Podcast appearances and mentions of Milt Hinton

Explore a new album from the Steve Allee Big Band, titled Naptown Sound. The project pays tribute to the musicians, teachers, mentors, history, and places that contributed to the development of the Naptown sound.  The pianist, composer and bandleader Steve Allee has been part of the Indianapolis jazz scene since the 1960s. He came of age at a time when many historic Naptown jazz players were still active on the scene. Allee was befriended and mentored by legendary Indianapolis musicians, including Jimmy Coe, Claude Sifferlen and Errol Grandy. Allee began performing professionally as a teenager, touring with the legendary jazz drummer Buddy Rich. His debut recording, a 1973 session with the the Baron Von Ohlen Quartet, remains a favorite among jazz fans around the world, with original copies seeking for over $200 on the collector's market.  Over the years, Allee has worked with a long list of jazz luminaries, including Slide Hampton, James Moody, Rufus Reid, Curtis Fuller, Jeff Hamilton, Milt Hinton and many others. Allee has also gained notoriety for his work as a composer. He's written work for the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and his compositions have been used in documentaries and television programs.

Regarded as the most important and influential musician on the Irish jazz scene, saxophonist/flutist and composer Michael Buckley has been playing professionally since the age of six when critics hailed him as a child prodigy. Born in Dublin city in 1971 Michael first came to prominence on an International level when, aged 10, he played flute with the legendary saxophonist George Coleman in the National Concert Hall. Though largely self-taught, his obvious talent has been developed by his father Dick Buckley, and such legends as Milt Hinton. Buckley has found his unique voice playing both saxophone and flute. Buckley has been collaborating with the World Jazz Orchestra, where Michael represented Ireland, the Edinburgh Jazz Festival Orchestra (led by Tim Hagans), and small group tours and concerts with Dave Liebman, John Abercrombie, Joey Baron, Jason Rebello, Nils Wolgram, Tom Rainey, and Chander Sardjoe, to name but a few. Now in his early 40s, Buckley is rapidly becoming the most important producer of his generation. With countless albums ranging from jazz to traditional to hip-hop, Michael is making a name for himself internationally as a producer and engineer. Buckley has also performed and toured in recent years with The Mingus Big Band, Jason Moran, Kurt Rosenwinkle, Edward Simon, Pete King, Badal Roy, Kenny Wheeler, Lee Konitz, Grant Stewart, Ingrid Jensen, Guy Barker, Greg Burk, Damon Brown, Kevin Dean, Florian Ross, soloist with the BBC big band, Albert Sanz, and Gerard Presencer among others. As well as frequent radio spots, Michael has made numerous television appearances, regularly works on film and television scores, and recently collaborated on recordings with Donovan, the Cranberries, The Coors, Jerry Lee Louis, and Johnny Mattis.

THE SOUND OF JAZZ CBS 30TH STREET STUDIOS New York, December 5, 1957Open All NightEmmett Berry, Doc Cheatham, Roy Eldridge, Joe Newman (tp) Vic Dickenson, Frank Rehak, Dicky Wells (tb) Earl Warren (as) Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young (ts) Harry Carney (bar) Count Basie (p) Freddie Green (g) Eddie Jones (b) Jo Jones (d) Pierce (arr)Wild man blues, RosettaHenry “Red” Allen (tp,vcl) Rex Stewart (cnt) Vic Dickenson (tb) Pee Wee Russell (cl) Coleman Hawkins (ts) Nat Pierce (p) Danny Barker (g) Milt Hinton (b) Jo Jones (d)I left my Baby, Dickie's Dream. Continue reading Puro Jazz 30 de diciembre, 2024 at PuroJazz.

THE SOUND OF JAZZ CBS 30TH STREET STUDIOS New York, December 5, 1957Open All NightEmmett Berry, Doc Cheatham, Roy Eldridge, Joe Newman (tp) Vic Dickenson, Frank Rehak, Dicky Wells (tb) Earl Warren (as) Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young (ts) Harry Carney (bar) Count Basie (p) Freddie Green (g) Eddie Jones (b) Jo Jones (d) Pierce (arr)Wild man blues, RosettaHenry “Red” Allen (tp,vcl) Rex Stewart (cnt) Vic Dickenson (tb) Pee Wee Russell (cl) Coleman Hawkins (ts) Nat Pierce (p) Danny Barker (g) Milt Hinton (b) Jo Jones (d)I left my Baby, Dickie's Dream. Continue reading Puro Jazz 30 de diciembre, 2024 at PuroJazz.

IKE QUEBEC “QUINTET” – New York, July 18, 1944Blue HarlemIke Quebec (ts) Ram Ramirez (p) Tiny Grimes (g) Milt Hinton (b) J.C. Heard (d) “SWINGTET” – New York, September 25, 1944If I had you, Mads About YouJonah Jones (tp) Tyree Glenn (tb) Ike Quebec (ts) Ram Ramirez (p) Tiny Grimes (g) Oscar Pettiford (b) J.C. Heard (d) JOHN HARDEE “SEXTET” – New York, February 28, 1946Hard tack, If I had you, Mad about youJohn Hardee (ts) Sammy Benskin (p) Tiny Grimes (g) John Simmons (b) Sidney Catlett (d)“SWINGTETT” – New York, May 31, 1946River edge rock,C jam blues, Flying home, Tiny's boogie woogieTrummy Young (tb) John Hardee (ts) Marlowe Morris (p) Tiny Grimes (g) Jimmy Butts (b) Eddie Nicholson (d) EDMOND HALL “CELESTE QUARTET” – New York, February 5, 1941Edmond Hall blues, Celestial expressEdmond Hall (cl) Meade Lux Lewis (celeste) Charlie Christian (g) Israel Crosby (b) “ALL STAR QUINTET” – New York, January 25, 1944Rumpin' in '44, Seein' RedEdmond Hall (cl) Red Norvo (vib) Teddy Wilson (p) Carl Kress (g) Johnny Williams (b) y su Swingtet : Jonah Jones (tp) Tyree Glenn (tb) Continue reading Puro Jazz 15 de octubre, 2024 at PuroJazz.

IKE QUEBEC “QUINTET” – New York, July 18, 1944Blue HarlemIke Quebec (ts) Ram Ramirez (p) Tiny Grimes (g) Milt Hinton (b) J.C. Heard (d) “SWINGTET” – New York, September 25, 1944If I had you, Mads About YouJonah Jones (tp) Tyree Glenn (tb) Ike Quebec (ts) Ram Ramirez (p) Tiny Grimes (g) Oscar Pettiford (b) J.C. Heard (d) JOHN HARDEE “SEXTET” – New York, February 28, 1946Hard tack, If I had you, Mad about youJohn Hardee (ts) Sammy Benskin (p) Tiny Grimes (g) John Simmons (b) Sidney Catlett (d)“SWINGTETT” – New York, May 31, 1946River edge rock,C jam blues, Flying home, Tiny's boogie woogieTrummy Young (tb) John Hardee (ts) Marlowe Morris (p) Tiny Grimes (g) Jimmy Butts (b) Eddie Nicholson (d) EDMOND HALL “CELESTE QUARTET” – New York, February 5, 1941Edmond Hall blues, Celestial expressEdmond Hall (cl) Meade Lux Lewis (celeste) Charlie Christian (g) Israel Crosby (b) “ALL STAR QUINTET” – New York, January 25, 1944Rumpin' in '44, Seein' RedEdmond Hall (cl) Red Norvo (vib) Teddy Wilson (p) Carl Kress (g) Johnny Williams (b) y su Swingtet : Jonah Jones (tp) Tyree Glenn (tb) Continue reading Puro Jazz 15 de octubre, 2024 at PuroJazz.

Send us a textBassist & Educator Peter Dominguez is Professor the of Double Bass and Jazz Studies at the University of Wisconsin- Madison and Artistic Director of the Richard Davis Foundation for Young Bassist Inc annual conference in Madison Wisconsin, and the director of the Milt Hinton Institute for Studio Bass. On EP 129, Dominguez discusses his insights into jazz, the double bass, and his relationship with legendary bassists like Richard Davis and Milt Hinton. Peter Dominguez is known for his deep connection to jazz history and his contributions as a performer and educator.In the interview, Dominguez discusses his personal experiences, his learning journey with Richard Davis, and Milt Hinton's influence, offering anecdotes, techniques, and reflections on how these giants shaped his musical philosophy. The episode  dives into the significance of these mentors in jazz, their techniques, and the legacy they left for future generations of bassists.Oskar Cartaya - Latin Bass Workshop Barry Green - The Inner Game of Music WorkshopBarry Green- Four ElementsSupport the showInstagram / Twitter / Youtube / Website / BSA / View More Episodes

JEREMY STEIG “FLUTE FEVER” New York, 1963Oleo, Well you needn't, Willow, weep for meJeremy Steig (fl) Denny Zeitlin (p) Ben Tucker (b) Ben Riley (d) HELEN MERRILL “HELEN MERRILL” New York, December 22, 1954Don't explain, Born to be blueHelen Merrill (vcl) acc by Clifford Brown (tp) Danny Bank (fl) Jimmy Jones (p) Barry Galbraith (g) Milt Hinton (b) Osie Johnson (d) Quincy Jones (arr,cond) New York, December 24, 1954What's new ? Continue reading Puro Jazz 10 de septiembre, 2024 at PuroJazz.

JEREMY STEIG “FLUTE FEVER” New York, 1963Oleo, Well you needn't, Willow, weep for meJeremy Steig (fl) Denny Zeitlin (p) Ben Tucker (b) Ben Riley (d) HELEN MERRILL “HELEN MERRILL” New York, December 22, 1954Don't explain, Born to be blueHelen Merrill (vcl) acc by Clifford Brown (tp) Danny Bank (fl) Jimmy Jones (p) Barry Galbraith (g) Milt Hinton (b) Osie Johnson (d) Quincy Jones (arr,cond) New York, December 24, 1954What's new ? Continue reading Puro Jazz 10 de septiembre, 2024 at PuroJazz.

JAY MCSHANN “GOING TO KANSAS CITY Dallas, Texas, April 30, 1941Swingmatism, Hootie blues (wb vcl,cp arr,1), Dexter bluesHarold Bruce, Buddy Anderson, Orville Minor (tp) Taswell Baird (tb) John Jackson (as) Charlie Parker (as,arr) Harold Ferguson, Bob Mabane (ts) Jay McShann (p) Gene Ramey (b) Gus Johnson (d) Walter Brown (vcl) William J. Scott (arr) New York, December 1, 1943You say forward, I'll march, Wrong neighborhood (bm vcl,), Home town blues (wb vcl,)Bob Merrill (tp,vcl) Dave Mitchell, Jesse Jones, Willie Cook (tp) Alonzo Pettiford, Alfonso Fook, Rudy Morrison (tb) John Jackson, Fats Dennis (as) Paul Quinichette, Bill Goodson (ts) Rae Brodely (bar) Jay McShann (p) Gene Ramey (b) Dan Graves (d) Walter Brown (vcl) ART HODES / MILT HINTON “JUST THE TWO OF US New York, August 26, 1981Willow, weep for me, Winin' boy blues, I would do anything for you, Randolph Street blueArt Hodes (p) Milt Hinton (b) PAUL GONSALVES “GETTIN' TOGETHER!” New York, December 20, 1960Hard groove, I surrender dear, Low gravyNat Adderley (cnt) Paul Gonsalves (ts) Wynton Kelly (p) Sam Jones (b) Jimmy Cobb (d) Continue reading Puro Jazz 03 de septiembre, 2024 at PuroJazz.

JAY MCSHANN “GOING TO KANSAS CITY Dallas, Texas, April 30, 1941Swingmatism, Hootie blues (wb vcl,cp arr,1), Dexter bluesHarold Bruce, Buddy Anderson, Orville Minor (tp) Taswell Baird (tb) John Jackson (as) Charlie Parker (as,arr) Harold Ferguson, Bob Mabane (ts) Jay McShann (p) Gene Ramey (b) Gus Johnson (d) Walter Brown (vcl) William J. Scott (arr) New York, December 1, 1943You say forward, I'll march, Wrong neighborhood (bm vcl,), Home town blues (wb vcl,)Bob Merrill (tp,vcl) Dave Mitchell, Jesse Jones, Willie Cook (tp) Alonzo Pettiford, Alfonso Fook, Rudy Morrison (tb) John Jackson, Fats Dennis (as) Paul Quinichette, Bill Goodson (ts) Rae Brodely (bar) Jay McShann (p) Gene Ramey (b) Dan Graves (d) Walter Brown (vcl) ART HODES / MILT HINTON “JUST THE TWO OF US New York, August 26, 1981Willow, weep for me, Winin' boy blues, I would do anything for you, Randolph Street blueArt Hodes (p) Milt Hinton (b) PAUL GONSALVES “GETTIN' TOGETHER!” New York, December 20, 1960Hard groove, I surrender dear, Low gravyNat Adderley (cnt) Paul Gonsalves (ts) Wynton Kelly (p) Sam Jones (b) Jimmy Cobb (d) Continue reading Puro Jazz 03 de septiembre, 2024 at PuroJazz.

On this episode, we welcome accomplished bassist and Professor of Double Bass and Jazz Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Peter Dominguez. Peter started his career in Milwaukee and has also taught at Michigan State University, the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and performed with various artists globally. Peter's contributions include adjudicating international competitions, directing the Richard Davis Foundation conference, and the Milt Hinton Institute for Studio Bass. His discography includes "How About This", "Groove Dreams", and a solo recording "Bass Salute". We discuss the Milt Hinton Institute for Studio Bass, a summer program for teenage bass players, which Peter directs. Hosted by NJPAC and Montclair State University in July 2024, the program offers classes, performances, ensemble work, studio sessions, and more. Visit njpac.org/hinton for more information. Subscribe to the podcast to get these interviews delivered to you automatically!   Connect with us: all things double bass double bass merch double bass sheet music   Thank you to our sponsor!   Upton Bass Rosin, developed by Gary Upton, boasts an excellent feel, response, and tone for double bass bows. Gary believes it's the best bass rosin available. It's appreciated by users like Blake Hinson from the New York Philharmonic for its quality and performance.  Learn more about Upton's rosin, basses, and more at uptonbass.com. theme music by Eric Hochberg

Largely forgotten white New Orleans clarinet player Parenti had a long and busy career initially in his hometown, but then in New York and Miami. He was a solid, dependable player whose jazz abilities were overlooked sometimes, but here are on full displace in trios (with Dick Wellstood and Sam Ulano) and quartets (with Hank Duncan, George Wettling, Milt Hinton, Armand Hug, Abbie Brunies and Chink Martin). --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/john-clark49/support

BILL FRISELL TRIO + UMBRIA JAZZ ORCHESTRA “ORCHESTRAS” Umbria ca. 2022Lookout for Hope, Strange Meeting, ElectrcityBill Frisell (g) Thomas Morgan (b) Rudy Royston (d) + Umbia Jazz Orchestra, Mike Gibbs (arr) Manuele Morbidini (cond) KENNY BURRELL TRIO A NIGHT AT THE VANGUARD New York, September 16 & 17, 1959All night long, Will you still be mine ?, I'm a fool to want you, TrioKenny Burrell (g) Richard Davis (b) Roy Haynes (d) GEORGE RUSSELL THE JAZZ WORKSHOP: New York, March 31, 1956Ye hypocrite, ye Beelzebub, Livingstone, I presume ?, Ezz-theticArt Farmer (tp) Hal McKusick (fl,as) Bill Evans (p) Barry Galbraith (g) Milt Hinton (b) Joe Harris (d) George Russell (arr,cond) New York, December 21, 1956Knights of the steamtable, Ballad of Hix Blewittsame except Teddy Kotick (b) Osie Johnson (d,woodblock-1) George Russell (boobams-1) added Continue reading Puro Jazz 30 Mayo 2024 at PuroJazz.

