Continuing with radio transcriptions of the 1960's this week. Featuring the Hollywood Bowl debut of 25 year-old Wunderkind Indian Conductor Zubin Mehta, who began his long association with the orchestra in 1961 with this performance, featuring pianist Byron Janis, of the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto #3, recorded by the Armed Forces Radio Service on August 1, 1961.

Mehta was something of a shot-in-the-arm for the Orchestra, which had gone through much of the previous decade in the musical doldrums, highlighted by the occasional guest conductor or soloist. Mehta brought enthusiasm back to the orchestra and the audience, by introducing a lot of adventuresome programming and trying unconventional things. Who could ever forget the L.A. Phil and The Mothers Of Invention at UCLA? Zubin Mehta came along and was at the right place at the right time.

And this recording is right about where it all started.

Another one of those concerts that hasn't seen the light of day since it was recorded. Even though it was pressed by AFRTS for use overseas, it's not likely it got a lot of airplay. And it certainly hasn't been reissued.

So yes, we're looking at yet another rarity here. Lucky you.

Another rare, and probably unheard one from The Hollywood Bowl this weekend. This time it's Hugh Masekela, who was riding high on the crossover hit Grazin' In The Grass and appearing at The Hollywood Bowl for the first time on August 14, 1968.

Oddly, part of a Fashion Show put on by The Broadway Department Stores in Los Angeles, Masekela was sandwiched in between Fall Fashion Previews and The Shopping Experience At The Broadway. But it was still enough to make an impression on the audience, and luckily it was recorded and can now be enjoyed.

Before Hugh Masekela came on the scene, Jazz from South Africa was thought not to exist, at least in the States. Certainly, it was heard about and talked about among Jazz aficianados, but it was Masekela who turned everyone, including an audience steeped in rock and pop, on to a new and exciting take on the Jazz idiom.

Coming in at a little less than a half-hour (with one or two numbers missing and a supposed 2nd half which never materialized) it's a memorable slice of musical history from an influential and much admired musician we just don't hear much about these days.

Except here.

Get ready for Monday.

Political humor of the 1950's - you don't really hear much about it these days. The forum for political humor has changed a lot over the decades. But in 1959 Political humor and social satire, like most social movements of the day, were considered outside the mainstream and relegated to the domain of nightclubs, college campuses and the occasional appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

But that's not to say the message was buried, and comedians like Mort Sahl rose to prominence during a time when questioning where our society was heading was just getting started. It was also a time when FM was slowly coming into its own and that proved to be a great launching pad for a lot of consciousness raising, politically as well as culturally.

I ran across this broadcast, originally aired over a local Los Angeles FM station (KRHM which became known as KMET and later The Wave) who happened to have a recording of a Mort Sahl appearance at L.A. State College in September of 1959. As far as I know, it's never been available commercially and it's classic Mort Sahl.

You may need to Google many of the names he mentions, like Claire Booth Luce, but you'll get a taste of what the political climate was like from a non-mainstream perspective. And that could be instructive or ironic, since a lot of the issues Sahl talks about are issues we're still dealing with some 50+ years later.

And further evidence some things just don't change, and may never change.

Here is a performance by Mort Sahl, as recorded at L.A. State College and broadcast by Les Claypool over KRHM-FM in Los Angeles on September 30, 1959.

I always talk about how many concerts are broadcast any given day by the radio networks in Europe, and how many of them are live on-the-spot. Well, to prove that point, here is a concert that was recorded lived earlier today (8:00 pm Paris time - 11:00 am Los Angeles time) featuring Orchestre National de France led by podium superstar Daniele Gatti and featuring Antonio Meneses, cello in music by Faure`, Saint-Saens, Debussy and Ravel.

Both the orchestra and soloist are given rousing ovations and, as is customary, they play rousing encores.

Great concert all the way around, and to hear it live as-it's-happening is a bonus.

The concert is divided between two players and the intermission feature has been edited out (no interviews, just commercial recordings featuring Meneses) and the announcements have been edited down in order to take the concert down from its original three hours to a reasonable length.

