuring "Chimes Blues," "Snake Rag," "Heebie Jeebies," "Sugar Foot Stomp," "West End Blues," and many others.

Detroit has a remarkable jazz tradition starting in the 1920s. Venues both palatial (Graystone, Fox, Club Plantation, Paradise) and small (Band Box, Palms) hosted great jazz. Featuring Jean Goldkette, McKinney's Cotton Pickers, Chocolate Dandies, Earl Hines, and Billie Holiday.

Jazz and blues music from the 1920s-40s. Featuring: Louis Prima, Jack Teagarden, Bessie Smith, Elzadie Robinson, Fats Waller, Benny Goodman, and others.

Chicago jazz and night clubs, from mob-protected speakeasies to the Dreamland Ballroom. Featuring: Joe King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller, Fletcher Henderson, and Anita O'Day.

New York dance halls, jazz clubs, and speakeasies, in 1920s-40s. What did people hear at the Cotton Club? Connie's Inn? Small's Paradise? How about the Ubangi Club? What did the Savoy Ballroom sound like? Music by Duke Ellington, Chick Webb, Ella Fitzgerald, Gladys Bentley, and others.

On today's show we'll appreciate Bix Beiderbecke, a shy young man with a horn from Davenport, IA, who lived just 28 years (1903-1931). He played cornet lyrically and deliberately. We'll listen to several memorable recordings made during this remarkable, too-brief career.

This week, W.C. Handy and Clarence Williams as shapers of early jazz. Composer and bandleader, W.C. Handy introduced blues form as a standard feature in jazz music. As a promoter, Williams helped enable the careers of Black performers and gave voice to jazz through avenues of publishing and recording.

This week we're listening to early jazz guitarists who faced individual and societal struggles, even resistance by the jazz world to their chosen instrument. Guitarists Eddie Lang, Lonnie Johnson, Nick Lucas, Big Bill Broonzy, Charlie Christian, and Django Reinhardt will be featured.

With performances of Earl "Fatha" Hines, James P. Johnson, Fats Waller, Teddy Wilson, Stephanie Trick, and Dorothy Donegan we'll tickle some ivories — but only scratch the surface of — recorded piano delights from the 1920s through the 1940s.

The Jimmie Lunceford band, in existence from the early 1930s to the late 1940s, was an extremely well-rehearsed and cohesive group. It was famous for for its sharp appearance onstage, its fancy showmanship and choreography—throwing and catching instruments and twirling mutes—their glee club style singing (everyone of its players could sing), and its danceable but extremely intricate rhythmic arran...

We’re listening to great female vocalists of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s this week, but we’re going to stretch our definition of “jazz” a bit. There are so many great singers to choose from, like Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, of course, but I also love some of the more mainstream, popular singers of the day. Annette Hanshaw, Ivie Anderson, Nina Mae McKinney, Connie Boswell, Mildred Bailey, and o...

This week we're heading to Harlem, circa 1932, for a tour of some of the great jazz and dance clubs as mapped out by African American cartoonist Elmer Simms Campbell. He drew a map, titled "Night Clubs of Harlem, 1932" and published in Manhattan Magazine, The map faces southwest, bounded by 110th street, and runs along Central Park's northern edge. It concentrates on Lenox Avenue and Seventh Avenu...

This week, the Fletcher Henderson Band, led by one of the more unlikely and reluctant leaders in jazz, but easily one of the most talented. Fletcher Henderson, nicknamed "Smack," for the way he smacked his lips, apparently even in his sleep, was born in Cuthbert, Georgia, in 1897 to a middle-class African American family. In 1922 he formed his own band. His first steady gig with his band was at th...

In May 1941 the International Sweethearts of Rhythm , an all-female, integrated high school swing band out of Piney Woods, Mississippi, was out on the road doing dance gigs, when they decided to break free, appropriating the bus and taking charge of their own careers — destined to become one of the best swing bands in history.

Mary Lou Williams is one of the great figures in jazz — pianist, arranger and teacher. We'll listen to some of Mary Lou Williams' earliest recordings as a stride pianist, then as a pianist and arranger as a member of the Andy Kirk band, and later the Benny Goodman, and Duke Ellington bands. We'll hear some of her work with the beboppers of the late 1940s. We'll also sample an interview she did in...