BILL FRISELL TRIO + UMBRIA JAZZ ORCHESTRA “ORCHESTRAS” Umbria ca. 2022Lookout for Hope, Strange Meeting, ElectrcityBill Frisell (g) Thomas Morgan (b) Rudy Royston (d) + Umbia Jazz Orchestra, Mike Gibbs (arr) Manuele Morbidini (cond) KENNY BURRELL TRIO A NIGHT AT THE VANGUARD New York, September 16 & 17, 1959All night long, Will you still be mine ?, I'm a fool to want you, TrioKenny Burrell (g) Richard Davis (b) Roy Haynes (d) GEORGE RUSSELL THE JAZZ WORKSHOP: New York, March 31, 1956Ye hypocrite, ye Beelzebub, Livingstone, I presume ?, Ezz-theticArt Farmer (tp) Hal McKusick (fl,as) Bill Evans (p) Barry Galbraith (g) Milt Hinton (b) Joe Harris (d) George Russell (arr,cond) New York, December 21, 1956Knights of the steamtable, Ballad of Hix Blewittsame except Teddy Kotick (b) Osie Johnson (d,woodblock-1) George Russell (boobams-1) added Continue reading Puro Jazz 30 Mayo 2024 at PuroJazz.

On the May 11 WBGO Journal, a preview of NJPAC's Milt Hinton Institute for Studio Bass summer camp and Governor Murphy reacts to protests at Rutgers-New Brunswick

"We heard from so many of you after our last release that you dug the 'Sax Trio Brilliance' episode - so we are back with more of Bob and Reuben's favorite Sax Trios! As a bassist, the freedom and transparency that happens in a chord-less saxophone trio can lead to inspiring new territory. We'll dig in this time to cuts that feature some of our favorite bassists - Milt Hinton, Gary Peacock, Charlie Haden, Ron Carter, Reggie Workman, and Christian McBride" If you like Bass - you're in the right place! Interested in more music and practice advice? Check out Open Studio...where you'll find courses and much more by world-class bassists like Reuben Rogers, Ron Carter, Christian McBride, Bob DeBoo and more. Reach out to the Upright Citizens anytime at uprightcitizenspodcast@gmail.com ★ Support this podcast ★

Great recordings made by Ethel Waters in 1938 and 1939 for Bluebird . . accompanied by her husband at the time, Eddie Mallory and His Orchestra which included Mallory, Shirly Clay, Tyree Glenn, Castor McCord, Benny Carter, Garvin Bushell, Reginald Beane, Danny Barker, Milt Hinton and Charles Turner --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/john-clark49/support

Great sessions for Charles Delauney's Swing label in New York in 1946 featuring Benny Carter and The Chocolate Dandies (Buck Clayton, Al Grey, Ben Webster, Sonny White, John Simmons and Sid Catlett), Jonah Jones and His Cats (Tyree Glenn, Rudy Powell, Ike Quebec, Dave Rivera, Milt Hinton, Kansas Fields) and Gene Sedric (Lincoln Mills, Freddy Jefferson, Danny Settle, Slick Jones), including two bonus Sedric tracks for Keynote --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/john-clark49/support

"It's here, it's here! It's Christmas time again, and the Upright Citizens are back with more of their favorite Christmas recordings and memories. Let's get in the spirit with sounds from some of our favorite bassists including John Clayton, Charlie Haden, Milt Hinton, Gary Peacock, Larry Grenadier!"Upright Citizens Xmas Party 2023 PlaylistInterested in more music advice? Check out the Open Studio courses and online practice community that is Open Studio Pro...where you'll find regular live guided practice sessions and masterclasses by Open Studio Artists like Reuben Rogers, Bob DeBoo, Peter Martin, Adam Maness, and many more. ★ Support this podcast ★

The great swing era trumpet player on three pickup dates after he left Cab Calloway's band . . the first with Sammy Price (also featuring, Vic Dickenson, Pete Brown, Milt Hinton and JC Heard), second with George Wettling (with Bud Freeman, Dave Bowman, Milt Hinton and George Barnes), and third with Sidney Bechet (with Jimmy Archey, Buddy Weed, Walter Page and Johnny Blowers). --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/john-clark49/support

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Sessions for Keynote (and one for Signature) in 1946 . . Shorty Sherock (featuring Willie Smith, Corky Corcoran, Arnold Ross), Milt Hinton and His Orchestra (featuring Jonah Jones, Al Gibson, Tyree Glenn), Clyde Hurley (with Babe Russin, Murray McEachern, Tommy Todd, Dave Barbour), and Mannie Klein (with Russin, Skitch Henderson, George Van Eps). .late period swing by veterans of the era! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/john-clark49/support

Two Cozy Cole sessions (with Coleman Hawkins, Budd Johnson, Eddie Barefield, Johnny Guarnieri), one Walter Thomas (Ben Webster, Budd Johnson, Clyde Hart) and under his own name (Don Byas, Dave Rivera, Milt Hinton, JC Heard) all feature the matchless trumpet of Emmett Berry in 1944 and 1945. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/john-clark49/support

Two sessions with the great Bob Crosby alumn Eddie Miller - 1979 featuring Johnny Varro, Ray Leatherwood and Gene Estes and 1982 with George Masso, John Bunch, Milt Hinton and Duffy Jackson . .great late period swing! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/john-clark49/support

Great sessions for Keynote led by drummers - Cozy Cole (Earl Hines, Trummy Young, Coleman Hawkins, Teddy Walters, Billy Taylor), Cozy with Don Byas (Byas, Aaron Sachs, Shorty Rogers, Vernon Brown), George Wettling (Jack Teagarden, Joe Thomas, Coleman Hawkins, Hank D'Amico, Herman Chittison), and J.C. Heard (Buck Clayton, Flip Phillips, Milt Hinton) . . --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/john-clark49/support

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The life of a jazz musician is never boring. George Shearing, Marian McPartland, Terry Gibbs and Milt Hinton regale us with behind-the-scenes scenarios, both poignant and absurd.

AL COHN “THE NATURAL SEVEN” – New York, February 3, 1955 Doggin’ around, Jump the blues away, Jack’s kinda swing, The natural thing to do, A.C. meets Osie Joe Newman (tp) Frank Rehak (tb) Al Cohn (ts,arr) Nat Pierce (p) Freddie Green (g) Milt Hinton (b) Osie Johnson (d)           CARL […]

IDA COX “BLUES FOR RAMPART STREET” – New York, April 11 – 12, 1961 Hard, oh Lord, Blues for Rampart Street, St. Louis blues, Hard time blues Ida Cox (vcl) acc by Roy Eldridge (tp) Coleman Hawkins (ts) Sammy Price (p) Milt Hinton (b) Jo Jones (d)             EARL HINES […]

En este primer episodio dedicado al contrabajo, hablamos de su rol en los inicios del jazz, suplantando poco a poco a la tuba. De la mano de pioneros como Pop's Foster, Wellman Brand con Duke, escuchamos a John Kirby, a Milt Hinton y llegamos a Kansas City: Walter Page antes y con Count Basie. Slam Stewart y sus solos con arco y cantados una octava más alta. Y por supuesto, culminamos con quien puso al bajo en primera línea como instrumento solista: Jimmy Blanton, con Ellington.

Good News: Bus stops in the UK city of Birmingham have beet transformed into stained glass art galleries, Link HERE. The Good Word: A stunningly beautiful poem from Nobel Prize winner Sir Derek Walcott. Good To Know: A genuinely startling fact about pineapples! Good News: The UK economy could get a 1.6-billion-pound boost if policies […]

00:00:00 No Tongue - Suite Tule 00:09:18 Xiu Xiu - Laura Palmer's Theme 00:14:19 “Vous Connaissez Le Si Avec Un Doigt“ 00:14:34 Madjid Khaladj - Grouhnavazi I 00:15:29 Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band - We Are Normal 00:20:18 Chant De Femme (Isongo) 00:23:13 Busta Rythm (Feat.Missy Elliot) - How We Do It Over Here 00:26:48 Jo Jones & Milt Hinton - Tam 00:28:46 Vent Dans Les Cordes - Sahara Occidental 00:29:51 Dean Blunt - Flaxen 00:34:00 Jusqu'à 15 00:34:27 Test Dept - Shockwork 00:40:23 J. Spacema, & Sun City Girls - Mr Lonely Viola 00:44:33 Novy Svet - Slavin 00:46:65 Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Paul's Dance 00:48:42 Reines D'Angleterre - Les Comores 3 00:50:20 David, Institut Don Bosco, Libourne 00:50:49 Sebastiao Tapajos & Pedros Dos Santos - Estudio N°1 00:54:36 Tonto's Expanding Head Band - Timewhys 00:59:30 Serafina Steer - Shut Up Shop 01:03:00 The Hub - Perry Mason In East Germany 01:08:10 Leroy “Horsemouth“ Wallace (Feat. The New Establisment) - Far Beyond 01:11:42 Barque Entre Lima Et Le Fronton 01:12:30 Los Chagras - El Curuchupa 01:15:36 Junray Song Chang - Hana 01:22:17 Demosoni Kelenv & Mamadi Keita - Percussions Malinkés 01:26:22 Le Cercle Des Mallissimalistes - Samonios (Extrait De Répétition)

These recordings were made for a radio program in Los Angeles in the early 1930's by his "International Orchestra" including Milt Hinton, Antonia Spaulding, Clifford King, George Barnes and Jimmy Bertrand - quite a mix of jazz, tango, rhumba, German, Jewish and Latin music! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/john-clark49/support

"Fallout" The Joe Wilder Quartet Jazz From Peter Gunn (Columbia, 1959) Joe Wilder, Milt Hinton, Hank Jones, John Cresci Jr. El tema es una composición de Henry Mancini. ¿Sabías que? Aprovechando el éxito de la serie de televisión Peter Gunn, Joe Wilder grabó con su cuarteto (en el que estaba el gran Hank Jones), una grabación con música de la serie, aunque en esta no estaba el celebérrimo "Peter Gunn". Joe Wilder nació el 22 de febrero de 1922 en Pennsylvania, aunque fue educado en Chicago, donde su padre dirigía una orquesta. De niño debutó en un programa radiofónico y posteriormente ingresó en la Mastbaum School Of Music. A principios de los años 40 lo contrataron Les Hite y Lionel Hampton, aunque tuvo que hacer una pausa para servir como marine en la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Tras licenciarse tocó con Jimmie Lunceford y Noble Sissle entre otros, y también participó en las orquestas de los espectáculos de Broadway: acompañó a la comedia musical Guys and Dolls durante tres años. En la primavera de 1954 Count Basie lo contrató para su gira europea. En 1957 retoma su trabajo de estudio en Nueva York entrando en la orquesta regular de la cadena ABC/TV. La abandonaría en 1973. También tocó con Benny Goodman en 1962 en la URSS y en orquestas de música clásica participando en 1975 en cuatro conciertos de la New York Philharmonic. Otros músicos con los que tocó fueron Tony Bennett, Lena Horne, Michel Legrand, Charles Mingus o Dizzy Gillespie entre otros. A pesar de todo ello no llegó a tener una discografía amplia (más bien fue todo lo contrario) a su nombre. Participó como músico en películas como Malcolm X, Poderosa Afrodita y Todos dicen I Love You, y en el célebre documental The Sound Of Jazz. Como actor participó en un episodio de La hora de Bill Cosby titulado "Play It Again, Russell". Además de músico, Joe Wilder fue fotógrafo. Falleció con más de 90 años en 2014. © Pachi Tapiz, 2022 En anteriores episodios de JazzX5/HDO/LODLMA/Maltidos Jazztardos/Tomajazz Remembers… https://www.tomajazz.com/web/?p=61576 https://www.tomajazz.com/web/?p=47859 https://www.tomajazz.com/web/?p=59944 https://www.tomajazz.com/web/?p=60399 Más información sobre Joe Wilder https://www.allaboutjazz.com/joe-wilder-a-true-living-legend-joe-wilder-by-greg-thomas Más información sobre JazzX5 JazzX5 es un minipodcast de HDO de la Factoría Tomajazz presentado, editado y producido por Pachi Tapiz. JazzX5 comenzó su andadura el 24 de junio de 2019. Todas las entregas de JazzX5 están disponibles en https://www.tomajazz.com/web/?cat=23120 / https://www.ivoox.com/jazzx5_bk_list_642835_1.html. JazzX5 y los podcast de Tomajazz en Telegram En Tomajazz hemos abierto un canal de Telegram para que estés al tanto, al instante, de los nuevos podcast. Puedes suscribirte en https://t.me/TomajazzPodcast. Pachi Tapiz en Tomajazz https://www.tomajazz.com/web/?cat=17847