Here's what's being played:

Part 1 - Gabriel Fauré

Pelléas et Mélisande, Musique de scène pour la pièce de Maeterlinck(1902)

Camille Saint-Saëns

Concerto N°1 en la mineur Op.33 (1869)

Part 2 - Claude Debussy

Jeux (1912)

Maurice Ravel

Daphnis et Chloé, Suite N°2 (1913)

Antonio Meneses, Violoncelle
Orchestre National de France
Daniele Gatti, Direction

Who says music is dead? Not around here.

Remember, it's Anti-Road Rage Wednesday so step away from the computer and turn the speakers up.

And enjoy.

When certain people become instrumental in shaping the formative years of your life by way of their message, their point of view or their example, their passing seems doubly poignant as it signifies an integral part of your development as a person is no longer able to be there. That sure-fire sign you can never go back.

I'll admit it's been a long time since I heard The Firesign Theater. By the 1970's I was on to other things, other messages and other examples. But hearing of the passing last week of Peter Bergman, the man who was the backbone of perhaps one of the most innovative and outrageous comedy groups in the U.S., brought me back to those nights when I was stuck to my radio like glue, joining this outrageous team of metaphysical clowns on their trip through hyper-reality.

The Firesign Theater were only part of the bigger picture. Radio Free Oz was "the big show" and was one of the more eclectic examples of broadcasting to come along in a very long time. Initially they were on KPFK, the Public radio station in Los Angeles. And then, for a short while, were on a top-40 AM station on Sunday nights. KRLA, which was one of the most popular Top-40 station at the time, played host to Bergman and Company.

Tonight I'm running a little under 2 hours of their final broadcast at KRLA. In typical Radio Free Oz fashion, the mix is heady, with an interview and poetry reading by Deep Image Poet Robert Kelly, and later featuring an interview with The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. In between all that is a Firesign skit "A Life In The Day" and lots of music.

I left just about everything as-is. Sadly, the show isn't complete and is missing the last hour (it's around, but it got separated from it's companion reel) and I did cut down on the music, but even that's an interesting point of departure since 1968 saw the beginning of Free-form radio on FM, and AM was dabbling in being free-form.

At any rate - as a tribute to Peter Bergman and the genius of The Firesign Theater, here is the last Radio Free Oz broadcast from KRLA on January 14, 1967.

I broke it up between two players - the top player features Poet Robert Kelly and the bottom player features A Life In The Day.

All in all, an interesting footprint in time and an appreciation to Peter Bergman for all he did and all those minds that were delightfully blown by his amazing presence.

Enjoy.

Something special and rare this weekend. A set by the Cannonball Adderley Quintet, recorded live at Hollywood Bowl on August 11, 1967. They were the opening act for a Summer Jazz concert which also included Count Basie and Lou Rawls. I'll be including those in the coming weeks, or the next time it feels like Summer in Los Angeles (it's 90 degrees in Santa Monica today). Perfect hot day music.

Needless to say, this hasn't been available in any form anywhere since it was recorded. So it's a special concert and it's a great one.

Enjoy. And if you're on the West Coast, dip into something cool and turn this up.

Those rather cumbersome, oversized, disgustingly fragile records again this week. Only instead of by way of France they're local. A weekly program that began life in the late 1920's and continued until the 1950's featured two major orchestras on the West Coast - The San Francisco Symphony and The Los Angeles Philharmonic. Sponsored by Standard Oil this one hour program featured some of the greatest names in the Classical Music World performing live in specially arranged concerts.

This one, originally broadcast on March 4, 1945 featured the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by their Music Director at the time Alfred Wallenstein with the legendary Artur Schnabel as piano soloist.

The program is pretty mainstream and aimed at the musical novice (there's nothing wrong with that - we all were). Starting with the Overture to Hansel and Gretel by Humperdinck, and the Prize Song from Wagner's Die Meistersinger. Schnabel joins the orchestra in the Schumann Piano Concerto (with a bumpy start) and ends with Dukas' Sorcerer's Apprentice.

Certainly historic in retrospect, but if you looked at the broadcast schedules from most American radio networks at the time who carried Symphonic concerts, it was no big deal. Every major (and many minor) symphony orchestras were regularly broadcast around the country. Some were dedicated to new music, some were dedicated to the meat-and-potatoes repertoire, but all of them were performing a service in introducing our culture to everything that was available. And the airwaves were filled with legendary figures at just about every spot on the radio dial

Something that, sadly, exists only in pockets today. With all this access in recent years you'd think we'd be drowning in an embarrassment of riches these days. But no.

