Friday, August 07, 2009

"The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" August 7, 2009

(Week 173)

This RADIOLA! is not a Spaghetti Western--but is otherwise self-explanatory.

Tune in tonight at 8 PM Eastern to WHCL (with direct streaming here). The show will be available on Live365 as soon as possible.

Cliff Edwards - Good Little Bad Little You (1928) - Mosaic MD8-213 Disc 3
Fats Waller and his Buddies - Lookin' Good But Feelin' Bad (1929) - orig Victor V 38086
Willard Robison (w/Ipana Troubadours) - Wake Up! Chill’un, Wake Up! (1929) - Columbia 1779-D
Alfredo and his Band - Good News (1928) - UK 78 (ToNY)
Ted Weems and his Orch (Parker Gibbs-Dusty Rhodes v) - Miss Annabelle Lee (1927) - Victor 20846
Arden-Ohman Orch (Johnny Marvin v) - 'S Wonderful (1927) - Victor alternate take (41152-_) (ToNY)
Frank Trumbauer and his Orch - A Good Man Is Hard To Find (1927) - Bix-Tram-Tea Mosaic Box
Annette Hanshaw - I Want A Good Man (And I Want Him Bad) (1930) - Clarion 5017 C
Sophie Tucker - My Extraordinary Man (1934) - Suprbatone 733 Disc 4
Nat Star Band - What Good Am I Without You? (1931) - UK 78 (ToNY)
Montmartre Mad Hatters - I Never Thought You Wonderful (ca. 1929) - UK 78 (ToNY)
Jack Leon's Symphonic Dance Band - I Want to Be Bad (1929) - UK 78 (ToNY)
Eddie Lang - Perfect (1927) - Mosaic MD8-213 Disc 2
Wilton Crawley - My Perfect Thrill (1928) - Jazz Oracle BDW 8020
West End Jazz Band - What A Perfect Combination (2005) - “The Gold Diggers of Broadway”
Dan Levinson and his Canary Cottage Dance Orch - Pretty Baby (2004) - “Crinoline Days” (Stomp Off)
Dan Levinson and his Swing Wing - Oh Peter (2008) - “At The Codfish Ball” (Loup-garous LG 1004)
Eddie Cantor - I Never Knew I Had A Wonderful Wife (1920) - Eddie Cantor: The Early Days
Harry Salter and his Willys Kighters - She's a Great Great Girl (1928) - Lincoln 2817 (ToNY)
Paul Specht's Georgians - Not Too Good - Not Too Bad (1927) - Columbia 1333 D (ToNY)
Cliff Carlisle - That Nasty Swing (1936) - A Country Legacy 1930-1939
Ray Noble New Mayfair Orch (Dorothy Carless v) - Nasty Man (1934) - HMV B649 (ToNY)
Sophie Tucker - Aren't Women Wonderful? (1928) - Suprbatone 733 - Disc 3
Cliff Edwards - My Dog Loves Your Dog (1934) - Songs of Ray Henderson (ASV Living Era CD)
Sam Robbins Hotel McAlpin Orch - Sittin' On a Log (Pettin' My Dog) (1933) - Bluebird B-5268 (ToNY)
George Brunies and his Jazz Band - Ugly Child (take 2) (1943) - Commodore 43-11-29
Chick Webb (Taft Jordan v) - I May Be Wrong (But I Think You're Wonderful) (1935) - Decca 640 A
Bob Wills Texas Playboys - Oh, Lady Be Good (1937) - Bob Wills Bear Box One San Antonio Rose
Chu Berry and his Stompy Stevedores - Too Marvelous For Words (1937) - 1937-1941 (Classics)
Claude Thornhill and his Orch (Bob Jenney v) - The Bad Humor Man (1940) - orig Okeh 5838
Jack Leon's Band - Great Day (1930) - UK 78 (ToNY)

6 comments:

drizzz said...

Do I detect a pattern with the oft recurring "Wake Up Chillin', Wake Up"? It is a great tune with great lyrics to boot so I'm not complaining. But I gotta ask, is he talking about children or the temperature?

Andy said...

Thanks for your comment. I apologize for the length of the following, but it's something I've been thinking about for some time.