PrefaceTo be in any form, what is that?(Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither)If nothing lay more develop'd the quahaug in its callous shell were enough.Mine is no callous shell,I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop,They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy,To touch my person to some one else's is about as much as I can stand.Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”A chicken ain't nothing but a bird.E. B. Wallace, “A Chicken Ain't Nothing But a Bird”(recorded in New York, October 14, 1940, by Cab Calloway and His Orchestra, including Mario Bauza, Dizzy Gillespie, Lamar Wright, Tyree Glenn, Quentin Jackson, Keg Johnson, Hilton Jefferson, Jerry Blake, Andrew Brown, Chu Berry, Walter Thomas, Benny Payne, Danny Barker, Milt Hinton, and Cozy Cole)THIS STORY WAS CONCEIVED at Corinne's Fabulous Fruits of the Sea one evening when Albertine and I had dropped by for drinks and stayed for dinner. Al always knows what she's going to have when we go to Corinne's, and since she doesn't eat fish, she always has the same thing: chicken. I study the menu, eliminating things one by one, remain undecided until the last minute, and then nearly always wind up ordering clams. During the important visit that led to my writing this story, we had been sitting at our table for a while, and I had eliminated everything on the menu but two things: chicken and clams.     “Are you having chicken?” I asked Al.     If I remember correctly, she said, “Yes.”     “Maybe I'll have chicken too.” I said.     She said nothing, I think.     “Or maybe I'll have clams,” I said.     She said something that I couldn't quite make out. A waitress, Dianne, one of my favorites, arrived. Al ordered. I hesitated. Albertine said—and I'll be forever in her debt for this—“You have to choose: chicken or clams.”     An electrifying sensation shot through me, at once frightening and exhilarating. What Albertine had said brought back to me a memory from three decades ago, when I was in the fifth grade. My work on “Take the Long Way Home” began then. Over the intervening months, the story has grown and developed in ways that I couldn't have predicted, but it is still possible to see that it began with the memory that Al's statement recalled.     Allow me a little of your time to explain what the memory was, how I changed its essentials, and why I altered them.     When I was in the fifth grade, I competed in two memorable contests. One was a contest to name a new elementary school in Babbington. The other was a contest for the affections of Veronica McCall. I lost both.     As I worked on “Take the Long Way Home,” I changed, among other things, the outcome of one of these contests: the name-the-school contest. In the pages that follow, I win. Why did I change the facts? To tell you the truth, I did it just to please myself. I've thought for nearly thirty years that I should have won that contest in the first place. Surely this is one of the motives behind any fiction: the desire to correct the errors of the past. It was easy to change the outcome, so I did.     I would have changed the outcome of the other contest if I could have, but I couldn't. The reasons for my losing Veronica were so deeply rooted in fact, in history, in the social fabric of Babbington, that to deny them, to try to alter them, would have meant trying to create a new social history, and since that seemed like more than I could do, I decided to stick to the facts.     But what were the facts? These things happened to me in the fifth grade; at the time, I thought that the outcome had a simple cause: I had lost Veronica to a boy named Frankie Paretti. What did I know then about the social forces at work in Babbington? Only as I worked on the story did I come to realize that—in the largest sense—I hadn't lost Veronica to any one boy. If I hadn't lost her to Frankie, I would have lost her to someone else, because I really lost Veronica to the sweeping force of social change. As I worked, I kept asking myself, “How did it happen? Why was there such an upheaval in the social structure of Babbington that it produced the tsunami that swept Veronica from me?” Weeks passed before I understood that it was all the fault of Stretch Mitgang.Have you missed an episode or two or several?You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you've missed.You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” “Take the Long Way Home,” and “Call Me Larry,” the first eight novellas in Little Follies.You'll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It's a pdf document. Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

Ride, Red, Ride . . recordings by Henry "Red" Allen in the 1950's for Soundcraft, Verve, and Victor . .featuring J.C. Higginbotham, Buster Bailey, Sol Yaged, Earl Warren, Coleman Hawkins, Lou Stein, Marty Napoleon, Milt Hinton, Lloyd Trotman, Cozy Cole, Chubby Jackson, George Wettling, Bob Hammer and Sol Hall --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/john-clark49/support

Wild Women - Ida Cox . .the "Uncrowned Queen of the Blues" in recordings from her most famous period in the 1920's featuring Lovie Austin, Jesse Crump, Tommy Ladnier and Jimmie O'Bryant along with two later appearances in the 1940's with Hot Lips Page, JC Higginbotham, Edmund Hall, James P. Johnson, Charlie Christian, Artie Bernstein, Lionel Hampton, Jo Jones, Walter Page, Buddy Tate, Dickie Wells and Shad Collins, and then at the end of her life with Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Sammy Price, Milt Hinton and Jo Jones. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/john-clark49/support

Paul Barbarin/Eddie Condon on Atlantic . .two very different traditional jazz groups . .one from New Orleans featuring Barbarin, John Brunious, Willie Humphrey, Lester Santiago, Danny Barker, Bob Thomas and Milt Hinton and the other celebrating Chicago with Condon, Max Kaminsky, Cutty Cutshall, Pee Wee Russell, Bud Freeman, Dick Cary, George Wettling and Leonard Gaskin --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/john-clark49/support

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Good News: Check out this enlightening list from MIT, that ranks the nations of the world according to their environmental commitments, Link HERE. The Good Word: A splendid, yet melancholy, poem about summers past, by Lewis Carroll. Good To Know + Good News: An absolutely amazing fact about penguins, and some truly remarkable information to […]

STANDAR SEMANAL.-Love is here to stay -JAZZANIVERSARIO.-Milt Hinton.-Basses Loaded! Milt Hinton - East Coast Jazz5.-JAZZACTUALIDAD.-John Hart.-Checkmate.

STANDAR SEMANAL.-Love is here to stay -JAZZANIVERSARIO.-Milt Hinton.-Basses Loaded! Milt Hinton - East Coast Jazz5.-JAZZACTUALIDAD.-John Hart.-Checkmate.

'18 and very promising'The Sharks & the Federal Studio Orchestra, Christopher Hampton, Milt Hinton, George Saunders, Beverley Williams, David Sedaris, Nina Simone, David Cheal, Bonnie Guitar, Sheldon Allman, Stephen Sondheim, Lily Kershaw, Eleanor Tiernan, Connie Francis, Malcolm Gladwell, The Teen Teens, Samm Henshaw, Debbie Reynolds, Mark Rothko, Susan Orlean, Julie London, The Secret Sisters

'18 and very promising' The Sharks & the Federal Studio Orchestra, Christopher Hampton, Milt Hinton, George Saunders, Beverley Williams, David Sedaris, Nina Simone, David Cheal, Bonnie Guitar, Sheldon Allman, Stephen Sondheim, Lily Kershaw, Eleanor Tiernan, Connie Francis, Malcolm Gladwell, The Teen Teens, Samm Henshaw, Debbie Reynolds, Mark Rothko, Susan Orlean, Julie London, The Secret Sisters

My dad's collection is filled with Dixieland jazz. You've already heard a couple in previous episodes. This album has an all-star cast that was pulled together in the wee hours of the morning. But they definitely were not ready to stop swinging yet. So get ready to put on your all night dancing shoes for Volume 20: Golden Era of Dixieland Jazz.  Claude Hopkins, Pee Wee Erwin, Vic Dickenson, Buster Bailey, Milt Hinton, George Wettling ‎– The Golden Era Of Dixieland Jazz 1887 - 1937 Label: Design Records (2) ‎– DLP 38 Format: Vinyl, LP, Mono Released: 1957 Genre: Jazz Style: Dixieland Bass – Milt Hinton Clarinet – Buster Bailey Drums – George Wettling Piano, Leader – Claude Hopkins Trombone – Vic Dickenson Trumpet – Pee Wee Erwin When The Saints Go Marching In  Traditional Struttin' With Some Barbeque  1927 by Lil Hardin Armstrong Muskrat Ramble  written by Kid Ory in 1926.  Clarinet Marmalade  composed by Larry Shields and Henry Ragas in 1918 I Would Do Anything For You  Written in 1932 by Alex Hill, Claude Hopkins and Bob Williams Birth Of The Blues  Written in 1926 by Ray Henderson ASCAP, BMI licenses provided by third-party platforms for music that is not under Public Domain.

Guitarist/composer Amanda Monaco has performed at venues such as Jazz at Lincoln Center, Birdland, Jazz Standard, and Flushing Town Hall, and with artists such as Milt Hinton, Steve Wilson, Rufus Reid, and the Mingus Orchestra. She has released eight albums to date and her current jazz projects include her eclectic quartet Deathblow, rambunctious organ quartet Glitter, an all-female jazz sextet Lioness. Her New Music ensemble The Pirkei Avot Project performs her original music with lyrics from selected verses (from a collection of rabbinical teachings with the same name) compiled in the third century C.E. An educator since 1990, Amanda is an Associate Professor at Berklee College of Music where she teaches private instruction, labs, and guitar ensembles. In this episode, Amanda shares her background, education, and musical journey. If you enjoyed this episode please make sure to subscribe, follow, rate, and/or review this podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, etc. Connect with us on all social media platforms and at www.improvexchange.com

SONNY STITT & PAUL GONSALVES – SALT AND PEPPER – New York, September 5, 1963 Lester Leaps In, Star dust, Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone Sonny Stitt (as-1,ts) Paul Gonsalves (ts) Hank Jones (p) Milt Hinton (b) Osie Johnson (d) JOE LOVANO TRIO TAPESTRY – GARDEN OF EXPRESSION – 2020 Night Creatures, […]

I this week's podcast, I tell the story of Marty Stuart taking inspiration from the The Dean of American Bassists, the great Milt Hinton. Marty discovered the photographs of the jazz great in the late 1970's and began his quest to do for country music what Milt was doing for jazz through his photography. Eudora WeltyMilt HintonMarty Stuart Lester FlattEarl ScruggsBill MonroeElla FitzgeraldGeorge JonesLoretta LynnSteve Earle

Unaccustomed As They Were - Famous musicians playing alternate instruments . . recordings of Benny Goodman on bass clarinet, alto and baritone saxes, Jimmy Dorsey on baritone sax and cornet (with Joe Venuti), Tommy Dorsey on trumpet, Ed Hall on baritone sax (with Claude Hopkins), Jack Teagarden on cornet (with Irving Mills), Barney Bigard on tenor sax (with Ellington), Milt Hinton on tuba (with Tiny Parham), Buster Bailey on alto (with Clarence Williams), Pee Wee Russell on tenor sax (with Red Nichols), Coleman Hawkins on clarinet (with Fletcher Henderson) and Bud Freeman on clarinet (with Bunny Berigan). --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/john-clark49/support

The Hump is HONORED to welcome our guest this week! Clarinetist, saxophonist, educator, Ken Peplowski! Tune in to find out why I call him, “The Rejuvenator!”

"Alone Together" (de l'

Welcome to a new edition of the Neon Jazz interview series with Jazz Vibraphonist, Composer & Band Leader Christian Tamburr .. We talked to him in  late March 2020 when the Spring Quarantine was really heading up .. and we talked abuot his Septet CD The Awakening (Sounds for Sculpture) .. This internationally renowned performer has been in over 67 countries around the world and first started performing jazz at the age of 14 – and went on to play with legends like Clark Terry, James Moody, Kenny Barron, Milt Hinton, Bucky Pizarelli, Nicolas Payton – he’s got great stories .. Dig…Click here to listen.Neon Jazz is a radio program airing since 2011. Hosted by Joe Dimino and Engineered by John Christopher in Kansas City, Missouri giving listeners a journey into one of America's finest inventions. Take a listen on KCXL (102.9 FM / 1140 AM) out of Liberty, MO. Listen to KCXL on Tunein Radio at http://tunein.com/radio/Neon-Jazz-With-Joe-Dimino-p381685/. You can now catch Neon Jazz on KOJH 104.7 FM out of the Mutual Musicians Foundation from Noon - 1 p.m. CST Monday-Friday at https://www.kojhfm.org/. Check us out at All About Jazz @ https://kansascity.jazznearyou.com/neon-jazz.php. For all things Neon Jazz, visit http://theneonjazz.blogspot.com/

Hilton Jefferson was known to musicians more than the public - as lead alto for Fletcher Henderson, Claude Hopkins, Cab Calloway and many others, he was often featured on ballads to show off his gorgeous sound, but here we are featuring him on more rhythmic tunes from some all star swing combos of the middle 1940's with a few ballads thrown in besides. Jonah Jones, Joe Thomas, Tyree Glenn, Ike Quebec, Jerry Jerome, Bernie Leighton, Eddie Barefield, Coleman Hawkins, Milt Hinton, Cozy Cole and Panama Francis are just a few of the notables featured here, but the focus is really on Jefferson, whose playing is a model of consistency, musicality and some innovation as well. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/john-clark49/support

Here is the second half of our half chat, half interview (chatterview?) with Glenn Zottola. Some great insights and stories from working with the greats of the swing era from Benny Goodman to Milt Hinton to Cab Calloway! For more info on Glenn's career, CDs and play along books go to glennzottola.com.

Here is the second half of our half chat, half interview (chatterview?) with Glenn Zottola. Some great insights and stories from working with the greats of the swing era from Benny Goodman to Milt Hinton to Cab Calloway! For more info on Glenn's career, CDs and play along books go to glennzottola.com.

