26-27 December, 2009
SOUNDS OF CHRISTMAS
Producer Dave Riggs is a fan of
Christmas music and his collection of
holiday tunes is extraordinary.
We tap his library to add extra variety to the season, along with a mythical tour through a small residential town in mid-America. The stories, the varied music, the sleigh bells and joyous voices combine to create a program for this holiday weekend.
2-3 January,2010
NEW YEAR'S DANCE PARTY
The focus of BBJ by its very nature is
music for listening but we vary our
program for this one weekend alone to provide the orchestras assembled strictly for dancing., all with an easily perceptible beat. As the brochures used to say, the music to be heard is for terpsichorean efforts. Ballroom legends will include Lester Lanin who said his music was played in a tempo with "the rhythm of a brisk walk." Others to be heard in this vastly different program are Ruse Morgan, Sammy Kaye and Guy Lombardo who all fashioned music with a danceable beat. You can, of course, listen if you want to but dancing is the focus for this weekend only.
9-10 January, 2010
THE TIME MACHINE
We go through the '40s with representative hits
for each year starting with Tommy Dorsey,
Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers singing I'LL NEVER SMILE AGAIN and ending with Frankie Laines's MULE TRAIN and Les Brown's I'VE GOT MY LOVE TO KEEP ME WARM. In between will be recording successes by Andy Russell, Jimmy Dorsey, the Andrews Sisters and Bing Crosby among many others. The transition of music styles will be clearly evident as we embark on this review of the leading recordings of that eventful decade.
16-17 January, 2010
IT'S ABOUT TIME
You can't see it, you can't stop it and you can't
ignore it. Time is with us in so many forms, not
the lease of which is the subject for music titles.
In some instances the titles carry an actual time, such as 920 SPECIAL or 11:60 PM. In others the reference is more general: AFTER HOURS, FIVE MINUTES MORE and JUST IN TIME, for example. The subject gives us an opportunity to hear such varied artists as Erskine Hawkins, Anita Kerr, Ray Conniff and even Jimmy Durante. We attempt to make good use of our programming time.
23-24 January, 2010
THE LP FILE
A trip into the far reaches of the back room gives
us a chance to be reminded of some of the top
tunes introduced to us on LP. While every significant artist and melody has been transferred to CD in the past couple of decades, we still find some inspiration back there; the LP art work and emphasis from another time call our attention to both varied and highly standardized recordings. We hear two dozen of them, some not heard from for a generation.
30-31 January, 2010
"LIVE" FROM CHICAGO
In the last few years the "live" series of BBJs
have gained considerable popularity as new
listeners discover the now rare sound of actual ballroom broadcasts and older listeners re-live a time when the fascination of radio was paramount. As the name implies, this program concentrates on the bands appearing at the storied ballrooms and hotels in the nation's largest mid-west city including Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Dick Jurgens and Bob Crosby among others. The crowd reaction, the excitement and the immediacy combine to give these preserved rare broadcasts a special flavor.
6-7 February, 2010
CITY HOUR
This formula, selecting titles or references to
cities in each selection, was tried once before for
just an hour. Now we dig deeper into the library and come up with additional "city" songs to constitute the full two hours of BBJ. The ones you expect will be there, of course. New York and Chicago will be referenced but so will locations less prominent. The advantage of doing a full two hours based on tunes with cities either in the title or in the lyrics is the broad range of styles that approach yields. Singers you may not have heard recently, bands not in the top echelon, melodies you possibly haven't heard for years, if at all.
13-14 February, 2010
SAMMY CAHN LEGACY
So many of the composers of popular song are
virtually unknown, even though we all know
their work. Sammy Cahn's name isn't unknown but few of us recall he's the one who wrote IT'S MAGIC, I'VE HEARD THAT SONG BEFORE, DAY BY DAY and I'LL WALK ALONE. Cahn has received four Academy Awards for his songs as well as often being considered a "personal" songwriter for Frank Sinatra who experienced success with so many Cahn lyrics.
We hear the songs of Sammy Cahn performed by Sinatra, Dean Martin and Doris Day among others as we learn how a kid from Brooklyn became a lyricist to top musical stars.
20-21 February, 2010
SINGING GROUPS
Requests for more use of singing groups is
second or third in the list of suggestions from
listeners. We heed those suggestions in this session as we hear from such groups as the Pied Pipers, the Clark Sisters, the King Sisters and of course the Andrews Sisters. The Ink Spots and the Mills Brothers will also be represented as we listen to ten different singing groups both with the Big Bands and as stand-alone acts. As well as the names you recognize, you'll hear groups you've possibly never heard of, included for their musical excellence. If you like words with your music sung by harmonious groups, this is your program!
27-28 February, 2010
SINATRA BY OTHERS / OTHER BAND'S HITS
This program began as a purely instrumental
salute to songs identified with Frank Sinatra. As
the program developed it was expanded to also
Include such songs as sung by others. A few
examples: THE LADY IS A TRAMP became identified with Frank Sinatra but we hear the highly stylized version by singer Buddy Greco. COME FLY WITH ME is certainly a Sinatra standard, interpreted for us instrumentally by Si Zentner. A dozen such Sinatra favorites are included as performed by others.
Similar to songs made a part of the Sinatra legacy, certain hit recordings are most recalled by a particular Big Band. In this second hour we hear those familiar melodies as played by others.
6-7 March, 2010
KAY KYSER RECALLED
We present this program about Kay Kyser as a
tie-in to publication of a biography about him,
reviewed in this issue. The story is told with comments from Kay himself, his wife Georgia Carroll and daughter Kimberly as well as with his music. Whenever such a book is published, curiosity about subject is a natural consequence. Most compelling about this program is samples of sound from the Kyser motion pictures as well as the originals of some of his most famous recordings. The story of his marriage to Georgia Carroll is told in an amusing way by daughter Kimberly, who also comments on the public's confusion about Kay Kyser's wife.
13-14 March, 2010
SECONDARY BANDS
We tend to think of the Big Band Era in terms of
just a few of the most famous bands, but there
were hundreds of bands then recording excellent material. We dig out some of the secondary names as we listen to Hal McIntyre, Bob Chester, Buddy Morrow, Jack Jenney, Boyd Raeburn and Jan Savitt. There will be others, too, as together we discover some beautifully performed but seldom heard gems from the Big Band world.
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