Do you like swing, jazz, music of your Grandmother's life?

[grasswire]

Jazz radio station KMHD-FM has a 2-hour segment every Saturday afternoon featuring music from the 20s-50s. You can stream it from KMHD.org.

It'll put a smile on your face, I think, and take you back. Very amusing stuff!

You can stream KMHD any time, of course, featuring all kinds of jazz from the most modern/avant garde to the Dixieland show on Sunday mornings.

1-3 PDT for this show, which is called "Divaville". Divaville is also on Weds. nights.

[VenusRising]

1. Thanks for sharing!

I can remember sitting at the piano with my grandma as she played all the old war time songs.

I can't listen to Sentimental Journey without thinking of her.

[Major Nikon]

2. I love big band and old time jazz

Music Choice: Singers and Swing is my favorite cable channel.

[dimbear]

3. Love Big Band music. Sign of the times, tho.....

nowadays you just can't pay salaries to a group that large...

[Justice wanted]

4. hmmm I can't get enough of Lady Day or Louis Armstrong myself.

[grasswire]

5. GMTA

Interestingly enough, one of our own DU members is a daughter of Fletcher Henderson, who led one of the hottest bands of the era and wrote many of the arrangements that led to the success of other bands. We are in the company of someone with a direct family link to the era of the music you love.

[Justice wanted]

6. WOW talk about 6 degrees of separation.

[provis99]

7. I like it; my grandma never did. She called it "race music".

yep. Old white people hated black people's music even before soul and blues.

[grasswire]

11. the Nazis hated it too.

Did you see that post over in Good Reads about the Nazi rules for dance orchestras in occupied Czechoslovakia? Fascinating.

[DearHeart]

8. Love this music!

I'm the only one my age who listens to this fantastic music. Thanks for the radio station suggestion-will tune in!

[begin_within]

9. That's the music we listen to every day.

My Mom is now 93 and we play that for her to listen to every day, and over the years I have learned to love it too. Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, the Dorseys, Benny Goodman, all the great bands of that era. My Mom went to see Glenn Miller and his orchestra perform live at least once, and says she stood at the edge of the stage just listening instead of dancing, and she knew at that time that his music would live forever. It wasn't long after that his plane disappeared. We have the "Glenn Miller Story" movie on DVD and we watch it often, for the music.

When I was a kid, some of these greats including Duke Ellington and Count Basie played at Disneyland, and we could have gone over there because we lived only 5 miles away, but I was way too young to appreciate who they were then. My Mom dragged me once to a Stan Kenton concert, and at that time I didn't really appreciate the music, but now I'm glad that I had the experience. Only in recent years have I really started to listen to all those songs and appreciate them, and recognize the same songs being done by different singers and bands in different styles.

Every Thursday evening, the Moonlight Serenade Orchestra plays at a large Chinese restaurant with a dance floor here. It is about a 20-piece band and they play all the oldies from that era, and throw in a few newer songs for variety here and there. But mostly the old standards. I have taken my Mom to it several times, and I took her to a wheelchair dance class recently, to learn how to dance with the wheelchair. Last time at the MSO I took her out on the dance floor in her wheelchair. Also two other people that night, who are far better dancers than me, took her out on the floor for one song each. My Mom was smiling bigger than I've seen her smile in a long time while she was out there.

Thanks for the info about KMDH, we'll give it a listen.

[grasswire]

10. thanks for sharing your memories

Understand that KMHD has hours dedicated to certain kinds of jazz that is more modern, or even experimental, as well as hours dedicated to the standards, and swing, and Dixieland/traditional jazz.

Your best bet for the standards is the Divaville show on Weds. evenings and repeated on Saturday afternoons.

You are a really good person to help your mom access the music of her life. It's so, so important.

You know, a great deal of wonderful old music is archived on youtube. If her eyesight is good, she might enjoy watching the performances there -- just as she saw them back in the day. Just search for the artist, or a generic term like swing or big band and you'll come up with a fresh concert every night.

Also, there's a site called redhotjazz.com that has recordings archived that you will not find anywhere else.

My best wishes to your mom. She's about the same age as my auntie, who also loves big band and swing.

[begin_within]

14. Thank you!

[monmouth]

16. When I was in the "Stars of Tomorrow" revue on the old Steel Pier in Atlantic City I got to hear

Stan Kenton and used to share sandwiches with Sammy Kaye on the old cat walk outside the theatre. Best music ever. Thought of wanting to become a "girl singer" with a big band...LOL..

[grasswire]

19. wow

Have we talked about "Stars of Tomorrow"? I vaguely remember a discussion of that old talent show either here or somewhere else on the web.

[monmouth]

22. It was big in the late '40s, and during the '60s. It was my entree into tv in Philadelphia (The

Paul Whiteman TV Teen Show). I coulda been a contendah!!!!

[unionworks]

12. I love it all

Thanks for the tip.

[HopeHoops]

13. I prefer to play it.

[grasswire]

20. I'm a little afraid to ask you what your instrument is. n/t

[HopeHoops]

21. I blow sax.

[cyberswede]

15. Love it...

our local public radio station plays it Sunday mornings from 7-9, and Sunday afternoons from 1-5. Fabulous!

...though it's my mom & dad's era, not my grandmother's.