Episode fifty-eight of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Mr. Lee" by the Bobbettes, and at the lbirth of the girl group sound. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Little Bitty Pretty One", by Thurston Harris.  ----more----   Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.   I've used multiple sources to piece together the information here. Marv Goldberg's page is always the go-to for fifties R&B groups. Girl Groups: Fabulous Females Who Rocked the World by John Clemente has an article about the group with some interview material. American Singing Groups by Jay Warner also has an article on the group.  Most of the Bobbettes' material is out of print, but handily this CD is coming out next Friday, with most of their important singles on it. I have no idea of its quality, as it's not yet out, but it seems like it should be the CD to get if you want to hear more of their music.  Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Over the last few months we've seen the introduction to rock and roll music of almost all the elements that would characterise the music in the 1960s -- we have the music slowly standardising on a lineup of guitar, bass, and drums, with electric guitar lead. We have the blues-based melodies, the backbeat, the country-inspired guitar lines. All of them are there. They just need putting together in precisely the right proportions for the familiar sound of the early-sixties beat groups to come out. But there's one element, as important as all of these, which has not yet turned up, and which we're about to see for the first time. And that element is the girl group. Girl groups played a vital part in the development of rock and roll music, and are never given the credit they deserve. But you just have to look at the first Beatles album to see how important they were. Of the six cover versions on "Please Please Me", three are of songs originally recorded by girl groups -- two by the Shirelles, and one by the Cookies. And the thing about the girl groups is that they were marketed as collectives, not as individuals -- occasionally the lead singer would be marketed as a star in her own right, but more normally it would be the group, not the members, who were known. So it's quite surprising that the first R&B girl group to hit the charts was one that, with the exception of one member, managed to keep their original members until they died. and where two of those members were still in the group into the middle of the current decade. So today, we're going to have a look at the group that introduced the girl group sound to rock and roll, and how the world of music was irrevocably changed because of how a few young kids felt about their fifth-grade teacher. [Excerpt: The Bobettes, "Mister Lee"] Now, we have to make a distinction here when we're talking about girl groups. There had, after all, been many vocal groups in the pre-rock era that consisted entirely of women -- the Andrews Sisters, for example, had been hugely popular, as had the Boswell Sisters, who sang the theme song to this show. But those groups were mostly what was then called "modern harmony" -- they were singing block harmonies, often with jazz chords, and singing them on songs that came straight from Tin Pan Alley. There was no R&B influence in them whatsoever. When we talk about girl groups in rock and roll, we're talking about something that quickly became a standard lineup -- you'd have one woman out front singing the lead vocal, and two or three others behind her singing answering phrases and providing "ooh" vocals. The songs they performed would be, almost without exception, in the R&B mould, but would usually have much less gospel influence than the male vocal groups or the R&B solo singers who were coming up at the same time. While doo-wop groups and solo singers were all about showing off individual virtuosity, the girl groups were about the group as a collective -- with very rare exceptions, the lead singers of the girl groups would use very little melisma or ornamentation, and would just sing the melody straight. And when it comes to that kind of girl group, the Bobbettes were the first one to have any real impact. They started out as a group of children who sang after school, at church and at the glee club. The same gang of seven kids, aged between eleven and fifteen, would get together and sing, usually pop songs. After a little while, though, Reather Dixon and Emma Pought, the two girls who'd started this up, decided that they wanted to take things a bit more seriously. They decided that seven girls was too many, and so they whittled the numbers down to the five best singers -- Reather and Emma, plus Helen Gathers, Laura Webb, and Emma's sister Jannie. The girls originally named themselves the Harlem Queens, and started performing at talent shows around New York. We've talked before about how important amateur nights were for black entertainment in the forties and fifties, but it's been a while, so to refresh your memories -- at this point in time, black live entertainment was dominated by what was known as the Chitlin Circuit, an informal network of clubs and theatres around the US which put on largely black acts for almost exclusively black customers. Those venues would often have shows that lasted all day -- a ticket for the Harlem Apollo, for example, would allow you to come and go all day, and see the same performers half a dozen times. To fill out these long bills, as well as getting the acts to perform multiple times a day, several of the chitlin circuit venues would put on talent nights, where young performers could get up on stage and have a chance to win over the audiences, who were notoriously unforgiving. Despite the image we might have in our heads now of amateur talent nights, these talent contests would often produce some of the greatest performers in the music business, and people like Johnny Otis would look to them to discover new talent. They were a way for untried performers to get themselves noticed, and while few did, some of those who managed would go on to have great success. And so in late 1956, the five Harlem Queens, two of them aged only eleven, went on stage at the Harlem Apollo, home of the most notoriously tough audiences in America. But they went down well enough that James Dailey, the manager of a minor bird group called the Ospreys, decided to take them on as well. The Ospreys were a popular group around New York who would eventually get signed to Atlantic, and release records like "Do You Wanna Jump Children": [Excerpt: The Ospreys, "Do You Wanna Jump Children?"] Dailey thought that the Harlem Queens had the potential to be much bigger than the Ospreys, and he decided to try to get them signed to Atlantic Records. But one thing would need to change -- the Harlem Queens sounded more like a motorcycle gang than the name of a vocal group. Laura's sister had just had a baby, who she'd named Chanel Bobbette. They decided to name the group after the baby, but the Chanels sounded too much like the Chantels, a group from the Bronx who had already started performing. So they became the Bobbettes. They signed to Atlantic, where Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler encouraged them to perform their own material. The girls had been writing songs together, and they had one -- essentially a playground chant -- that they'd been singing together for a while, about their fifth-grade teacher Mr. Lee. Depending on who you believe -- the girls gave different accounts over the years -- the song was either attacking him, or merely affectionately mocking his appearance. It called him "four-eyed" and said he was "the ugliest teacher you ever did see". Atlantic liked the feel of the song, but they didn't want the girls singing a song that was just attacking a teacher, and so they insisted on them changing the lyrics. With the help of Reggie Obrecht, the bandleader for the session, who got a co-writing credit on the song largely for transcribing the girls' melody and turning it into something that musicians could play, the song became, instead, a song about "the handsomest sweetie you ever did see": [Excerpt: The Bobbettes, "Mister Lee"] Incidentally, there seems to be some disagreement about who the musicians were on the track. Jacqueline Warwick, in "Girl Groups, Girl Culture", claims that the saxophone solo on "Mr. Lee" was played by King Curtis, who did play on many sessions for Atlantic at the time. It's possible -- and Curtis was an extremely versatile player, but he generally played with a very thick tone. Compare his playing on "Dynamite at Midnight", a solo track he released in 1957: [Excerpt: King Curtis, "Dynamite at Midnight"] With the solo on "Mr Lee": [Excerpt: The Bobbettes, "Mister Lee"] I think it more likely that the credit I've seen in other places, such as Atlantic sessionographies, is correct, and that the sax solo is played by the less-well-known player Jesse Powell, who played on, for example, "Fools Fall in Love" by the Drifters: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Fools Fall In Love"] If that's correct -- and my ears tell me it is -- then presumably the other credits in those sources are also correct, and the backing for "Mister Lee" was mostly provided by B-team session players, the people who Atlantic would get in for less important sessions, rather than the first-call people they would use on their major artists -- so the musicians were Jesse Powell on tenor sax; Ray Ellis on piano; Alan Hanlon and Al Caiola on guitar; Milt Hinton on bass; and Joe Marshall on drums. "Mr. Lee" became a massive hit, going to number one on the R&B charts and making the top ten on the pop charts, and making the girls the first all-girl R&B vocal group to have a hit record, though they would soon be followed by others -- the Chantels, whose name they had tried not to copy, charted a few weeks later. "Mr. Lee" also inspired several answer records, most notably the instrumental "Walking with Mr. Lee" by Lee Allen, which was a minor hit in 1958, thanks largely to it being regularly featured on American Bandstand: [Excerpt: Lee Allen, "Walking With Mr. Lee"] The song also came to the notice of their teacher -- who seemed to have already known about the girls' song mocking him. He called a couple of the girls out of their class at school, and checked with them that they knew the song had been made into a record. He'd recognised it as the song the girls had sung about him, and he was concerned that perhaps someone had heard the girls singing their song and stolen it from them. They explained that the record was actually them, and he was, according to Reather Dixon, "ecstatic" that the song had been made into a record -- which suggests that whatever the girls' intention with the song, their teacher took it as an affectionate one. However, they didn't stay at that school long after the record became a hit. The girls were sent off on package tours of the Chitlin' circuit, touring with other Atlantic artists like Clyde McPhatter and Ruth Brown, and so they were pulled out of their normal school and started attending The Professional School For Children, a school in New York that was also attended by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers and the Chantels, among others, which would allow them to do their work while on tour and post it back to the school. On the tours, the girls were very much taken under the wing of the adult performers. Men like Sam Cooke, Clyde McPhatter, and Jackie Wilson would take on somewhat paternal roles, trying to ensure that nothing bad would happen to these little girls away from home, while women like Ruth Brown and LaVern Baker would teach them how to dress, how to behave on stage, and what makeup to wear -- something they had been unable to learn from their male manager. Indeed, their manager, James Dailey, had started as a tailor, and for a long time sewed the girls' dresses himself -- which resulted in the group getting a reputation as the worst-dressed group on the circuit, one of the reasons they eventually dumped him. With "Mr. Lee" a massive success, Atlantic wanted the group to produce more of the same -- catchy upbeat novelty numbers that they wrote themselves. The next single, "Speedy", was very much in the "Mr. Lee" style, but was also a more generic song, without "Mr. Lee"'s exuberance: [Excerpt: The Bobbettes, "Speedy"] One interesting thing here is that as well as touring the US, the Bobbettes made several trips to the West Indies, where R&B was hugely popular. The Bobbettes were, along with Gene and Eunice and Fats Domino, one of the US acts who made an outsized impression, particularly in Jamaica, and listening to the rhythms on their early records you can clearly see the influence they would later have on reggae. We'll talk more about reggae and ska in future episodes, but to simplify hugely, the biggest influences on those genres as they were starting in the fifties were calypso, the New Orleans R&B records made in Cosimo Matassa's studio, and the R&B music Atlantic was putting out, and the Bobbettes were a prime part of that influence. "Mr. Lee", in particular, was later recorded by a number of Jamaican reggae artists, including Laurel Aitken: [Excerpt: Laurel Aitken, "Mr. Lee"] And the Harmonians: [Excerpt: the Harmonians, "Music Street"] But while "Mr Lee" was having a massive impact, and the group was a huge live act, they were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the way their recording career was going. Atlantic was insisting that they keep writing songs in the style of "Mr. Lee", but they were so busy they were having to slap the songs together in a hurry rather than spend time working on them, and they wanted to move on to making other kinds of records, especially since all the "Mr. Lee" soundalikes weren't actually hitting the charts. They were also trying to expand by working with other artists -- they would often act as the backing vocalists for other acts on the package shows they were on, and I've read in several sources that they performed uncredited backing vocals on some records for Clyde McPhatter and Ivory Joe Hunter, although nobody ever says which songs they sang on. I can't find an Ivory Joe Hunter song that fits the bill during the Bobbettes' time on Atlantic, but I think "You'll Be There" is a plausible candidate for a Clyde McPhatter song they could have sung on -- it's one of the few records McPhatter made around this time with obviously female vocals on it, it was arranged and conducted by Ray Ellis, who did the same job on the Bobbettes' records, and it was recorded only a few days after a Bobbettes session. I can't identify the voices on the record well enough to be convinced it's them, but it could well be: [Excerpt: Clyde McPhatter, "You'll Be There"] Eventually, after a couple of years of frustration at their being required to rework their one hit, they recorded a track which let us know how they really felt: [Excerpt: The Bobbettes, "I Shot Mr. Lee", Atlantic version] I think that expresses their feelings pretty well. They submitted that to Atlantic, who refused to release it, and dropped the girls from their label. This started a period where they would sign with different labels for one or two singles, and would often cut the same song for different labels. One label they signed to, in 1960, was Triple-X Records, one of the many labels run by George Goldner, the associate of Morris Levy we talked about in the episode on "Why Do Fools Fall In Love", who was known for having the musical taste of a fourteen-year-old girl. There they started what would be a long-term working relationship with the songwriter and producer Teddy Vann. Vann is best known for writing "Love Power" for the Sand Pebbles: [Excerpt: The Sand Pebbles, "Love Power"] And for his later minor novelty hit, "Santa Claus is a Black Man": [Excerpt: Akim and Teddy Vann, "Santa Claus is a Black Man"] But in 1960 he was just starting out, and he was enthusiastic about working with the Bobbettes. One of the first things he did with them was to remake the song that Atlantic had rejected, "I Shot Mr. Lee": [Excerpt: The Bobbettes, "I Shot Mr. Lee", Triple-X version] That became their biggest hit since the original "Mr. Lee", reaching number fifty-two on the Billboard Hot One Hundred, and prompting Atlantic to finally issue the original version of “I Shot Mr. Lee” to compete with it. There were a few follow-ups, which also charted in the lower regions of the charts, most of them, like "I Shot Mr. Lee", answer records, though answers to other people's records. They charted with a remake of Billy Ward and the Dominos' "Have Mercy Baby", with "I Don't Like It Like That", an answer to Chris Kenner's "I Like It Like That", and finally with "Dance With Me Georgie", a reworking of "The Wallflower" that referenced the then-popular twist craze. [Excerpt: The Bobbettes, "Dance With Me Georgie"] The Bobbettes kept switching labels, although usually working with Teddy Vann, for several years, with little chart success. Helen Gathers decided to quit -- she stopped touring with the group in 1960, because she didn't like to travel, and while she continued to record with them for a little while, eventually she left the group altogether, though they remained friendly. The remaining members continued as a quartet for the next twenty years. While the Bobbettes didn't have much success on their own after 1961, they did score one big hit as the backing group for another singer, when in 1964 they reached number four in the charts backing Johnny Thunder on "Loop De Loop": [Excerpt: Johnny Thunder, "Loop De Loop"] The rest of the sixties saw them taking part in all sorts of side projects, none of them hugely commercially successful, but many of them interesting in their own right. Probably the oddest was a record released in 1964 to tie in with the film Dr Strangelove, under the name Dr Strangelove and the Fallouts: [Excerpt: Dr Strangelove and the Fallouts, "Love That Bomb"] Reather and Emma, the group's two strongest singers, also recorded one single as the Soul Angels, featuring another singer, Mattie LaVette: [Excerpt: The Soul Angels, "It's All In Your Mind"] The Bobbettes continued working together throughout the seventies, though they appear to have split up, at least for a time, around 1974. But by 1977, they'd decided that twenty years on from "Mister Lee", their reputation from that song was holding them back, and so they attempted a comeback in a disco style, under a new name -- the Sophisticated Ladies. [Excerpt: Sophisticated Ladies, "Check it Out"] That got something of a cult following among disco lovers, but it didn't do anything commercially, and they reverted to the Bobbettes name for their final single, "Love Rhythm": [Excerpt: The Bobbettes, "Love Rhythm"] But then, tragedy struck -- Jannie Pought was stabbed to death in the street, in a random attack by a stranger, in September 1980. She was just thirty-four. The other group members struggled on as a trio. Throughout the eighties and nineties, the group continued performing, still with three original members, though their performances got fewer and fewer. For much of that time they still held out hope that they could revive their recording career, and you see them talking in interviews from the eighties about how they were determined eventually to get a second gold record to go with "Mr. Lee". They never did, and they never recorded again -- although they did eventually get a *platinum* record, as "Mr. Lee" was used in the platinum-selling soundtrack to the film Stand By Me. Laura Webb Childress died in 2001, at which point the two remaining members, the two lead singers of the group, got in a couple of other backing vocalists, and carried on for another thirteen years, playing on bills with other fifties groups like the Flamingos, until Reather Dixon Turner died in 2014, leaving Emma Pought Patron as the only surviving member. Emma appears to have given up touring at that point and retired. The Bobbettes may have only had one major hit under their own name, but they made several very fine records, had a career that let them work together for the rest of their lives, and not only paved the way for every girl group to follow, but also managed to help inspire a whole new genre with the influence they had over reggae. Not bad at all for a bunch of schoolgirls singing a song to make fun of their teacher...