I chose "Wake Up Chill'un" as my signature tune (counter-intuitively placed after the first two numbers as a direct nod to Rich Conaty's The Big Broadcast) after a couple of years of using other pieces. For a while I played the Ray Starita version at the end of the show, but finding the Willard Robison vocal was a real coup.

It's become one of my all-time favorite songs. There's multiple layers of significance in my use of it, some of which I was not conscious even as I opted to use the song. The "Wake Up" lyric is in contrast to Rich's "You Meet the Nicest People in Your Dreams"--which I love, by the way, but it's a cue that I'm doing a program that differs from the Big Broadcast in terms of tone and content. There's generally a theme to what I do--and some commentary along with the music.

(Rich, by the way, was very helpful when I was creating the show and offered me valuable advice--which I gratefully took.)

The deeper (and less apparent) significance of "Wake Up!" is that the music I play actually wakes us out of the hypnotic trance of daily living--and of other types of music. I've occasionally said that '20s and '30s music wakes up the mind and makes it smile.

People perhaps need to be in a semi-zombified state to get through the necessary crud of everyday life. The same rhythms (of speech, of music, of thought) endlessly repeated twitch and throb us through long days of senseless drudgery.

If people were constantly alive to music, and poetry, and the consciousness of being alive nothing would ever get done. We have to shut down our capacity to be moved for a number of hours every day (or week) so we can just get through it all. And the repetitious throb of the familiar--so familiar that we don't even hear it anymore--propels us along.

What's necessary, then, is that people find their humanity at some point during the week--that they wake up out of this utilitarian stupor--and come alive to beauty and the heartbreaking poignancy of their own mortality.

Not that people should roar with laughter, or weep, or dance in their cubicles or behind the registers at Wal-Mart. They'd be fired. But people have to do these things to be human--and they can't do it listening to the same droning rock or country they've been hearing all day.

They say that Waking Up is hard to do--and so I offer a choice of vital, surprising music that shimmers with wit and levity and beats with the pulse of life. And I hope it makes a difference.

drizzz said...

"Ain't That a Grand and Glorious Feeling" by Annette Hanshaw and reading Jeeves and Wooster novels is also prescribed! Another way to "wake up" a bit is to try spending the day using your left hand (if you're right-handed)- it makes you concentrate. Thank you for your response and your equally thoughtful playlists and the great music in general!

Andy said...

Thanks!

I'll have to play that Annette Hanshaw recording--it's been a while. (Not that I need an excuse to do so.) Also, P.G.Wodehouse should be required reading for almost everyone. He truly wakes up the mind and makes it smile.

The handedness issue is interesting. I'm right-handed, but I find my grip is stronger in my left hand. I find myself doing most things (except handwriting) ambidextrously. What you suggest is a worthy conscious experiment.

Liz G. said...

First, I want to say I always enjoy your shows. I have downloaded some of them to my iPod and they enliven long trips and workdays alike. Also, your comment about "Wake Up Chill'un" (which I also like) reminded me of something I had recently read, so I'll quote it here:

"The ineffable inhabits the magnificent and the common, the grandiose and the tiny facts of reality alike. Some people sense this quality at distant intervals in extraordinary events; others sense it in the ordinary events, in every fold, in every nook; day after day, hour after hour. To them things are bereft of triteness; to them being does not mate with non-sense. They hear the stillness that crowds the world in spite of our noise, in spite of our greed. Slight and simple as things may be -- a piece of paper, a morsel of bread, a word, a sigh -- they hide and guard a never-ending secret: A glimpse of God? Kinship with the spirit of being? An eternal flash of a will?" (A.J. Heschel). (Not quoted here to argue for any religious platform, but for the deeper message about openness to, and awareness of, the sublime in the world).

I agree with you that good music (such as that played on your show) can awaken in us an awareness of this "secret" reality, and allow us glimpses of it in our mundane daily lives. So thanks.

Andy said...

Liz,

Thank you. That's a beautiful quote. And yes, we have to attune ourselves to those deeper resonances at least on occasion. It's increasingly difficult but increasingly necessary to do so.

Andy