Big Band Bash

Well, with this last episode we come to the end of a series that I have really enjoyed presenting. Our local PBS station runs reruns of the Lawrence Welk show every Saturday at 6:00pm. I was watching it and the show they were doing was a salute to the swing bands of the 30's and 40's. So I thought let's run a series highlight ten of the top bands and present many of their hit songs. We've been thr...

I've been listening to Gene Krupa's band since 1973. That is the year he passed away and the local jazz show had a tribute to Gene. On this Part 9 of This Is The Best Of,  I will be playing some of the hits of Gene and his band.  The band that had Anita O'Day and Roy Eldridge was always my favorite but any band he was the drummer for was a very exciting band.  There is not a lot of patter on this...

In the movie, The Nutty Professor from 1963 there is a scene towards the end with Jerry Lewis dancing to the sound of Les Brown playing Leap Frog. It is a swinging song and that is the way I feel about the music of The Band of Renown. On the show today, I am going to continue with part eight of my ten part series I call This Is The Best Of. The band in the spotlight today is Les Brown. We will be...

Today we are going to look at the best of Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra on part 7 of This Is The Best Of. Jimmie Lunceford's band differed from other great bands of the time because it was better known for its ensemble than for its solo work. Additionally, he was known for using a two-beat rhythm, called the Lunceford two-beat, as opposed to the standard four-beat rhythm. His band was also kn...

This is The Best of continues this week with a focus on the music of Harry James. Harry had a great tone and an excellent technique that made him one of the leading trumpeters of the swing era. He started his band in 1938 and struggled for a while until he added strings and started playing sentimental favorites that struck a chord with many people during World War 2. He also had an ear for great v...

This is one of my favorite Best of programs. Today on Part 5 we are going to be listening to some of the best of Artie Shaw's hits. Although they were two different players on the clarinet, I liked them equally well. I came to listen to the Shaw band after my listening stints with Goodman and Miller. I enjoyed the songs and Shaw's star sidemen such as Georgie Auld, Tony Pastor, Buddy Rich and Hele...

Part Four of This is the Best Of features the great music of Count Basie. These are some of his popular recordings from the late 1930's plus a few from the 1950's. Some of the songs feature the vocals of blues singer Jimmy Rushing. Count Basie featured a style of music called Kansas City Swing. These are some great soloists in his band like Lester You, Buck Clayton, Herschel Evans and the Count hi...

Part Three of This is the Best Of features the hits of Tommy Dorsey. He had more hits than I could fit in one hour but this is a good representation of many of his hit recordings.  I started with his theme song and tried to find a good cross section of many of his hits. We'll be hearing the golden trombone sound of Tommy plus vocalists Edythe Wright, Jack Leonard, Frank Sinatra plus Jo Stafford an...

This is Part Two of a ten part series highlighting the hits and best recordings of ten of the top bands of the swing era. I got the ides from watching the Lawrence Welk show on our local PBS station. His show that week was a salute to the swing bands. Since we just went through a series called revisited where we looked at some of the lesser known bands I thought let's play some of the hits of the...

This is Part one of a ten part series highlighting the hits and best recordings of ten of the top bands of the swing era. I got the ides from watching the Lawrence Welk show on our local PBS station. His show that week was a salute to the swing bands. Since we just went through a series called revisited where we looked at some of the lesser known bands I thought let's play some of the hits of the...

Well with this tenth part we are bringing to a close my revisited series. Today's show features the band of the great trumpeter Charlie Spivak.  He played with some of the top bands in the late 1930's like Bob Crosby (1938), Tommy Dorsey (1938–1939), and Jack Teagarden (1939) before launching his own band. The vocalist on most of these recordings is his wife Irene Daye. I hope you enjoy these grea...

In Part 9 of this ten part series, we are going back to a show that I did in 2019 on a very fine trumpet player by the name of Randy Brooks. He played with several big bands such as Claude Thornhill and Les Brown before starting his own band in early 1945. He married Ina Ray Hutton and moved to Los Angeles where he suffered a stroke and was unable to continue as a musician. He died at the age of 4...