Episode fifty-eight of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Mr. Lee” by the Bobbettes, and at the lbirth of the girl group sound. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Little Bitty Pretty One”, by Thurston Harris.  —-more—-   Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.   I’ve used multiple sources to piece together the information here. Marv Goldberg’s page is always the go-to for fifties R&B groups. Girl Groups: Fabulous Females Who Rocked the World by John Clemente has an article about the group with some interview material. American Singing Groups by Jay Warner also has an article on the group.  Most of the Bobbettes’ material is out of print, but handily this CD is coming out next Friday, with most of their important singles on it. I have no idea of its quality, as it’s not yet out, but it seems like it should be the CD to get if you want to hear more of their music.  Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Over the last few months we’ve seen the introduction to rock and roll music of almost all the elements that would characterise the music in the 1960s — we have the music slowly standardising on a lineup of guitar, bass, and drums, with electric guitar lead. We have the blues-based melodies, the backbeat, the country-inspired guitar lines. All of them are there. They just need putting together in precisely the right proportions for the familiar sound of the early-sixties beat groups to come out. But there’s one element, as important as all of these, which has not yet turned up, and which we’re about to see for the first time. And that element is the girl group. Girl groups played a vital part in the development of rock and roll music, and are never given the credit they deserve. But you just have to look at the first Beatles album to see how important they were. Of the six cover versions on “Please Please Me”, three are of songs originally recorded by girl groups — two by the Shirelles, and one by the Cookies. And the thing about the girl groups is that they were marketed as collectives, not as individuals — occasionally the lead singer would be marketed as a star in her own right, but more normally it would be the group, not the members, who were known. So it’s quite surprising that the first R&B girl group to hit the charts was one that, with the exception of one member, managed to keep their original members until they died. and where two of those members were still in the group into the middle of the current decade. So today, we’re going to have a look at the group that introduced the girl group sound to rock and roll, and how the world of music was irrevocably changed because of how a few young kids felt about their fifth-grade teacher. [Excerpt: The Bobettes, “Mister Lee”] Now, we have to make a distinction here when we’re talking about girl groups. There had, after all, been many vocal groups in the pre-rock era that consisted entirely of women — the Andrews Sisters, for example, had been hugely popular, as had the Boswell Sisters, who sang the theme song to this show. But those groups were mostly what was then called “modern harmony” — they were singing block harmonies, often with jazz chords, and singing them on songs that came straight from Tin Pan Alley. There was no R&B influence in them whatsoever. When we talk about girl groups in rock and roll, we’re talking about something that quickly became a standard lineup — you’d have one woman out front singing the lead vocal, and two or three others behind her singing answering phrases and providing “ooh” vocals. The songs they performed would be, almost without exception, in the R&B mould, but would usually have much less gospel influence than the male vocal groups or the R&B solo singers who were coming up at the same time. While doo-wop groups and solo singers were all about showing off individual virtuosity, the girl groups were about the group as a collective — with very rare exceptions, the lead singers of the girl groups would use very little melisma or ornamentation, and would just sing the melody straight. And when it comes to that kind of girl group, the Bobbettes were the first one to have any real impact. They started out as a group of children who sang after school, at church and at the glee club. The same gang of seven kids, aged between eleven and fifteen, would get together and sing, usually pop songs. After a little while, though, Reather Dixon and Emma Pought, the two girls who’d started this up, decided that they wanted to take things a bit more seriously. They decided that seven girls was too many, and so they whittled the numbers down to the five best singers — Reather and Emma, plus Helen Gathers, Laura Webb, and Emma’s sister Jannie. The girls originally named themselves the Harlem Queens, and started performing at talent shows around New York. We’ve talked before about how important amateur nights were for black entertainment in the forties and fifties, but it’s been a while, so to refresh your memories — at this point in time, black live entertainment was dominated by what was known as the Chitlin Circuit, an informal network of clubs and theatres around the US which put on largely black acts for almost exclusively black customers. Those venues would often have shows that lasted all day — a ticket for the Harlem Apollo, for example, would allow you to come and go all day, and see the same performers half a dozen times. To fill out these long bills, as well as getting the acts to perform multiple times a day, several of the chitlin circuit venues would put on talent nights, where young performers could get up on stage and have a chance to win over the audiences, who were notoriously unforgiving. Despite the image we might have in our heads now of amateur talent nights, these talent contests would often produce some of the greatest performers in the music business, and people like Johnny Otis would look to them to discover new talent. They were a way for untried performers to get themselves noticed, and while few did, some of those who managed would go on to have great success. And so in late 1956, the five Harlem Queens, two of them aged only eleven, went on stage at the Harlem Apollo, home of the most notoriously tough audiences in America. But they went down well enough that James Dailey, the manager of a minor bird group called the Ospreys, decided to take them on as well. The Ospreys were a popular group around New York who would eventually get signed to Atlantic, and release records like “Do You Wanna Jump Children”: [Excerpt: The Ospreys, “Do You Wanna Jump Children?”] Dailey thought that the Harlem Queens had the potential to be much bigger than the Ospreys, and he decided to try to get them signed to Atlantic Records. But one thing would need to change — the Harlem Queens sounded more like a motorcycle gang than the name of a vocal group. Laura’s sister had just had a baby, who she’d named Chanel Bobbette. They decided to name the group after the baby, but the Chanels sounded too much like the Chantels, a group from the Bronx who had already started performing. So they became the Bobbettes. They signed to Atlantic, where Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler encouraged them to perform their own material. The girls had been writing songs together, and they had one — essentially a playground chant — that they’d been singing together for a while, about their fifth-grade teacher Mr. Lee. Depending on who you believe — the girls gave different accounts over the years — the song was either attacking him, or merely affectionately mocking his appearance. It called him “four-eyed” and said he was “the ugliest teacher you ever did see”. Atlantic liked the feel of the song, but they didn’t want the girls singing a song that was just attacking a teacher, and so they insisted on them changing the lyrics. With the help of Reggie Obrecht, the bandleader for the session, who got a co-writing credit on the song largely for transcribing the girls’ melody and turning it into something that musicians could play, the song became, instead, a song about “the handsomest sweetie you ever did see”: [Excerpt: The Bobbettes, “Mister Lee”] Incidentally, there seems to be some disagreement about who the musicians were on the track. Jacqueline Warwick, in “Girl Groups, Girl Culture”, claims that the saxophone solo on “Mr. Lee” was played by King Curtis, who did play on many sessions for Atlantic at the time. It’s possible — and Curtis was an extremely versatile player, but he generally played with a very thick tone. Compare his playing on “Dynamite at Midnight”, a solo track he released in 1957: [Excerpt: King Curtis, “Dynamite at Midnight”] With the solo on “Mr Lee”: [Excerpt: The Bobbettes, “Mister Lee”] I think it more likely that the credit I’ve seen in other places, such as Atlantic sessionographies, is correct, and that the sax solo is played by the less-well-known player Jesse Powell, who played on, for example, “Fools Fall in Love” by the Drifters: [Excerpt: The Drifters, “Fools Fall In Love”] If that’s correct — and my ears tell me it is — then presumably the other credits in those sources are also correct, and the backing for “Mister Lee” was mostly provided by B-team session players, the people who Atlantic would get in for less important sessions, rather than the first-call people they would use on their major artists — so the musicians were Jesse Powell on tenor sax; Ray Ellis on piano; Alan Hanlon and Al Caiola on guitar; Milt Hinton on bass; and Joe Marshall on drums. “Mr. Lee” became a massive hit, going to number one on the R&B charts and making the top ten on the pop charts, and making the girls the first all-girl R&B vocal group to have a hit record, though they would soon be followed by others — the Chantels, whose name they had tried not to copy, charted a few weeks later. “Mr. Lee” also inspired several answer records, most notably the instrumental “Walking with Mr. Lee” by Lee Allen, which was a minor hit in 1958, thanks largely to it being regularly featured on American Bandstand: [Excerpt: Lee Allen, “Walking With Mr. Lee”] The song also came to the notice of their teacher — who seemed to have already known about the girls’ song mocking him. He called a couple of the girls out of their class at school, and checked with them that they knew the song had been made into a record. He’d recognised it as the song the girls had sung about him, and he was concerned that perhaps someone had heard the girls singing their song and stolen it from them. They explained that the record was actually them, and he was, according to Reather Dixon, “ecstatic” that the song had been made into a record — which suggests that whatever the girls’ intention with the song, their teacher took it as an affectionate one. However, they didn’t stay at that school long after the record became a hit. The girls were sent off on package tours of the Chitlin’ circuit, touring with other Atlantic artists like Clyde McPhatter and Ruth Brown, and so they were pulled out of their normal school and started attending The Professional School For Children, a school in New York that was also attended by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers and the Chantels, among others, which would allow them to do their work while on tour and post it back to the school. On the tours, the girls were very much taken under the wing of the adult performers. Men like Sam Cooke, Clyde McPhatter, and Jackie Wilson would take on somewhat paternal roles, trying to ensure that nothing bad would happen to these little girls away from home, while women like Ruth Brown and LaVern Baker would teach them how to dress, how to behave on stage, and what makeup to wear — something they had been unable to learn from their male manager. Indeed, their manager, James Dailey, had started as a tailor, and for a long time sewed the girls’ dresses himself — which resulted in the group getting a reputation as the worst-dressed group on the circuit, one of the reasons they eventually dumped him. With “Mr. Lee” a massive success, Atlantic wanted the group to produce more of the same — catchy upbeat novelty numbers that they wrote themselves. The next single, “Speedy”, was very much in the “Mr. Lee” style, but was also a more generic song, without “Mr. Lee”‘s exuberance: [Excerpt: The Bobbettes, “Speedy”] One interesting thing here is that as well as touring the US, the Bobbettes made several trips to the West Indies, where R&B was hugely popular. The Bobbettes were, along with Gene and Eunice and Fats Domino, one of the US acts who made an outsized impression, particularly in Jamaica, and listening to the rhythms on their early records you can clearly see the influence they would later have on reggae. We’ll talk more about reggae and ska in future episodes, but to simplify hugely, the biggest influences on those genres as they were starting in the fifties were calypso, the New Orleans R&B records made in Cosimo Matassa’s studio, and the R&B music Atlantic was putting out, and the Bobbettes were a prime part of that influence. “Mr. Lee”, in particular, was later recorded by a number of Jamaican reggae artists, including Laurel Aitken: [Excerpt: Laurel Aitken, “Mr. Lee”] And the Harmonians: [Excerpt: the Harmonians, “Music Street”] But while “Mr Lee” was having a massive impact, and the group was a huge live act, they were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the way their recording career was going. Atlantic was insisting that they keep writing songs in the style of “Mr. Lee”, but they were so busy they were having to slap the songs together in a hurry rather than spend time working on them, and they wanted to move on to making other kinds of records, especially since all the “Mr. Lee” soundalikes weren’t actually hitting the charts. They were also trying to expand by working with other artists — they would often act as the backing vocalists for other acts on the package shows they were on, and I’ve read in several sources that they performed uncredited backing vocals on some records for Clyde McPhatter and Ivory Joe Hunter, although nobody ever says which songs they sang on. I can’t find an Ivory Joe Hunter song that fits the bill during the Bobbettes’ time on Atlantic, but I think “You’ll Be There” is a plausible candidate for a Clyde McPhatter song they could have sung on — it’s one of the few records McPhatter made around this time with obviously female vocals on it, it was arranged and conducted by Ray Ellis, who did the same job on the Bobbettes’ records, and it was recorded only a few days after a Bobbettes session. I can’t identify the voices on the record well enough to be convinced it’s them, but it could well be: [Excerpt: Clyde McPhatter, “You’ll Be There”] Eventually, after a couple of years of frustration at their being required to rework their one hit, they recorded a track which let us know how they really felt: [Excerpt: The Bobbettes, “I Shot Mr. Lee”, Atlantic version] I think that expresses their feelings pretty well. They submitted that to Atlantic, who refused to release it, and dropped the girls from their label. This started a period where they would sign with different labels for one or two singles, and would often cut the same song for different labels. One label they signed to, in 1960, was Triple-X Records, one of the many labels run by George Goldner, the associate of Morris Levy we talked about in the episode on “Why Do Fools Fall In Love”, who was known for having the musical taste of a fourteen-year-old girl. There they started what would be a long-term working relationship with the songwriter and producer Teddy Vann. Vann is best known for writing “Love Power” for the Sand Pebbles: [Excerpt: The Sand Pebbles, “Love Power”] And for his later minor novelty hit, “Santa Claus is a Black Man”: [Excerpt: Akim and Teddy Vann, “Santa Claus is a Black Man”] But in 1960 he was just starting out, and he was enthusiastic about working with the Bobbettes. One of the first things he did with them was to remake the song that Atlantic had rejected, “I Shot Mr. Lee”: [Excerpt: The Bobbettes, “I Shot Mr. Lee”, Triple-X version] That became their biggest hit since the original “Mr. Lee”, reaching number fifty-two on the Billboard Hot One Hundred, and prompting Atlantic to finally issue the original version of “I Shot Mr. Lee” to compete with it. There were a few follow-ups, which also charted in the lower regions of the charts, most of them, like “I Shot Mr. Lee”, answer records, though answers to other people’s records. They charted with a remake of Billy Ward and the Dominos’ “Have Mercy Baby”, with “I Don’t Like It Like That”, an answer to Chris Kenner’s “I Like It Like That”, and finally with “Dance With Me Georgie”, a reworking of “The Wallflower” that referenced the then-popular twist craze. [Excerpt: The Bobbettes, “Dance With Me Georgie”] The Bobbettes kept switching labels, although usually working with Teddy Vann, for several years, with little chart success. Helen Gathers decided to quit — she stopped touring with the group in 1960, because she didn’t like to travel, and while she continued to record with them for a little while, eventually she left the group altogether, though they remained friendly. The remaining members continued as a quartet for the next twenty years. While the Bobbettes didn’t have much success on their own after 1961, they did score one big hit as the backing group for another singer, when in 1964 they reached number four in the charts backing Johnny Thunder on “Loop De Loop”: [Excerpt: Johnny Thunder, “Loop De Loop”] The rest of the sixties saw them taking part in all sorts of side projects, none of them hugely commercially successful, but many of them interesting in their own right. Probably the oddest was a record released in 1964 to tie in with the film Dr Strangelove, under the name Dr Strangelove and the Fallouts: [Excerpt: Dr Strangelove and the Fallouts, “Love That Bomb”] Reather and Emma, the group’s two strongest singers, also recorded one single as the Soul Angels, featuring another singer, Mattie LaVette: [Excerpt: The Soul Angels, “It’s All In Your Mind”] The Bobbettes continued working together throughout the seventies, though they appear to have split up, at least for a time, around 1974. But by 1977, they’d decided that twenty years on from “Mister Lee”, their reputation from that song was holding them back, and so they attempted a comeback in a disco style, under a new name — the Sophisticated Ladies. [Excerpt: Sophisticated Ladies, “Check it Out”] That got something of a cult following among disco lovers, but it didn’t do anything commercially, and they reverted to the Bobbettes name for their final single, “Love Rhythm”: [Excerpt: The Bobbettes, “Love Rhythm”] But then, tragedy struck — Jannie Pought was stabbed to death in the street, in a random attack by a stranger, in September 1980. She was just thirty-four. The other group members struggled on as a trio. Throughout the eighties and nineties, the group continued performing, still with three original members, though their performances got fewer and fewer. For much of that time they still held out hope that they could revive their recording career, and you see them talking in interviews from the eighties about how they were determined eventually to get a second gold record to go with “Mr. Lee”. They never did, and they never recorded again — although they did eventually get a *platinum* record, as “Mr. Lee” was used in the platinum-selling soundtrack to the film Stand By Me. Laura Webb Childress died in 2001, at which point the two remaining members, the two lead singers of the group, got in a couple of other backing vocalists, and carried on for another thirteen years, playing on bills with other fifties groups like the Flamingos, until Reather Dixon Turner died in 2014, leaving Emma Pought Patron as the only surviving member. Emma appears to have given up touring at that point and retired. The Bobbettes may have only had one major hit under their own name, but they made several very fine records, had a career that let them work together for the rest of their lives, and not only paved the way for every girl group to follow, but also managed to help inspire a whole new genre with the influence they had over reggae. Not bad at all for a bunch of schoolgirls singing a song to make fun of their teacher…