Maybe someday. In the meantime - check out this slice of history. You may have heard of Artur Schnabel and you may have his benchmark series of complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas in your collection. Or maybe you just heard about him and never knew what he sounded like.

Now's your chance.

The incredible talent that passes our way we never take for granted, but somehow assume they'll be around forever. I guess you could say that about Etta James.

Ironic that she and another great talent, Johnny Otis, should also leave almost on the same day. It was in the late 1960's, when Otis played regularly around Los Angeles with The Johnny Otis Show, featuring his particular galaxy of immortals like Joe Turner, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson and Etta James all onstage, in one place and for one staggering performance after the next. And later in the early 1970's, periodically showing up at The Troubadour in West Hollywood or The Total Experience on Crenshaw, for a show that featured other luminaries like Bobby "Blue" Bland or B.B. King for night after night of what seemed like an embarrassment of riches - I never took them for granted, but I assumed they'd be around forever.

Life doesn't work like that.

And so Etta James isn't here anymore, and her years of failing health were some indication it wouldn't be forever. But still. . .

I ran across this concert she did in 1994 in San Francisco. Her voice maybe a little rougher around the edges, but the soul intact, the power still there. My buddy and C&L colleague Mike Finnigan, who I think is on Hammond B-3 for this show, gigged with her for a number of years and never grew tired of it. He always said what a great experience it was, and how much the audiences loved her.

That goes for a lot of us.

Thank you for all those unforgettable nights.

I doubt anyone who was born during the "Reagan Years" would have any vague idea of what this is all about.

Popular culture has moved so far, so fast and the mainstream aspect of that culture has become so compartmentalized, marginalized and abandoned that listening to this entry may seem downright strange to you.

And hearing his tape again I realize just how far removed we are today from that period of time in our popular culture where the Disc Jockey actually served as a sort of Town Crier and imparter of wisdom and musical taste.

In 1967 we had AM radio and AM radio had B. Mitchel Reed, who was one of the most popular disc jockey's in Southern California. A transplanted New Yorker, whose reputation had been cemented at another Top-40 AM radio station, WMCA. Reed was a cornerstone and a bridge between the staid music business of the time and the bubbling under counter-culture in search of the alternative. And it was probably because of his pioneering spirit in the area of free-form radio that made such a dent in audiences growing up in the mid-late 1960's in California.

Here is one hour of B. Mitchel Reed on KFWB from July 15, 1967. We swore by him.

A complete rarity tonight. A recording long though lost and not to have existed which hasn't seen the light of day since it was recorded in July 1950 at The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Hosted by Los Angeles disc jockey and impresario Gene Norman (who also was creator of the Just Jazz Series), this was the first of what would become a yearly event, The Rhythm & Blues Jubilee.

This is the second half of the concert featuring Roy Milton and His Solid Senders with Camille Howard on Piano and Lil Greenwood on vocals. Gene Norman is the MC.

A couple of things to be aware of - the original master discs are badly damaged, bordering on unplayable. The reason? The discs are larger than the conventional 16" diameter Transcription discs of the time. They measure a whopping 19" and because of their size, they were difficult to transfer. And also because of their size they were not properly stored as there were no sleeves. So the discs were susceptible to scratches digs and gouges over time, and there are plenty. I have tried to get rid of as much of the offending sound as possible. What sound there is comes out very clearly but be aware it gets a little dicey at times. The other problem took place during the actual concert itself when some important mikes died and for a time the sound is rather distant. But only for one song.

Those precautions aside, this is a very rare glimpse into a formative period of popular music. In 1950 R&B was still considered "race music" and not rock n' roll yet. Roy Milton was one of the great Jump-Blues outfits of the post-War period in music and sadly, this is about the only example of him in a live concert setting from that period.

So even though the sound is rather funky in places, it's still an important and historic event. And you get to hear it first - because no one else has.

Enjoy and try to put yourself in the audience that July night in 1950. And imagine you never heard this music before.