At the Jazz Band Ball

At the Jazz Band Ball is a podcast devoted to jazz from its earliest days through the 1940s. Every show is an exploration of an artist, a venue or an instrument. Louis Armstrong at Connie's Inn in Harlem, Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club, Bix Beiderbecke at the Palace Theatre in Cleveland, and lots more. Join me on Substack, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Early jazz drummers, pt. 2. Featuring: Buddy Gilmore, Chick Webb, Sonny Greer, George Wettling, Dave Tough, Gene Krupa, Papa Jo Jones.Music: Castle House Rag, Vote for Mr. Rhythm, Liza (All The Clouds'll Roll Away), Jumpin' Pumpkins, Drummer's Delight, Three Little Words, Shine, Sing Sing Sing, Drum Boogie, Sent for You Yesterday (And Here You Come Today), Delta Serenade.

Featuring: Baby Dodds, Zutty Singleton, Sid Catlett, Viola Smith, Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong, James P. Johnson, Pee Wee Russell; Songs include: Spooky Drums, China Boy, Sugar Foot Strut, I Found a New Baby, Moppin' and Boppin', Rose Room, Mop Mop, Steak Face.

Benny Carter Recorded June 14, 1992, Courtesy of Smithsonian Jazz Oral HistoryThis native New Yorker made memorable impressions as a great bandleader and improviser. Largely self-taught, Benny Carter's first instrument was the trumpet, although the alto saxophone eventually became his principal instrument. He participated in tours with Jazz at the Philharmonic and wrote arrangements for singers including Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong. Carter received numerous awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987.Complete Transcript (145 pages) View PDFClip 1: MP3 Family Musical HistoryClip 2: MP3 First SaxophoneClip 3: MP3 Meeting Count BasieClip 4: MP3 First ArrangementsClip 5: MP3 Why the SaxophoneClip 6: MP3 1932's First OrchestraClip 7: MP3 Dizzy Gillespie's ImpactClip 8: MP3 Writing for Film and TVBenny Carter Photo Provided Courtesy of Ed Berger

Benny Carter, alto sax, trumpet - Rambling in C (1937), Plain Dirt (1929), That's How I Feel Today (1929), Six or Seven Times (1929), Keep a Song in Your Soul (1930), Chinatown My Chinatown (1930), Keep a Song in Your Soul (1930), Symphony in Riffs (1933), Waltzing the Blues (1936), When Lights Are Low (1936), Cow Cow Boogie (1942). Featuring: McKinney's Cotton Pickers, The Little Chocolate Dandies, Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, Benny Carter and His Harlem Club Orchestra, Benny Carter and His Swing Quartet, Ella Mae Morse with Freddie Slack and His Orchestra.

Featuring: Louis Armstrong, California Ramblers, Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk Orchestra, Art Tatum, Fats Waller, Bix Beiderbecke, Bessie Smith.Songs: Dinah, Gut Bucket Blues, Clap Hands! Here Comes Charlie!, Flamin' Mamie, Tea For Two, Squeeze Me, Davenport Blues, St. Louis Blues.

Holiday jazz featuring: Peggy Lee, Ella Logan, Victoria Spivey, Lonnie Johnson, Bessie Smith, Ella Fitzgerald, Julia Lee, Fletcher Henderson, Claude Thornhill, John Kirby, Putney Dandridge, and Fats Waller.Songs include: Jingle Bells, Winter Weather, Santa Claus Came in the Spring, There's Frost on the Moon, Every Day's a Holiday, Snowy Morning Blues, Snowfall, Arab Dance, Bounce of the Sugar Plum Fairy, Christmas Spirits, Chistmas Without Santa Claus.

Bonus show, Christmas jazz 1940s. Featuring: Peggy Lee (with Art Lund and Benny Goodman): Winter Weather (1941) and Julia Lee and Her Boyfriends (1948): Christmas Spirits. Regular Christmas show to appear in a couple of weeks. Enjoy!

The Devil's Music: Halloween Jazz, 1920s, 30s, 40s. Featuring: Louis Armstrong, Marion Harris, Fats Waller, Hot Lips Page, Jelly Roll Morton, Mildred Bailey, Louis Prima, Cab Calloway, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday. Songs: The Skeleton in the Closet, I'm a Jazz Vampire, Dry Bones, Skull Duggery, Boogaboo, Ghost of a Chance, Mr. Ghost is Going to Town, The Ghost of Smokey Joe, Haunted House Blues, Ghost of Yesterday,

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).

As the most prevalent surname in the U.S., "Smith" also comes up frequently in jazz, but put together in one show the result is a startling assemblage of blues and jazz artists: Bessie, Pinetop, Willie "The Lion," Viola, Clara, Mamie, Trixie...the list goes on.

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 arrangements. For ten consecutive years, starting around 1934, the group's hit recordings sold in the hundreds of thousands, and was a favorite among black and white audiences.

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 others.

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 Avenue — or "heaven" as Simms called it. Performances by Ellington, Lunceford, Webb, Fitzgerald, and McKinney.

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 the Club Alabam on Broadway in 1924, but only after the band's players—not Henderson—talked their way into auditioning for their first long-term engagement.

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 the 1970s with Marian McPartland, and we'll finish with a live recording she did at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1978.