Episode fifty-eight of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Mr. Lee” by the Bobbettes, and at the lbirth of the girl group sound. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Little Bitty Pretty One”, by Thurston Harris.  —-more—-   Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.   I’ve used multiple sources to piece together the information here. Marv Goldberg’s page is always the go-to for fifties R&B groups. Girl Groups: Fabulous Females Who Rocked the World by John Clemente has an article about the group with some interview material. American Singing Groups by Jay Warner also has an article on the group.  Most of the Bobbettes’ material is out of print, but handily this CD is coming out next Friday, with most of their important singles on it. I have no idea of its quality, as it’s not yet out, but it seems like it should be the CD to get if you want to hear more of their music.  Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Over the last few months we’ve seen the introduction to rock and roll music of almost all the elements that would characterise the music in the 1960s — we have the music slowly standardising on a lineup of guitar, bass, and drums, with electric guitar lead. We have the blues-based melodies, the backbeat, the country-inspired guitar lines. All of them are there. They just need putting together in precisely the right proportions for the familiar sound of the early-sixties beat groups to come out. But there’s one element, as important as all of these, which has not yet turned up, and which we’re about to see for the first time. And that element is the girl group. Girl groups played a vital part in the development of rock and roll music, and are never given the credit they deserve. But you just have to look at the first Beatles album to see how important they were. Of the six cover versions on “Please Please Me”, three are of songs originally recorded by girl groups — two by the Shirelles, and one by the Cookies. And the thing about the girl groups is that they were marketed as collectives, not as individuals — occasionally the lead singer would be marketed as a star in her own right, but more normally it would be the group, not the members, who were known. So it’s quite surprising that the first R&B girl group to hit the charts was one that, with the exception of one member, managed to keep their original members until they died. and where two of those members were still in the group into the middle of the current decade. So today, we’re going to have a look at the group that introduced the girl group sound to rock and roll, and how the world of music was irrevocably changed because of how a few young kids felt about their fifth-grade teacher. [Excerpt: The Bobettes, “Mister Lee”] Now, we have to make a distinction here when we’re talking about girl groups. There had, after all, been many vocal groups in the pre-rock era that consisted entirely of women — the Andrews Sisters, for example, had been hugely popular, as had the Boswell Sisters, who sang the theme song to this show. But those groups were mostly what was then called “modern harmony” — they were singing block harmonies, often with jazz chords, and singing them on songs that came straight from Tin Pan Alley. There was no R&B influence in them whatsoever. When we talk about girl groups in rock and roll, we’re talking about something that quickly became a standard lineup — you’d have one woman out front singing the lead vocal, and two or three others behind her singing answering phrases and providing “ooh” vocals. The songs they performed would be, almost without exception, in the R&B mould, but would usually have much less gospel influence than the male vocal groups or the R&B solo singers who were coming up at the same time. While doo-wop groups and solo singers were all about showing off individual virtuosity, the girl groups were about the group as a collective — with very rare exceptions, the lead singers of the girl groups would use very little melisma or ornamentation, and would just sing the melody straight. And when it comes to that kind of girl group, the Bobbettes were the first one to have any real impact. They started out as a group of children who sang after school, at church and at the glee club. The same gang of seven kids, aged between eleven and fifteen, would get together and sing, usually pop songs. After a little while, though, Reather Dixon and Emma Pought, the two girls who’d started this up, decided that they wanted to take things a bit more seriously. They decided that seven girls was too many, and so they whittled the numbers down to the five best singers — Reather and Emma, plus Helen Gathers, Laura Webb, and Emma’s sister Jannie. The girls originally named themselves the Harlem Queens, and started performing at talent shows around New York. We’ve talked before about how important amateur nights were for black entertainment in the forties and fifties, but it’s been a while, so to refresh your memories — at this point in time, black live entertainment was dominated by what was known as the Chitlin Circuit, an informal network of clubs and theatres around the US which put on largely black acts for almost exclusively black customers. Those venues would often have shows that lasted all day — a ticket for the Harlem Apollo, for example, would allow you to come and go all day, and see the same performers half a dozen times. To fill out these long bills, as well as getting the acts to perform multiple times a day, several of the chitlin circuit venues would put on talent nights, where young performers could get up on stage and have a chance to win over the audiences, who were notoriously unforgiving. Despite the image we might have in our heads now of amateur talent nights, these talent contests would often produce some of the greatest performers in the music business, and people like Johnny Otis would look to them to discover new talent. They were a way for untried performers to get themselves noticed, and while few did, some of those who managed would go on to have great success. And so in late 1956, the five Harlem Queens, two of them aged only eleven, went on stage at the Harlem Apollo, home of the most notoriously tough audiences in America. But they went down well enough that James Dailey, the manager of a minor bird group called the Ospreys, decided to take them on as well. The Ospreys were a popular group around New York who would eventually get signed to Atlantic, and release records like “Do You Wanna Jump Children”: [Excerpt: The Ospreys, “Do You Wanna Jump Children?”] Dailey thought that the Harlem Queens had the potential to be much bigger than the Ospreys, and he decided to try to get them signed to Atlantic Records. But one thing would need to change — the Harlem Queens sounded more like a motorcycle gang than the name of a vocal group. Laura’s sister had just had a baby, who she’d named Chanel Bobbette. They decided to name the group after the baby, but the Chanels sounded too much like the Chantels, a group from the Bronx who had already started performing. So they became the Bobbettes. They signed to Atlantic, where Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler encouraged them to perform their own material. The girls had been writing songs together, and they had one — essentially a playground chant — that they’d been singing together for a while, about their fifth-grade teacher Mr. Lee. Depending on who you believe — the girls gave different accounts over the years — the song was either attacking him, or merely affectionately mocking his appearance. It called him “four-eyed” and said he was “the ugliest teacher you ever did see”. Atlantic liked the feel of the song, but they didn’t want the girls singing a song that was just attacking a teacher, and so they insisted on them changing the lyrics. With the help of Reggie Obrecht, the bandleader for the session, who got a co-writing credit on the song largely for transcribing the girls’ melody and turning it into something that musicians could play, the song became, instead, a song about “the handsomest sweetie you ever did see”: [Excerpt: The Bobbettes, “Mister Lee”] Incidentally, there seems to be some disagreement about who the musicians were on the track. Jacqueline Warwick, in “Girl Groups, Girl Culture”, claims that the saxophone solo on “Mr. Lee” was played by King Curtis, who did play on many sessions for Atlantic at the time. It’s possible — and Curtis was an extremely versatile player, but he generally played with a very thick tone. Compare his playing on “Dynamite at Midnight”, a solo track he released in 1957: [Excerpt: King Curtis, “Dynamite at Midnight”] With the solo on “Mr Lee”: [Excerpt: The Bobbettes, “Mister Lee”] I think it more likely that the credit I’ve seen in other places, such as Atlantic sessionographies, is correct, and that the sax solo is played by the less-well-known player Jesse Powell, who played on, for example, “Fools Fall in Love” by the Drifters: [Excerpt: The Drifters, “Fools Fall In Love”] If that’s correct — and my ears tell me it is — then presumably the other credits in those sources are also correct, and the backing for “Mister Lee” was mostly provided by B-team session players, the people who Atlantic would get in for less important sessions, rather than the first-call people they would use on their major artists — so the musicians were Jesse Powell on tenor sax; Ray Ellis on piano; Alan Hanlon and Al Caiola on guitar; Milt Hinton on bass; and Joe Marshall on drums. “Mr. Lee” became a massive hit, going to number one on the R&B charts and making the top ten on the pop charts, and making the girls the first all-girl R&B vocal group to have a hit record, though they would soon be followed by others — the Chantels, whose name they had tried not to copy, charted a few weeks later. “Mr. Lee” also inspired several answer records, most notably the instrumental “Walking with Mr. Lee” by Lee Allen, which was a minor hit in 1958, thanks largely to it being regularly featured on American Bandstand: [Excerpt: Lee Allen, “Walking With Mr. Lee”] The song also came to the notice of their teacher — who seemed to have already known about the girls’ song mocking him. He called a couple of the girls out of their class at school, and checked with them that they knew the song had been made into a record. He’d recognised it as the song the girls had sung about him, and he was concerned that perhaps someone had heard the girls singing their song and stolen it from them. They explained that the record was actually them, and he was, according to Reather Dixon, “ecstatic” that the song had been made into a record — which suggests that whatever the girls’ intention with the song, their teacher took it as an affectionate one. However, they didn’t stay at that school long after the record became a hit. The girls were sent off on package tours of the Chitlin’ circuit, touring with other Atlantic artists like Clyde McPhatter and Ruth Brown, and so they were pulled out of their normal school and started attending The Professional School For Children, a school in New York that was also attended by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers and the Chantels, among others, which would allow them to do their work while on tour and post it back to the school. On the tours, the girls were very much taken under the wing of the adult performers. Men like Sam Cooke, Clyde McPhatter, and Jackie Wilson would take on somewhat paternal roles, trying to ensure that nothing bad would happen to these little girls away from home, while women like Ruth Brown and LaVern Baker would teach them how to dress, how to behave on stage, and what makeup to wear — something they had been unable to learn from their male manager. Indeed, their manager, James Dailey, had started as a tailor, and for a long time sewed the girls’ dresses himself — which resulted in the group getting a reputation as the worst-dressed group on the circuit, one of the reasons they eventually dumped him. With “Mr. Lee” a massive success, Atlantic wanted the group to produce more of the same — catchy upbeat novelty numbers that they wrote themselves. The next single, “Speedy”, was very much in the “Mr. Lee” style, but was also a more generic song, without “Mr. Lee”‘s exuberance: [Excerpt: The Bobbettes, “Speedy”] One interesting thing here is that as well as touring the US, the Bobbettes made several trips to the West Indies, where R&B was hugely popular. The Bobbettes were, along with Gene and Eunice and Fats Domino, one of the US acts who made an outsized impression, particularly in Jamaica, and listening to the rhythms on their early records you can clearly see the influence they would later have on reggae. We’ll talk more about reggae and ska in future episodes, but to simplify hugely, the biggest influences on those genres as they were starting in the fifties were calypso, the New Orleans R&B records made in Cosimo Matassa’s studio, and the R&B music Atlantic was putting out, and the Bobbettes were a prime part of that influence. “Mr. Lee”, in particular, was later recorded by a number of Jamaican reggae artists, including Laurel Aitken: [Excerpt: Laurel Aitken, “Mr. Lee”] And the Harmonians: [Excerpt: the Harmonians, “Music Street”] But while “Mr Lee” was having a massive impact, and the group was a huge live act, they were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the way their recording career was going. Atlantic was insisting that they keep writing songs in the style of “Mr. Lee”, but they were so busy they were having to slap the songs together in a hurry rather than spend time working on them, and they wanted to move on to making other kinds of records, especially since all the “Mr. Lee” soundalikes weren’t actually hitting the charts. They were also trying to expand by working with other artists — they would often act as the backing vocalists for other acts on the package shows they were on, and I’ve read in several sources that they performed uncredited backing vocals on some records for Clyde McPhatter and Ivory Joe Hunter, although nobody ever says which songs they sang on. I can’t find an Ivory Joe Hunter song that fits the bill during the Bobbettes’ time on Atlantic, but I think “You’ll Be There” is a plausible candidate for a Clyde McPhatter song they could have sung on — it’s one of the few records McPhatter made around this time with obviously female vocals on it, it was arranged and conducted by Ray Ellis, who did the same job on the Bobbettes’ records, and it was recorded only a few days after a Bobbettes session. I can’t identify the voices on the record well enough to be convinced it’s them, but it could well be: [Excerpt: Clyde McPhatter, “You’ll Be There”] Eventually, after a couple of years of frustration at their being required to rework their one hit, they recorded a track which let us know how they really felt: [Excerpt: The Bobbettes, “I Shot Mr. Lee”, Atlantic version] I think that expresses their feelings pretty well. They submitted that to Atlantic, who refused to release it, and dropped the girls from their label. This started a period where they would sign with different labels for one or two singles, and would often cut the same song for different labels. One label they signed to, in 1960, was Triple-X Records, one of the many labels run by George Goldner, the associate of Morris Levy we talked about in the episode on “Why Do Fools Fall In Love”, who was known for having the musical taste of a fourteen-year-old girl. There they started what would be a long-term working relationship with the songwriter and producer Teddy Vann. Vann is best known for writing “Love Power” for the Sand Pebbles: [Excerpt: The Sand Pebbles, “Love Power”] And for his later minor novelty hit, “Santa Claus is a Black Man”: [Excerpt: Akim and Teddy Vann, “Santa Claus is a Black Man”] But in 1960 he was just starting out, and he was enthusiastic about working with the Bobbettes. One of the first things he did with them was to remake the song that Atlantic had rejected, “I Shot Mr. Lee”: [Excerpt: The Bobbettes, “I Shot Mr. Lee”, Triple-X version] That became their biggest hit since the original “Mr. Lee”, reaching number fifty-two on the Billboard Hot One Hundred, and prompting Atlantic to finally issue the original version of “I Shot Mr. Lee” to compete with it. There were a few follow-ups, which also charted in the lower regions of the charts, most of them, like “I Shot Mr. Lee”, answer records, though answers to other people’s records. They charted with a remake of Billy Ward and the Dominos’ “Have Mercy Baby”, with “I Don’t Like It Like That”, an answer to Chris Kenner’s “I Like It Like That”, and finally with “Dance With Me Georgie”, a reworking of “The Wallflower” that referenced the then-popular twist craze. [Excerpt: The Bobbettes, “Dance With Me Georgie”] The Bobbettes kept switching labels, although usually working with Teddy Vann, for several years, with little chart success. Helen Gathers decided to quit — she stopped touring with the group in 1960, because she didn’t like to travel, and while she continued to record with them for a little while, eventually she left the group altogether, though they remained friendly. The remaining members continued as a quartet for the next twenty years. While the Bobbettes didn’t have much success on their own after 1961, they did score one big hit as the backing group for another singer, when in 1964 they reached number four in the charts backing Johnny Thunder on “Loop De Loop”: [Excerpt: Johnny Thunder, “Loop De Loop”] The rest of the sixties saw them taking part in all sorts of side projects, none of them hugely commercially successful, but many of them interesting in their own right. Probably the oddest was a record released in 1964 to tie in with the film Dr Strangelove, under the name Dr Strangelove and the Fallouts: [Excerpt: Dr Strangelove and the Fallouts, “Love That Bomb”] Reather and Emma, the group’s two strongest singers, also recorded one single as the Soul Angels, featuring another singer, Mattie LaVette: [Excerpt: The Soul Angels, “It’s All In Your Mind”] The Bobbettes continued working together throughout the seventies, though they appear to have split up, at least for a time, around 1974. But by 1977, they’d decided that twenty years on from “Mister Lee”, their reputation from that song was holding them back, and so they attempted a comeback in a disco style, under a new name — the Sophisticated Ladies. [Excerpt: Sophisticated Ladies, “Check it Out”] That got something of a cult following among disco lovers, but it didn’t do anything commercially, and they reverted to the Bobbettes name for their final single, “Love Rhythm”: [Excerpt: The Bobbettes, “Love Rhythm”] But then, tragedy struck — Jannie Pought was stabbed to death in the street, in a random attack by a stranger, in September 1980. She was just thirty-four. The other group members struggled on as a trio. Throughout the eighties and nineties, the group continued performing, still with three original members, though their performances got fewer and fewer. For much of that time they still held out hope that they could revive their recording career, and you see them talking in interviews from the eighties about how they were determined eventually to get a second gold record to go with “Mr. Lee”. They never did, and they never recorded again — although they did eventually get a *platinum* record, as “Mr. Lee” was used in the platinum-selling soundtrack to the film Stand By Me. Laura Webb Childress died in 2001, at which point the two remaining members, the two lead singers of the group, got in a couple of other backing vocalists, and carried on for another thirteen years, playing on bills with other fifties groups like the Flamingos, until Reather Dixon Turner died in 2014, leaving Emma Pought Patron as the only surviving member. Emma appears to have given up touring at that point and retired. The Bobbettes may have only had one major hit under their own name, but they made several very fine records, had a career that let them work together for the rest of their lives, and not only paved the way for every girl group to follow, but also managed to help inspire a whole new genre with the influence they had over reggae. Not bad at all for a bunch of schoolgirls singing a song to make fun of their teacher…

