A few months ago I ran another Sauter-Finegan Club date, also from Chicago and also from 1953. This one is earlier by a month and wasn't part of the All-Star Parade of Bands series put on by The Treasury Department. This was part of a weekly show broadcast from the famous Blue Note Club in Chicago and was first broadcast on August 12, 1953.

Different song lineup, with the exception of the Band's Theme (Doodletown Fifers), and there's a few technical goofs in this broadcast (the engineer couldn't find the right vocal microphone for the first number), but it settles down by the second number and the audience is pretty happy.

So if you're wondering about the Big Band scene in the early 1950's, Sauter-Finegan was one of the bands to watch at the time. However, as it worked out, the climate was changing fast and the writing was on the wall for Big Bands in favor of small outfits, as was evidenced by the announcer giving news for the upcoming broadcast the following week with Art Tatum's Trio. There would be a lot more Trios and Quartets in the future - it was just the economic nature of the beast.

As I promised a couple weeks ago, here is the Count Basie portion of the Jazz concert from The Hollywood Bowl on August 11, 1967.

Like the Cannonball Adderley entry, this recording hasn't been issued in any form and is most likely the first time it's been heard since it was recorded.

All the more reason to sit back and enjoy it.

Another Stan Kenton concert this week - this time it's from a weekly series Kenton did during one of his criss-cross tours of the U.S. in 1953.

Today it's from The Student Union Building at State Teacher's College in Terre Haute Indiana on June 16, 1953.

With a lineup that included many greats from the soon-to-be Cool School of West Coast Jazz, among them Frank Rosolino, Sal Salvador, Conte Condoli, Lee Konitz and Zoot Sims, Kenton pushed hard to get his audience on board. This tour and several others actually did much to establish Kenton as a person of musical note, particularly at a time when Big Bands were no longer profitable and hard to secure bookings at large venues. Ultimately Kenton was forced to abandon this concept as just too cost prohibitive to continue, instead concentrating mostly on his studio work. But the names that passed through the ranks of the Kenton organization were impressive and most all of them went on to successful careers throughout the 1950's and early 60's.

Here is what Kenton referred to a "Concert In Miniature" via NBC Radio.

As the era of the Big Band was drawing to a close there were very few working bands that could boast making a living playing one-night stands and criss-crossing the country almost constantly.

Ralph Marterie, or "the man born for the horn" was one of those exceptions. A commercial success, with several records on the charts in the early 1950's, he was much in demand on the college and high school circuit before the dawn of rock n' roll changed all that. In 1953 it was still very mainstream and now somewhat cringe-worthy in retrospect. Vocals are strange, but the one interesting point in all this is the presence of Tommy Tedesco, who would soon become one of the mainstays and legends in the studio world of Rock n' Roll as well as a well-respected Jazz Guitarist as solo performer. Here he is in a Big Band setting - one that Marterie developed into a distinctive sound early on. Integrating the guitar, which was always considered something of a background instrument in the Big Band setting, into a more key position within the arrangements. It worked out very well and established Tedesco as a soloist of note.

Here is Ralph Marterie and his Downbeat Orchestra performing live at The Hollywood Palladium, September 28, 1953. There is an audience in there, but they are very quiet for the first 15-20 minutes.

Examples of the Traditional Big Band, heading into the sunset.

When you thought much-publicized family feuds in music were limited to The Gallagher Brothers (Oasis) and the Everly Brothers, you might have missed one of the more famous from another era. The split between big band icons Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey.

Okay, it was the 1940's and the Big Band era is a bit fuzzy these days anyway. But believe me, when those two guys broke up, it was big news. And in 1953, when they patched things up, it was big news too.

So this installment of the Downbeat (the Labor Day edition because it IS a holiday even though stores are open and bill collectors pay no attention) features a club date featuring the newly reunited Dorsey Brothers as part of NBC Radio's All Star Parade of Bands series from June 19, 1953.

Although somewhat distant in history, Stan Kenton was a pretty controversial figure in the Jazz world of the 1950's. There was a contingent of ardent followers who swore up and down it was the way of the future and Kenton was taking the Big Band idea to new and interesting places. And there was an equally large contingent of people who swore it was all hype and that Kenton was just being as noisy and soul-less as possible.

What ever the consensus of opinion was, Stan Kenton came along at a time when the Big Band was dwindling and being replaced by the small unit; the Trio, Quartet and Quintet. He did inject a lot of much needed energy into the form and Kenton gave the musical world a band you listened to, and not at. In short, there wasn't a whole pile of dancing at Stan Kenton concerts; people sat and listened. And on that score, that was a good thing and Kenton breathed a fresh new life into the idea of the Big Band, even if some considered it radical.

Tonight's installment of the Downbeat takes place at Birdland in New York City on July 11, 1955 and it's pretty much typical of what Stan Kenton was up to at this period of time.