I do have my 11 and 9 y.o. kids listen with me, so they can gain an appreciation, too.

Finally...there's a great online station on Live365.com called Radio Dismuke that plays 20's jazz - lots of fun.

[KamaAina]

17. I am a jazz fanatic

but most of the jazz I like is from the bebop era or later, New Orleans traditional jazz excepted. ("Dixieland" is a pale imitation of traditional jazz played by white men in hideous seersucker suits.)

Two artists that Grandma would have liked who made my playlists back at Jazz 94 are Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie.

[grasswire]

18. I am obliged to clarify

The term "trad" (short for traditional) is today used to describe the bands and musicians who "revived" New Orleans jazz in the latter half of the twentieth century and continue today. And that includes mostly white guys. The roots of trad are the hot jazz bands of the twenties, the West coast revivals such as Lu Watters, the Chicago style such as Eddie Condon, and more. They play and revere Armstrong, Ellington, Kid Ory, Teagarden, W.C. Handy, Waller, Morten, and so so much more.

I have been an officer of several jazz societies, co-produced jazz festivals and events, and been friends with many many of the finest trad jazz musicians, and nary a one owns a seersucker suit to my knowledge.

It is true that a corny interpretation of jazz existed under the name "Dixieland" -- mostly in the 1950s. But not all jazz music played by white guys was/is corny or pale.

But then my interest in jazz ends just prior to Dizzy Gillespie (whom I have heard in concert).

[KamaAina]

23. Well, then, what you're playing isn't Dixieland

I actually had no idea that "trad" had become so popular north of Lake Pontchartrain. In the Birthplace of Jazz itself, enitr blocks of airtime on the renowned WWOZ are devoted to traditional jazz. And of course white players (sans seersucker ) are involved in it; it was Allan Jaffe who made Preservation Hall a destination. (that is, all Dixieland players are white, but not all white players play Dixieland).

[grasswire]

24. for the last thirty years...

....there has been a huge popularity in trad, although it is diminishing somewhat as an "industry" lately. Hundreds of large festivals took place each year all across the country. Sure, there are show bands and shtick bands and some corny bands. But the core of the revival has been the musicians who know the roots of the music, honor it, and keep it alive. In order to "pay the bills" the festivals sometimes align trad with ragtime and/or blues and/or swing to draw as many attendees as possible. And festivals have tended to drop the term Dixieland everywhere possible.

Across the pond in UK and in Europe and Australia trad flourishes even more than in this country.

laissez les bon temps roulez

A book that you might find really interesting is "Black Beauty; White Heat" that chronicles the jazz band throughout the decades up to the fifties. It's a detailed pictorial history. Your library ought to be able to get it for you.

[BrendaBrick]

25. Several years ago

I heard a song played on the car radio by a local university with a FANTASTIC collection of this type of music. When I first heard "Accentuate The Positive" by Johnny Mercer, I immediately pulled over to jot down the name of the song and the artist. (Though I'm not real keen on the whole *preaching*, *sin* and Jonah & the Whale slant/aspect...) overall, a really great tune which never fails to pick me up:

BTW, Interesting bio on Mercer:

"His father had died in 1940, having succeeded in paying off $700,000 of the million he owed. In 1955, Mercer sold his share in Capitol records and, finally able to do so, surprised his father's creditors by using $300,000 of the proceeds to pay off the remainder of the debt."

Source: http://www.songwritershalloffame.org/exhibits/bio/C18

Another good one I really like is Louis Prima: "Brooklyn Boogie"

&ob=av2e

Of course, in my book...can't nothin' even come close to touching this one:

The bar has officially been raised and to my knowledge...still holds true to this day!!!

(on edit - right album cover...wrong song)

[grasswire]

29. Louis is the god of jazz.

The end.

Although I luvs some Cab Calloway too. Talk about radical music!

[BrendaBrick]

32. Yup!

[RebelOne]

26. I am the grandmother.

Swing and jazz were popular when I was a child. My favorite eras of music were in the '60s, '70s and ''80s.

[Bake]

27. My father made me listen to the Big Bands when I was a kid

Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, et al. I hated it at the time. Now I love it!



Bake

[DFW]

28. You young'uns need a broader perpective

for SOME of us, that was our mom's life!!

My mom was playing string bass in a jazz band in NYC in the 1940s. She had a collection of original 78s of Jelly Roll Morton. I spent ten years trying to play boogie Woogie like Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis before I gave up and tried to take up Leo Kottke's 12 string guitar (somewhat more successful).

[grasswire]

30. how cool

What was the name of the band your mom was in?

And do you have her record collection?

[DFW]

31. I don't even know if her band had a formal name

They just played in jazz joints.

I did get most of her record collection. Cool stuff, eh? "I'm the Winin' Boy, don't deny my name...."

I don't know where it all landed--here in Germany, or in DC with my brother, somewhere, but it's around.

[grasswire]

33. 1939 Morten w/ Sidney Bechet

and it's still played today -- saw this performance last summer:

[DFW]

34. Her record had Morton singing solo accompanying himself on the piano

And I remember Jorma Kaukonen doing it on the first Hot Tuna album, too.

The best songs always endure, always to come back again and again, revived by artists who weren't even born when they were first written.