When Jay Starkes of the Neo Bass Ensemble called me up to let me know about an upcoming performance, I knew that I had to check out this group.  Lisle Atkinson, the group’s founder, has been on the jazz scene in New York for decades and has played with some of the biggest names in the business like Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Carter, Clark Terry, and Thad Jones & Mel Lewis Big Band. Lisle was in the New York Bass Violin Choir along with Richard Davis, Ron Carter, Milt Hinton, Michael Fleming, Bill Lee (Spike Jones’ father), and Sam Jones.  He started the Neo Bass Ensemble 25 years ago, and this group performs regularly throughout the tri-state region. I hope you enjoy this brief but engaging conversation that I had with Lisle backstage during the intermission of the Neo Bass Ensemble performance.  Along with Lisle, that performance featured Karen Atkinson, Darnell “Jay” Starkes, Phillip Wadkins, Sam McPherson, John Robinson, Mimi Jones, and rhythm section members Paul West, Richard Wyands, and Charles McPherson, Jr.     Listen to Contrabass Conversations with our free app for iOS, Android, and Kindle! Contrabass Conversations is sponsored by: Steve Swan String Bass Steve Swan String Bass features the West Coast’s largest selection of double basses between Los Angeles and Canada.  Located in Burlingame, just south of San Francisco, their large retail showroom holds about 70 basses on display. Their new basses all feature professional setups and come with a cover at no additional cost. Used and consignment instruments receive any needed repairs and upgrades before getting a display position on the sales floor. D'Addario Strings This episode is brought to you by D’Addario Strings! Check out their Zyex strings, which are synthetic core strings that produce an extremely warm, rich sound. Get the sound and feel of gut strings with more evenness, projection and stability than real gut.   Kolstein Music The Samuel Kolstein Violin Shop was founded by Samuel Kolstein in 1943 as a Violin and Bow making establishment in Brooklyn, New York. Now on Long Island, over 60 years later, Kolstein’s has built a proud reputation for quality, craftsmanship and expertise in both the manufacture and repair of a whole range of stringed instruments, and has expanded to a staff of twelve experts in restoration, marketing and production. A440 Violin Shop An institution in the Roscoe Village neighborhood for over 20 years, A440's commitment to fairness and value means that we have many satisfied customers from the local, national, and international string playing communities. Our clients include major symphony orchestras, professional orchestra and chamber music players, aspiring students, amateur adult players, all kinds of fiddlers, jazz and commercial musicians, university music departments, and public schools. Upton Bass String Instrument Company Upton's Karr Model Upton Double Bass represents an evolution of our popular first Karr model, refined and enhanced with further input from Gary Karr. Since its introduction, the Karr Model with its combination of comfort and tone has gained a loyal following with jazz and roots players. The slim, long “Karr neck” has even become a favorite of crossover electric players. The Bass Violin Shop The Bass Violin Shop offers the Southeast’s largest inventory of laminate, hybrid and carved double basses. Whether you are in search of the best entry-level laminate, or a fine pedigree instrument, there is always a unique selection ready for you to try. Trade-ins and consignments welcome! Contrabass Conversations production team: Jason Heath, host Michael Cooper and Steve Hinchey, audio editing Mitch Moehring, audio engineer Trevor Jones, publication and promotion Krista Kopper, archival and cataloging Subscribe to the podcast to get these interviews delivered to you automatically!

Mit ihrem 14. Album legt die österreichische Sängerin Simone Kopmajer erneut den Spotlight auf Jazz und so heißt denn auch das Album - Spotlight on Jazz. Ihre Gesangsartistik und ihre glühende Band ergeben ein harmonisches Ganzes und dass Simone auch wunderbare Songs schreiben kann, beweist sie auf diesem Album ebenfalls. Ihr Mighty Tender Love ist ein echtes Schmuckstück, hier hat sie auch den Text verfasst, bei zwei weiteren Kopmajer-Kompositionen, namentlich Spotlights und Remember Jeannie schrieb Karolin Türk die Texte, bei A Gift From Buddy und We’re Goin In schrieb wiederum die Jazz-Sängerin die Texte. Die Musik hingegen stammt jeweils von Terry Myers, der mit seinem luftigen Saxofon-Spiel wichtige Akzente auf dem Album setzt. Im Gegensatz zu Simone Kopmajer und ihren Bandkollegen Paul Urbanek am Piano, Martin Spitzer an der Gitarre, Karl Sayer am Bass und Reinhardt Winkler an den Drums ist Terry Myers der an Erfahrung reichste. Der Saxofonist spielte u.a. beim Tommy Dorsey Orchestra und mit Exzellenzen wie Ray Charles, Rosemary Clooney, Wild Bill Davison und Milt Hinton, um nur einige wenige zu nennen. So sind auch die Klassiker zu erklären, die auf Spotlight on Jazz in neuen Gewändern zu Gehör gebracht werden, wie Pennies from Heaven, Poinciana, Stompin’ at the Savoy und Mood Indigo. Ein sehr leiwandes Album also, das Simone Kopmajer mit ihrer hervorragenden und gleichermaßen spielfreudigen Band vorlegt. Wir trafen uns im Rahmen ihrer Album-Präsentation in Wien zu einem kurzweiligen Gespräch, das uns bis nach Asien führte.

My guest today is Warren Odze. Warren is a successful drummer who has had a rich, versatile career; he has played, recorded &/or toured with Rod Stewart, Judy Collins, Bernie Leighton, Milt Hinton, Hank Jones, Peter Allen, Henry Gross as well as played on countless Broadway shows. Warren appreciates that his parents introduced him to quality music, listening to legends like Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald and Louie Armstrong. Jo Jones (aka Papa Jo Jones) was a family friend and actually played Warren’s bar mitzvah! He shares honest insights of the world of a professional musician, wisdom that applies to life in general. He talks openly about his own sobriety and lessons he learned after his divorce to be a better father. He  marvels at musicians who, regardless of the intense pressure they are under, can bring chill to the gig. Warren names ‘the magic cats’, inspiring musicians like Steve Gadd, Elvin Jones, Frank Sinatra and Chick Corea, who embody being in the zone. He describes his personal journey of stage fright and anxiety and his determination to learn to relax, get out of his own way, so he could perform from a more grounded, intuitive place. Here’s a taste of some of Warren’s wit & wisdom: “I’m a first generation spoiled Long Island brat!” “When you are 18-20 years old, you are supposed to feel like you are going to change the world!” “I never really wanted to practice, I just wanted to play!” “I’m not famous and I’m not the best, but I’ve had a charmed life.” “Knock it out of the ballpark, wherever you go!” “There is no bad gig!” “All roads lead to Carvel” “Build it and they will come!” “The real sign of success is a dental plan.” “If you can’t chill there is no gig” “I have an acute case of wanderlust.” “I want to get to the finish line with peace and honor.” "(Broadway is) like a recording session where you never get a take but keep trying over and over again." Enjoy the podcast! Links: Internet Broadway Database All Music Facebook

New music from Golden Teacher, Cindy Wilson, Martin Rev, and Slow Place Like Home plus Free Association mainstays Tuxedomoon and Talk Talk. Original air date: February 9, 2018 Nino Rota The Awards Fellini Toby Dammit  1968 Tuxedomoon Litebulb Overkill Desire / No Tears Crammed Discs 1978 Chris Campbell Lord Byron Things You Already Know Innova 2014 Talk Talk Desire Spirit of Eden EMI 1988 Golden Teacher What Fresh Hell Is This? Golden Teacher - No Luscious Life Golden Teacher 2017 Raymond Scott “Portofino” #2 Manhattan Research, Inc. Basta Music 2000 Raymond Scott Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. Manhattan Research, Inc. Basta Music 2000 Martin Rev Stretch Martin Rev - Demolition 9 Atlas Realisations 2017 Eyvind Kang Sous Le Soleil Exactement Great Jewish Music: Serge Gainsbourg Tzadik 1997 Slow Place Like Home Echoes (feat. Fearghal McKee) When I See You…Ice Cream! Tuxedomoon Jinx Tuxedomoon - Desire Celluloid 1981 Einstürzende Neubauten salamandrina Einstürzende Neubauten - Interim Our Choice 1993 Arto Lindsay VAO QUEIMAR OU BOTANDO PRA DANCAR Arto Lindsay - Cuidado Madame Northern Spy 2017 Cindy Wilson Change Cindy Wilson - Change Kill Rock Stars 2017 Tiny Parham and His Musicians Back to the Jungle Tiny Parham 1928-1930 (feat. Punch Miller, Charles Johnson & Milt Hinton)