Looking at it now, it's hard to see what all the fuss was about. I'm sure there was a measure of hype that may have been unnecessary at the time. But how else do you get noticed when the field, which was once crowded with people saying the same thing, is now pretty much abandoned for greener pastures and the people left are looking for something different?

And it worked for a long time.

Over to the Hollywood Palladium tonight for live date by Ray Anthony and his Orchestra.

Big bands were certainly not up to the same level of adoration as the smaller combo's had in the post-World War 2 period, mostly because larger venues were becoming more scarce, the expense of touring and maintaining a large band and the changing Jazz scene made the Big Band a rapidly fading attraction, but they were still the backbone of our musical society as this live broadcast from June of 1953 proves.

Here is Ray Anthony, one of the most popular bands of the early 1950's as he was recorded live at the legendary Hollywood Palladium, one of the few venues of its kind still standing.

This might be a stretch, but I had to include it in our look at On-Air live Music tracks pre-1950. Tonight it's a two-song excerpt from The Phoenix Hosiery Company Program Featuring Ben Bernie and His Orchestra, recorded in April 1931 and broadcast over the NBC Blue Network.

Big Bands (Sweet and/or Syncopated) were a staple in the diet of early radio since the concept of a "disc jockey" hadn't been arrived at yet, and because playing commercial records on the air wasn't allowed by the FCC, most radio stations had a band of one sort or another on staff, just in case there needed to be some dance music.

So this two-song excerpt was typical of what was played on Radio in the 1920's and 1930's. Ben Bernie was considered a huge star in his day and his program was one of the most popular in the early 1930's.

The two songs featured are Wabash Moon and Have You Forgotten? (with a pretty dreary vocal "refrain", as was the case with a lot of big band tracks at the time).

In any event, it's history, it's a period of time some 81 years ago, the music's been largely forgotten (at least the pop material) and you may be hearing this for the first time. It may sound totally foreign, painfully weird and embarrassingly quaint - but that's what people were listening to in 1931.

And they went nuts over it.

I've been doing a lot of Roundtable's lately devoted to radio sessions by bands from the 1960's-2000's, but haven't really investigated any of that treasure trove of radio sessions done in the 1930's and 1940's, when just about every major network radio program had at least one or two guest appearances by major recording artists singing either their latest hits or songs they never recorded commercially.

A lot have been reissued in various formats over the years featuring a vast galaxy of Pop and Jazz artists of the day. I'm not sure if this one has been reissued. If not, that's a shame, but not anymore since you get to hear it here.

Connee Boswell (or Connie Boswell depending on which period you're talking about) was part of the legendary sister singing team, The Boswell Sisters, who were very popular from the 1920's until their breakup in 1936. Connee went on to pursue a solo career and became one of the most influential Jazz singers of her day. Her style of singing was cited as a major influence on, among others, a young Ella Fitzgerald.

Tonight's track, Boogie Woogie Piggie is from 1942 and was from The Old Gold Cigarette Program, airing in 1942. There's no mention of the band backing her, but it might be Ray Noble's Orchestra (just a hunch). It falls in that gray area between Novelty, Scat and Jazz, but done in true Connee Boswell fashion, it's original.

Get ready for more of these "one-off" examples this week. There's quite a pile of them.

Okay, this is a real stretch tonight. As long as we've been on the subject of Pop Music and Mainstream Pop artists, I thought I would go all the way back to the 1920's and give an example of what Pop Music was all about 90 years ago.

Paul Whiteman, who was alternately referred to as either "Pops" or "The King Of Jazz" was quite possibly the first million selling artist in the history of recording. His first huge hit was a song called "Whispering" which, according to whoever was keeping sales and popularity records at the time, was in the Number One position for 11 weeks and dropped to number 2 for another 20.

As much as the title "King Of Jazz" has been disputed over the years, one thing was certain - he was the world's first Pop Star, raking in an estimated $1million a year in sales and appearances (in 1920's money) and was a widely influential figure in music. In 1924 he was the one who introduced audiences to Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue for the first time. He was largely responsible for the early career of Bing Crosby as a member of Whiteman's singing group The Rhythm Boys. He was one of the first bandleaders to cross the color line by working with arrangers such as Fletcher Henderson and recording with such artists as Paul Robeson and Billie Holiday (one session for Capitol in the 1940's).

When the genre of Roaring 20's Jazz morphed into Swing in the 1930's, Whiteman's popularity began to wane, but by that time he had already established a place in musical history. He went largely into retirement in the late 1930's and briefly emerged in the 1940's.

But in the 1920's, Whiteman was riding the crest of a huge wave of popularity and he recorded a vast amount of records for RCA Victor including tonight's entry - a 1922 recording of Bygones which sounds remarkably like a follow-up to his 1920 hit Whispering.

Yes, the mainstream Pop Music machine was already getting started and it's first honest-to-god Popstar was born.

If the record sounds strange, this was state-of-the-art in 1922. The new-and-improved method of recording didn't get underway until late 1925. But remember, we're talking 90 years ago.

It had to start somewhere.