Thursday, July 12, 2012

This blog has been created in order to provide background for WCBN's Face the Music show. It is also an educational tool intended to illustrate what goes into the making of this broadcast each week.

2 comments:

  1. Face the Music {WCBN 88.3 FM}
    Potentials and Probabilities for 71212

    Yes! I’m In the Barrel
    Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five [1925]

    Jasper Taylor Blues
    Original Washboard Band [1928]

    Jug Band Quartette
    Memphis Jug Band [1934]

    Southbound Rag
    Johnny Dodds & Blind Blake [1928]

    Ham and Eggs
    Johnny Dunn’s Original Jazz Hounds [1928]

    Bull Blues {E Flat No.1 Blues}
    Thomas Morris Past Jazz Masters [1923]

    Heebie Jeebies
    Lovie Austin & her Blues Serenaders [1925]

    Doctor Jazz
    Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers [1926]

    Just Gone
    King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band [1923]

    Society Blues
    Ory’s Sunshine Orchestra [1922]

    Scouting Around
    James P. Johnson [1923]

    Oklahoma Stomp
    Duke Ellington & his Orchestra [1929]

    Flaming Reeds & Screaming Brass
    Jimmie Lunceford & his Orchestra [1933]

    One in a Million
    Fats Waller & his Rhythm [1936]

    Honky Tonk Train Blues
    Meade Lux Lewis [1927]

    Moten Swing
    Bennie Moten’s Kansas City Orchestra [1932]

    When
    Bix Beiderbecke
    with Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra [1928]

    Tickle Toe
    Count Basie & his Orchestra [1940]

    Bopmatism
    Dodo Marmarosa [1946]

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  2. This list came together during the week as I heard different musical passages in my heart & head. I reworked the second half of the program at 7:20 this morning after realizing that my decision to end with Dodo Marmarosa's "Bopmatism" had originally grown out of a desire to air the Count Basie Orchestra's 1940 recording of Lester Young's "Tickle Toe". To my sensibilities the two pieces seem more than slightly related. Consulting Frank Buchmann-Moller's Lester Young 'solography' "You Got To Be Original, Man!" I encountered this passage describing the origins of 'Tickle Toe': "The theme has its own story, pointed out by Richard Sudhalter. Tickle Toe was a tap dancer and maybe also a drug pusher, but the most interesting thing here is the material used for the composition." Elements include "arpeggios taken from an exercise book for saxophone players which was widely used in the 1920s. Lester may have used that particular book and remembered some of the exercises." There is also a section that is "identical with a solo played by Bix Beiderbecke on a recording of 'When' by the Paul Whiteman band on March 12 1938". Confronted with this delightful evidence, and after listening to the Beiderbecke solo in question, I eliminated a Jay McShann recording from the list in order to make room for Bix & Prez, as it were. This also necessitated a restructuring of the second half of the playlist, so that it "sounded right" to my heart & head. An example of how a show can be cobbled together and tweaked around beforehand.

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