In this special episode, we chat with Kurt Morrow about the time he spent with Milt Hinton.  Milt's wife Mona asked Kurt if he would live in faculty housing with Milt.  Kurt shares some of these life-changing experiences with us today. More about Milt Hinton Milt “The Judge” Hinton was regarded as the Dean of jazz bass players. He was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1910, and at the age of eleven moved to Chicago with his family. He began his musical education by taking private violin lessons, but while attending Chicago's Wendell Phillips High School and playing in a band sponsored by the Chicago Defender newspaper, he learned to play bass horn, tuba, cello, and eventually the bass violin. Like many aspiring Southside musicians of his generation, he was influenced by the legendary educator, Major N. Clark Smith. During the late 1920s and early 30s, Milt worked as a freelance musician in Chicago and performed with legendary jazz artists including Freddie Keppard, Zutty Singleton, Jabbo Smith, Erskine Tate, and Art Tatum. His first steady job was with a band led by Tiny Parham, followed by a stint with violinist Eddie South’s Orchestra. Milt’s earliest recording come from this era. In l936, Milt joined Cab Calloway and for fifteen years performed with Calloway and renowned sidemen such as Danny Barker, Chu Berry, Doc Cheatham, Cozy Cole, Dizzy Gillespie, Quentin Jackson, Illinois Jacquet, Jonah Jones, Ike Quebec, and Ben Webster. During this period he was also featured on numerous recordings accompanying Benny Carter, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Coleman Hawkins, Billie Holiday, Ethel Waters, and Teddy Wilson - to name just a few. Most of these sessions have become jazz classics. After leaving Calloway in the early 50s, Milt began working as a studio freelancer in New York City. For two decades he played on thousands of jazz and popular records. He also played on hundreds of jingles and film soundtracks and numerous radio and television programs. In addition, he made concert and festival appearances around the world and toured extensively with Louis Armstrong, Pearl Bailey, and Bing Crosby. Milt has played with virtually every jazz and popular artist from Ellington, Coltrane and the Marsalis Brothers to Streisand, Midler and McCartney. In the late 80s Chiaroscuro Records released Old Man Time , a double cd featuring Milt along with many life-long friends from the music world. Laughin' at Life, was released by Columbia Records in 1995 and Chiaroscuro recently released The Judge at His Best, a selection of his recordings on that label over three decades, and the Bassment Tapes, which features Milt performing with groups he assembled. Milt received honorary doctorates from William Paterson College, Skidmore College, Hamilton College, DePaul University, Trinity College, the Berklee College of Music, Fairfield University, and Baruch College of the City University of New York. He won the Eubie Award from the New York Chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Living Treasure Award from the Smithsonian Institution, and he was the first recipient of the Three Keys Award in Bern, Switzerland. In 1993, Milt was awarded the highly prestigious American Jazz Master Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, in 1996 he received a New York State Governor’s Arts Award, in March 1998 he was awarded the Artist Achievement Award by the Governor of Mississippi, and in 2000 his name was installed on ASCAP’s Wall of Fame. Milt began taking photographs of his friends in the l930s, and he has continued ever since. Over the years his collection has grown to more than 60,000 images. The work depicts an extensive range of jazz artists and popular performers in varied settings - on the road, in recording studios, at parties, and at home - over a period of six decades. In June 1981, he had his first one-person photographic exhibition in Philadelphia and since then he has had exhibits across the country and in Europe. In addition to being published in major periodicals, Milt’s photographs have appeared in documentary films including The Long Night of Lady Day (Billie Holiday), The Brute and the Beautiful (Ben Webster), and Listen Up (Quincy Jones). A Great Day in Harlem a 1994 documentary about Esquire’s photographic shoot of jazz legends in 1958, features numerous photographs by Milt as well as a home movie shot by his wife, Mona Hinton. In 1988, Bass Line: The Stories and Photographs of Milt Hinton, by Milt Hinton and David G. Berger was published by Temple University Press. It was selected Book of the Year by JazzTimes. In 1991, OverTime: The Jazz Photographs of Milt Hinton, was published by Pomegranate ArtBooks. In 1990, Milt's 80th year, WRTI-FM in Philadelphia produced a series of twenty eight short programs in which Milt chronicled his life. These were aired nationwide by more than one hundred fifty public radio stations and received a Gabriel Award as Best National Short Feature in 1990. In June 2000, a concert was held to pay tribute to Milt on the occasion of his 90th Birthday. Milt passed away six months later. In late 2002, Keeping Time: The Life, Music & Photographs of Milt Hinton, a one hour documentary film was completed. It was produced and directed by David G. Berger and Holly Maxson. It debuted at the London Film Festival, won the Audience Award at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2003, and has been shown at film festival both here and abroad. Milt and Mona Hinton were married for fifty-seven years and have a daughter Charlotte and granddaughter Inez who live in Atlanta. The Hintons’ life-long involvement in their Queens, New York community, their strong commitment to family, and their ongoing contribution to music and photography made them both role models and an inspiration to younger generations. Contrabass Conversations is sponsored by: The Upton Bass String Instrument Company.  Upton's Karr Model Upton Double Bass represents an evolution of our popular first Karr model, refined and enhanced with further input from Gary Karr.  Since its introduction, the Karr Model with its combination of comfort and tone has gained a loyal following with jazz and roots players. The slim, long “Karr neck” has even become a favorite of crossover electric players. Check out this video of David Murray "auditioning" his Upton Bass! A440 Violin Shop - An institution in the Roscoe Village neighborhood for over 20 years, A440's commitment to fairness and value means that we have many satisfied customers from the local, national, and international string playing communities. Our clients include major symphony orchestras, professional orchestra and chamber music players, aspiring students, amateur adult players, all kinds of fiddlers, jazz and commercial musicians, university music departments, and public schools. The Bass Violin Shop, which  offers the Southeast's largest inventory of laminate, hybrid and carved double basses. Whether you are in search of the best entry-level laminate, or a fine pedigree instrument, there is always a unique selection ready for you to try. Trade-ins and consignments welcome! Subscribe to the podcast to get these interviews delivered to you automatically!

Ever wonder what it's like to be transplanted from balmy Texas and Louisiana to the coldest city in the continental United States? Ask Adam Booker. Here's a recent weather report from Duluth in case you're curious. How did he go from the gigging life in Texas to the US Navy and finally into a life in academia? We talk about this and much more, including: traditional jazz bass lines and what notes were really being played confessions from a former string neurotic what surprised Adam the most about academia Stefon Harris and his description of scales as a collection of emotions hanging up on Milt Hinton... and then watching Jeopardy with him not just creating great bassists, but creating great people I had a great time hanging out with Adam at BASS2016 in Prague, and it was a real pleasure to sit down with him and do an interview! Here's a shot of Adam, Geoff Chalmers, and me in Prague. Links to check out: Adam's website gear reviews from Adam Unraveled Rival (Adam's album) on iTunes Adam's University of Minnesota Duluth faculty page Subscribe to the podcast to get these interviews delivered to your inbox! Learn how you can support the show at contrabassconversations.com/support Thanks to our sponsors! This episode is brought to you by D’Addario Strings! Check out their Helicore strings, which are are designed, engineered, and crafted at the D’Addario string factory in New York and come in orchestral, hybrid, pizzicato, and solo string sets. Hosting for Contrabass Conversations is provided by Bass Capos.  Bass Capos are an excellent choice for any bass player using or looking to implement a double bass extension. Easy to install and adjust, cheaper and more reliable than hand-built latches, also lighter and quicker in operation.

After 30 years of teaching the "best student improvisers on the planet," to use his term, Berklee professor of ensemble Hal Crook '71 is retiring soon and celebrating this week with a concert featuring some of his most remarkable former students. A trombonist, Crook will perform with Grammy Award–winner Esperanza Spalding '05, drummer Antonio Sanchez '97, guitarist Lionel Loueke '04, pianist Leo Genovese '01, saxophonist Chris Cheek '91, and Deborah Pierre '13. A former member of the Phil Woods Quintet and the Tonight Show Orchestra, Crook has performed with a long list of jazz greats, including Bob Brookmeyer, Mick Goodrick, Woody Herman, Milt Hinton, Thad Jones, John Medeski, Paul Motian, and Clark Terry. The podcast features "Behind These Eyes," one of the Crook originals he and his band will play in the concert, The Music of Hal Crook: Set Me Free, on Thursday, February 18, at the Berklee Performance Center.

Boniface Ferdinand Leonard "Buddy" DeFranco was the man who brought the clarinet into the Modern jazz era. DeFranco began and can be heard on very early recordings in the mid-forties sounding like a combination of Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw but he soon was absorbing the musical language of Charlie Parker and his disciples and "modernized" his style and became the leading voice of the clarinet in the 40's.50's,60's and beyond. There were a few others who played modern clarinet but none could match Mr. DeFranco. This album isn't called "Mr.Clarinet!" for nothing! It features Buddy DeFranco's working band with Kenny Drew on piano, Milt Hinton on bass and the dynamic Art Blakey on drums. The repertoire is a well chosen mix of standards plus originals by DeFranco and Drew. This is Jazz at it's best!

The Milt Hinton Jazz Perspectives Series presents Bobby Sanabria & Quarteto Ache': Masters of Afro-Cuban Jazz. The performance takes place at Engelman Recital Hall, Baruch Performing Arts Center, on February 19, 2009.

Rez Abbasi performs at Engelman Recital Hall, Baruch Performing Arts Center, on October 23, 2008 as part of Milt Hinton Jazz Perspectives Series. Titled the "Best of 2007" by Jazz Improv and "Best of 2006" by All About Jazz, New York based musician Rez Abbasi seamlessly combines jazz, soul-jazz, classical and world music. Hailing from the Indian sub-continent and trained at the University of California and the Manhattan School of Music, Abbasi is considered by many to be one of the leading jazz guitarists and composers of our day. He has five albums of original compositions, but it was his 2005 album "Snake Charmer" that has created a stir in the music world due to his blending of jazz and Indian music. Having performed and recorded with many of the greats (Ruth Brown, Peter Erskine, among others), Abbasi's new album "Bazaar" creates an even larger sphere of sound and is on the prestigious Zoho Music Label. Joining Abbasi at Baruch is Gary Versace on organ, Ted Poor on drums and tabla, and the famed Indian folk musician Kiran Ahluwalia.

The Milt Hinton Jazz Perspectives Series presents Bobby Sanabria & Quarteto Ache': Masters of Afro-Cuban Jazz. The performance takes place at Engelman Recital Hall, Baruch Performing Arts Center, on February 19, 2009.

Sax in the City perform as part of the 12th annual Milt Hinton Jazz Perspectives Concert series. Sax in the City is comprised of Don Rhynard (soprano saxophone), Harry Hassell (alto saxophone), Patrick Lombardo (tenor saxophone) and Michel Gohler (baritone saxophone). The performance took place on December 4, 2003 at 1:00 p.m. in the Lobby of the Vertical Campus.

A performance by Dikki Du and the Zydeco Crew, introduced by Jerry Bornstein.

Rez Abbasi performs at Engelman Recital Hall, Baruch Performing Arts Center, on October 23, 2008 as part of Milt Hinton Jazz Perspectives Series. Titled the "Best of 2007" by Jazz Improv and "Best of 2006" by All About Jazz, New York based musician Rez Abbasi seamlessly combines jazz, soul-jazz, classical and world music. Hailing from the Indian sub-continent and trained at the University of California and the Manhattan School of Music, Abbasi is considered by many to be one of the leading jazz guitarists and composers of our day. He has five albums of original compositions, but it was his 2005 album "Snake Charmer" that has created a stir in the music world due to his blending of jazz and Indian music. Having performed and recorded with many of the greats (Ruth Brown, Peter Erskine, among others), Abbasi's new album "Bazaar" creates an even larger sphere of sound and is on the prestigious Zoho Music Label. Joining Abbasi at Baruch is Gary Versace on organ, Ted Poor on drums and tabla, and the famed Indian folk musician Kiran Ahluwalia.

The Milt Hinton Jazz Perspectives Series presents Bobby Sanabria & Quarteto Ache': Masters of Afro-Cuban Jazz. The performance takes place at Engelman Recital Hall, Baruch Performing Arts Center, on February 19, 2009.

A performance by Dikki Du and the Zydeco Crew, introduced by Jerry Bornstein.

Sax in the City perform as part of the 12th annual Milt Hinton Jazz Perspectives Concert series. Sax in the City is comprised of Don Rhynard (soprano saxophone), Harry Hassell (alto saxophone), Patrick Lombardo (tenor saxophone) and Michel Gohler (baritone saxophone). The performance took place on December 4, 2003 at 1:00 p.m. in the Lobby of the Vertical Campus.

The Milt Hinton Jazz Perspectives Series presents Bobby Sanabria & Quarteto Ache': Masters of Afro-Cuban Jazz. The performance takes place at Engelman Recital Hall, Baruch Performing Arts Center, on February 19, 2009.

We apologize for the archived show quality- Blogtalkradio.com was experiencing technical difficulties which prevented us from talking to callers because our switchboard was not operating correctly. On this special 90-minute show, Grammy nominated vocalist and scat singer extraordinare Janet Lawson was our guest! Janet Lawson is widely recognized for her impeccable musicianship and free-spirited, swinging improvisation. Her commitment to improvisation, the essence of jazz, and her later studies with tenor sax master Warne Marsh nourished her conception of the voice as an instrument. She has appeared with, among other jazz greats, Duke Ellington, Tommy Flanagan, Joe Newman, Barney Kessel, Milt Hinton, Ron Carter, Barry Harris, Dave Liebman, David and Lida Baker, Rufus Reid, Clark Terry, Billy Hart, Eddie Jefferson, Cedar Walton, Billy Higgins and Bob Dorough. Janet is co-founder of the Vocal Jazz program at The New School in NYC, where she is currently an Adjunct Professor. Lawson is also a member of the performing faculty of The International Music Camp for Young Latvian Musicians in Latvia. The vocal jazz degree programs she developed as a result of that association are now offered throughout Latvia. Her album, The Janet Lawson Quintet, earned her a Grammy nomination. (The winner of the Grammy in the same category that year was Ella Fitzgerald!) She also appeared on Eddie Jefferson's album, "The Main Man." To learn more about Janet, visit her website janetlawsonscats.com

We apologize for the archived show quality- Blogtalkradio.com was experiencing technical difficulties which prevented us from talking to callers because our switchboard was not operating correctly. On this special 90-minute show, Grammy nominated vocalist and scat singer extraordinare Janet Lawson was our guest! Janet Lawson is widely recognized for her impeccable musicianship and free-spirited, swinging improvisation. Her commitment to improvisation, the essence of jazz, and her later studies with tenor sax master Warne Marsh nourished her conception of the voice as an instrument. She has appeared with, among other jazz greats, Duke Ellington, Tommy Flanagan, Joe Newman, Barney Kessel, Milt Hinton, Ron Carter, Barry Harris, Dave Liebman, David and Lida Baker, Rufus Reid, Clark Terry, Billy Hart, Eddie Jefferson, Cedar Walton, Billy Higgins and Bob Dorough. Janet is co-founder of the Vocal Jazz program at The New School in NYC, where she is currently an Adjunct Professor. Lawson is also a member of the performing faculty of The International Music Camp for Young Latvian Musicians in Latvia. The vocal jazz degree programs she developed as a result of that association are now offered throughout Latvia. Her album, The Janet Lawson Quintet, earned her a Grammy nomination. (The winner of the Grammy in the same category that year was Ella Fitzgerald!) She also appeared on Eddie Jefferson's album, "The Main Man." To learn more about Janet, visit her website janetlawsonscats.com

Andy Harder, Klavier Studium an der Swiss Jazz School Bern (Klavier, Composing and Arranging). Konzerte und Tourneen im Trio oder Quartett, sowie als Mitglied verschiedener Ensembles in der Schweiz, in Italien, Frankreich, Tschechien und Deutschland, zahlreiche Festivalteilnahmen unter anderem in Montreux, Bern, Freiburg und Bratislava. Arbeitete mit bekannten Musikern der internationalen Jazzszene wie Glenn Ferris, Andy McGhee, Billy Cobham, Sal Nistico, Johnny Griffin, Reggie Johnson, Harry "Sweets" Edison, Roy Hargrove, Jimmy Woode, Oliver Jackson, Benny Bailey, Benny Waters, Dusko Gojkovitc und Milt Hinton. Verschiedene CD- und Konzertproduktionen mit bekannten Schweizer Musikern und internationalen Solisten. Kompositionsaufträge für Swiss Brass Consort, Schweizer Bläser Solisten, Swiss Clarinet Players, Rundfunk Big Bands u.a. Leiter verschiedener Big Band-Projekte und Formationen. Dozent für Klavier an der Abteilung Jazz und Pop der HMT Zürich.