Night Lights Classic Jazz
The sounds and stories of the year that changed everything.
We'll hear music from Louis Jordan, Kitty Kallen with Jimmy Dorsey, Sam Donahue's Navy band, and much more.
In honor of the holiday weekend, we're posting both parts of last year's "American Popular Song and World War II".
Wrapping up our series this week of Duke Ellington Treasury shows: In August of 1945 the United States’ war with Japan ended suddenly, and the war bonds that Ellington promoted every Saturday on “Your Date With the Duke” turned into “Victory Bonds.” His bond pitches placed special emphasis on the many wounded and injured veterans returning–or soon to return–from the war. In this program we’ll hear broadcasts from that month of “Work Song” and “The Blues” from Ellington’s…
This edition of our ongoing Duke Ellington Treasury series features mid-summer performances from an Ellington appearance at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, including “Day Dream,” “Carnegie Blues,” and a medley of Billy Strayhorn tunes with Strayhorn at the piano, while Marie Ellington (no relation, but Nat King Cole’s future wife) and Al Hibbler take turns…
Duke Ellington was on the road during the summer of 1945 promoting the war-bond drive, and some of this program’s selections come from an Evansville, Indiana concert. In addition to “Indiana,” we’ll hear the Ellington orchestra performing “Body and Soul,” Ellington’s extended instrumental “New World a-Comin” (named after Roi Ottley’s proto-black pride 1943 book), the title song from his musical Jump For Joy, and classic Ellington songbook numbers such as…
As part of our daily presentation this week of several big-band shows that I did in 2005 devoted to Duke Ellington’s Treasury shows, the Tuesday “May 1945″ edition finds World War II ending in Europe, something we hear Duke Ellington acknowledge several times throughout this program in his pitches for U.S. war bonds…
In the spring of 1945, as World War II finally began to draw to a close, Duke Ellington began “Your Saturday Date With the Duke,” a series of weekly broadcasts sponsored by the U.S. Treasury Department to promote the sale of war bonds. The sets featured classics from the Ellington songbook, pop hits of the day, obscure Ellington/Strayhorn compositions rarely or never recorded by the band, and pitches from Ellington and MCs to buy war bonds, along with occasional news bulletin interruptions. Ellington’s 1945 band, removed only a couple of years from the celebrated Blanton-Webster era…
Compilations are usually anathema to jazz aficionados, but Allen Lowe's Devilin' Tune project offers a highly compelling tour of music history.
David Brent Johnson hosts the weekly WFIU historical jazz program Night Lights and Afterglow as well. Learn more »
Johnny Hartman, Blossom Dearie, Dean Martin and others help us pay tribute to the Indiana songwriter.
Afterglow is WFIU's weekly program of jazz and American popular song hosted by David Brent Johnson.
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