As long as we're jumping into seldom featured material on Newstalgia, I thought I would keep it going with a dose of, what is sometimes referred to as "Traditional Jazz", but at the time of this broadcast was known simply as Dixieland.

Pretty much faded from view as genres go, Dixieland (or Traditional Jazz) had a real spike in popularity in the mid-1950's and was considered something of a raucous cousin where serious Jazz was concerned. Certainly when compared to the Cool School, Dixieland got it's fair share of cringe worthy reactions. But, in all fairness, this was the basis for which a lot of Jazz sprang from - as evidenced by Louis Armstrong who is probably it's most well known figure.

Al Hirt was a fixture for Mardi Gras and was as much a part of the scenery in New Orleans as the proverbial Crawfish boil. Hirt achieved huge commercial success through a number of hit singles and popular albums and was, conceivably as instrumental in making Traditional Jazz a popular mainstream idiom as The Kingston Trio and The Christy Minstrels were in making Folk music a popular genre for mainstream consumption.

So tonight it's an episode of the weekly CBS Radio program Jazz Band Ball featuring Al Hirt and his band live in New Orleans from August 18, 1956.

A good time was had by all.

Traditional Jazz this week from the great Louis Armstrong, recorded live at Basin Street on New York's famed 52nd Street on May 7, 1955.

For those of you interested in the great "Mouldy Fig vs. Chinese Music" controversy (i.e. Dizzy Gillespie, high priest of Be-Bop, once proclaimed Louis Armstrong's Traditional Jazz as Mouldy Fig music and Armstrong fired back saying Gillespie was playing Chinese Music), Armstrong gets in a not-so-subtle dig at Gillespie mid-way through the broadcast.

All good fun and all good musical history via the weekly All-Star Parade Of Bands broadcasts.

The great Louis Armstrong tonight, recorded live at Basin Street in New York on May 28, 1956 as part of the weekly NBC Radio Series All Start Parade Of Bands.

Not too much to add other than this probably hasn't been reissued anywhere and may or may not have made the circles of radio collectors of live Jazz.

In any event, it's here and you get to enjoy it.

I'm not entirely sure this being touted as "the first Network Jazz concert on Television" is accurate, as I think CBS may have had that distinction a year or two earlier. But I'm sure it sounded good in the press releases and, truths to tell, it was a star-studded lineup that promised more on a regular basis. Hosted by then-King of Late Night Television Steve Allen (he was the first Tonight Show host) with venerable pitch-man John Cameron Swayze for Timex (takes a licking and keeps on ticking) watches, it was a one hour extravaganza.

Packed with the likes of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, Gene Krupa, Jack Teagarden, June Christy and a host of others, it was one solid hour of wall-to-wall Jazz at a time when Rock n' Roll was threatening to eclipse the popular music market and Jazz was making a stand.

I believe this concert has been preserved and is available on video. These however, are the original transcription discs made by NBC engineers as a reference recording and so the sound quality may be a bit better.

In any event, if you've never heard this concert before, here's a good opportunity to hear what was going on in 1957 as far as the more mainstream Jazz practitioners were concerned. If you have heard this concert before, maybe this one sounds a bit better. You decide.

Without question one of the most important figures in Jazz in the last 100+ years. Louis Armstrong has been synonymous with traditional Jazz out of New Orleans since the dawn of commercial recording. And his popularity has endured long after his death in . In the 1950's Jazz (well, all music for that matter) was undergoing a transformation, having evolved out of the Big Band era into small units. Trios, quartets, quintets and everything in between began an era of exploration, branching out from traditional styles into the experimental and the extended solo. Traditional Jazz had a rough go of it for a while, and practitioners like Armstrong were in danger of being swept aside with the tide of Avant-Garde. But Armstrong was true to his roots and withstood the shifts in popularity and, like many before him, took to the road and made a case wherever he went. His perseverance won out as this broadcast from the All-Star Parade of Bands series for NBC Radio.

This performance features Louis Armstrong leading a small group at Basin Street in New York on May 21, 1955. It's a half-hour of top-notch Armstrong and further evidence why his artistry has endured for so many years.

If you liked this, or are planning on downloading it, could you toss a few pennies in this direction too?

(The Casa Loma Orchestra - known as a "Sweet Band")

As much as you'd like to think the majority of America was listening to Fletcher Henderson, King Oliver, Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong in the early days of recorded popular music, you'd be extremely wrong.

As I said last night, the majority of America really wasn't aware that "hot Jazz" (as it was later known) actually existed aside from a small group of people, cognoscenti who spread the word.

No, the majority of America in the 1920's and early 30's went out for "sweet bands", big bands which were good, proficient but not "edgy". The Casa Loma Orchestra were one of the more popular examples of that genre. Although they did transition over to Swing in the later 1930's, this recording, made in December 1930 had all the earmarks of light, breezy and uncomplicated. No improvised solos, a tight ensemble (usually with strings) and always a vocal chorus that was neutral, bland and over-annunciated.

Little Did I Know was the norm for popular music of the early 1930's. The diet was rather plain for Depression-era America.

(Eldia - nicely dark)

Eldia are a French Alternative/Experimental band I ran across a couple of years ago during one of my "six degrees of separation" experiments on My Space. Hitting Browse on MySpace is a little like playing the slots - sometimes it comes up jackpot and other times it's all lemons. There are just as many creepy, boring bands hoping to get your attention on MySpace as there is anywhere else. Fortunately, Eldia isn't one of them. They are an interesting band with an engaging style and completely top-notch production. It's pretty clearly obvious they have their sites on a more worldwide market than the French one, since all their vocals are in English and, if I didn't tell you they were based in Paris, you would never have known. Not that it makes any difference. I'm a big believer that music is the universal language and if they sing in English, French or Bulgarian, that shouldn't prevent you from experiencing something good. Remember, there's only two kinds of music - good music and bad music (thanks Louis Armstrong).

So tonight's track On Top Of The Cliff is off their new album, Yayaya and I would recommend checking out their MySpace page or Facebook and hearing what else they have going on. Don't take my word for it.

But you can if you want.

(They were just as suspicious of us)

For all the saber rattling and threats and accusations during the Cold War period, there were times, especially in the late 1950s, where signs of thaw in relations were starting to become noticed.

One was the great cultural exchange that went on between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the late 1950s. We got the Bolshoi Ballet and they got Louis Armstrong. Our pianist (Van Cliburn) won the prestigious Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow. Soviet cinema was being seen on a regular basis in art house movie theaters around the country.

And so the barriers started to come down, a little bit - but not for long. In December of 1957, CBS Radio, in what was hailed as a milestone, not only in broadcasting, but in East-West communications, hosted a program from their Radio Beat series. The program dealt with Education and the perceptions both the Russians and the Americans had towards each other.

Dwight Cook (CBS News): “We believe in the broadcast that you’re about to hear, that one of the rare firsts of this year, is coming about. Because for the first time, as far as we know, in the history of radio you’re going to hear an actual, unrehearsed discussion between a group of educators sitting in a studio in Moscow Russia and another group of educators sitting around a table with me here in CBS New York. Our discussion is going to be on the purpose of Education.”

All very polite and non-confrontational - no dissidents commandeering the microphone shouting about Gulags. Three leading educators from the U.S. sitting around asking questions of three leading educators from the Soviet Union - and vice versa. What it did was establish the idea that neither of the two super powers really knew anything about each other.

It was short lived however. When the U2 Spyplane scandal surfaced in 1960, what little thaw there had been froze solid and stayed that way for a very long time before resuming.

But in the late 1950s there was that window of opportunity.