This week's Revisited episode is on the band of Andy Kirk and His Twelve Clouds of Joy. Andy Kirk was an American jazz saxophonist and tubist who led the Twelve Clouds of Joy, a band popular during the swing-era. Their pianist, and the band's arranger, was Mary Lou Williams, who went on to become a prominent figure in jazz. There is some great music in this programs and I hope you enjoy Andy Kirk...

On Part 7 of my revisited series, I'm going back to a program I produced in 2012. I called it Two Kays because I highlighted Kay Kyser and Sammy Kaye. They had two very good bands and played in what is called the sweet style of swing. There is some good music in this program and I hope you enjoy the music of Kay Kyser and Sammy Kaye. Please visit this podcast at http://bigbandbashfm.blogspot.com

This week's show is part 6 of my revisited series. We are going to revisit the music of the late pianist and composer Claude Thornhill. His band was not as driving or swinging as some of the others but he produced some beautiful songs that are some of my favorites from that era. August 10 is also Claude's birthday so most of this show is from a birthday salute I did for Claude several years ago. I...

The Revisited series continues this week with part 5 featuring music from the band of Bob Crosby and the Bobcats. Bob was the younger brother of Bing Crosby and a fine vocalist in his own right. But he became a band leader when he was picked to lead members of the disbanded Ben Pollack orchestra. He was the front man and saxophonist Gil Rodin was the man who ran the band. They had quite a few hits...

The Revisited series continues this week with a look back at the music and career of Erskine Hawkins and His Orchestra. He is best remembered for composing the jazz standard "Tuxedo Junction" (1939) with saxophonist and arranger Bill Johnson. The song became a hit during World War II, rising to No. 7 nationally (version by the Erskine Hawkins Orchestra) and to No. 1 nationally (version by the Glen...

The Revisited series continues this week with a look back at the music and career of Glenn Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra. As an orchestra they predated Benny Goodman and the start of the swing era. They had some excellent musicians and had a few big hits in the 30's and 40's. I'll be playing some of these numbers as we look back at the career of the Casa Loma Orchestra. Please visit this podcas...

This week I am continuing with part two of a ten week series I call Revisited. I am going to revisit some bands from the 30's and 40's that I enjoy and that were not the Number One bands at that time. I started the series with a look at Will Bradley's band and this week we will look at the music and career of Larry Clinton. Larry had a very good band and wrote a couple of hits for other bands name...

This show is a repeat of the show I produced last year. Here is the copy from that show and I hope you enjoy the program as we celebrate Independance Day here in America. July the 4th is an important day for us here in the United States.  We think of July 4, 1776, as a day that represents the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the United States of America as an independent nation. I trie...

In looking back over some of the programs I have done in the past, I decided to revisit about 10 of the lesser bands. Today I am going to revisit the Will Bradley-Ray Mckinley Orchestra.  They had a hit with Beat Me Daddy Eight to the Bar and produced several other boogie woogie numbers. We'll take a look at the career of Will Bradley on the show. The Puzzler is back too. I hope you enjoy revisiti...

This week I am going to continue our observance on June 6th 1944 by playing the songs that were in the number one spot in the United States during the years of 1944 and 1945. These were the songs that reached number one in the jukeboxes or on the radio. There is a wide variety of artists on this program and I hope your favorites are among them. In honor of all the men and women who fought and were...

June 6, 1944 was an important day in the history of World War 2.  It was called D-Day because it marked the invasion of Normandy, France. Since we just passed June 6th, I thought I would revisit  some of the music from 1942 - 1945. I did a little research and took note of all the songs that were in the number one spot either on the jukeboxes or the airways (radio). Today we will be listening to nu...

May 25, 1917 is the birthday of another big band clarinetist. His name is Jimmy Hamilton. Jimmy achieved his greatest fame as clarinetist with Duke Ellington for 25 years. I have picked out about six songs from a few cds in my collection that Jimmy plays on. They are a little longer in length but you will still get an idea of what a fantastic musician Jimmy was. Our last clarinetist is from a late...

May 16, 1913 is the birthday of another big band clarinetist. His name is Woody Herman. I would like to celebrate Woody's birthday by presenting two radio remotes. One is from 1945 at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City New Jersey and the other is from 1940 recorded at the Famous Door on Fifty Second Street in New Your City. The 1945 remote has a few vocals by Frances Wayne and Woody has a few vocals...