Our Jazz Radio Show Info Page
The sordid history of our weekly big band music radio show, live since 1985. Proves that FCC radio deregulation survival may be linked to narcissistically twisted disorders.

Pre Swing Era Jazz History
Early hot jazz bands, the hotel dance bands and early jazz history leading up to the Big Band era.

Pre Swing Era World Report
The role of economics, early recording technology, and radio relative to the conception of the Big Band era.

The Recording Ban Of 1942
Scans of a 1942 Down Beat magazine article detailing one of the most devastating events of the Big Band era; the James Petrillo / AFM recording ban.

Webb Cuts Basie At The Savoy
Another of the many historic jazz magazine articles from Down Beat here on the site. This piece details the Count Basie vs. Chick Webb big band music Battle Of Swing held at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom in January of 1938.

Simone turned to singing jazz and popular music as a way to make money, performing in nightclubs in Philadelphia and Atlantic City, N.J. In the late 1950s Simone recorded her first tracks, including "Plain Gold Ring" and "Don't Smoke in Bed." But she gained fame in 1959 with her recording of "I Loves You Porgy," from the George and Ira Gershwin Broadway musical, "Porgy & Bess." Soon Nina Simone the nightclub singer became Nina Simone the star, performing at Town Hall, Carnegie Hall and the Newport Jazz Festival.

There was a time when Nina Simone was dubbed "the high priestess of soul," a term she hated, not only because it smacked of marketing hype but because it tried to put her in a box she'd never have fit in comfortably. While Simone certainly invested all her work with soul, she blurred boundaries and jumped genres, embracing jazz, pop, blues, spirituals, folk, French chansons, African song and the works of contemporary songwriters like Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, the Bee Gees and the Beatles -- Simone's reading of "Here Comes the Sun" remains a transcendent moment of elegance and joy. Simone was also one of the first African American artists to embrace traditional African garb, adding regal bearing to her already dramatic presence.

Simone was a crucial voice in the civil rights era, when some of her most striking work addressed the horrors and injustices attending blacks in the South, incendiary tracts like "Mississippi Goddam" (inspired by the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four black girls), "Old Jim Crow" and "Backlash Blues" (based on a poem written for Simone by Langston Hughes). Like jazz artists Abbey Lincoln, Max Roach and Charles Mingus, Simone used her populist platform to shine a bright light into ugly corners of American society.

It is ironic that Simone's first and only American hit came early in her career. The 1957 recording of George Gershwin's "I Loves You Porgy" went Top 20, the only Top 40 entry of a career that covered 45 years. Confirming the vagaries of pop culture, Simone did enjoy a top-five single in England in 1987, when a three-decade-old recording of "My Baby Just Cares for Me" -- from the same "Little Girl Blue" album that included "Porgy" -- became a hit after being used in a television commercial.

What was always evident in Simone's style was a powerful contralto that expressed her highly personal interpretations of varied materials, subtly shaded by her assured piano underscoring. You can hear Nina's classical training come out on many of her recordings. She initially trained to be a classical pianist, but found there to be few opportunities in the field for African Americans in the 1950s. It was then that in order to support her further musical education, she made a living accompanying classical singers. When an opportunity to work in an Atlantic City lounge cropped up in 1954, it was on the condition that she sang as well as played. That's when Eunice Waymon became Nina Simone, out of fear of offending her handyman father and, perhaps more important, her Methodist minister mother. Up to that point, Simone had never sung in public.

Simone started off exploring the Great American Songbook, but also expanded her repertoire with stately spirituals like "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" and reconstituted folk standards like "House of the Rising Sun" and "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair." Whatever the material, Simone offered it on her terms.

Her recording career started in the mid-'50s on the Bethlehem label, and even though she was never a particularly "commercial" presence, she was prolific: The online site All Music Guide lists almost 100 albums (including compilations). Many of the best are live albums that capture the artist's charisma, tenderness and fervor -- as well as the occasional firestorm of anger and frustration. Because Simone was so productive, particularly in the first two decades of her career, she could be annoyingly erratic and inconsistent on record: her best-ofs are often the best representation of less-than-stellar efforts, but there's usually at least one gem on every album she recorded.

By the late '60s, Nina Simone had grown weary of American racial politics and frustrated with the level of her commercial success. She relocated to Europe, where she felt more appreciated as both an artist and a black person. She lived at various times in Switzerland, France and England, as well as Liberia and Barbados. When Simone performed at Lisner Auditorium in 1992, it was her first Washington appearance in 15 years; her last was in June of 2001, when she filled Constitution Hall with fans who excused the singer's time-worn voice and apparent health problems and enthusiastically applauded her indomitable spirit and proud history.

Barney Kessel Biography
The jazz guitar great died May 6th, 2004 and left behind a vast body of recorded jazz work.

Benny Carter Biography
Benny Carter was one of the greatest arrangers and jazz musicians the genre has ever known. This extensive biography spans the entire lengthy carreer of the jazz legend.

Billy May Biography
The trumpeter, bandleader, composer and arranger died Jan. 22, 2004. May wrote many Swing Era classics for Glenn Miller and Charlie Barnet and later for Sinatra and Nat Cole.

Count Basie Biography
Our biography of Count Basie traces the career of "the kid from Red Bank" through Kansas City and into the later stages of his life as a bandleader.

Ray Charles Biography
Known as "The Genius" Ray Charles recorded a wide variety of music but got his start playing big band music and jazz. He passed away 6-10-04.

Shirley Horn Biography
Shirley Horn predated Dianna Krall and Harry Connick Jr.as the premiere singing pianist in jazz since Nat "King" Cole. The use of pauses and breaks in her playing and singing ala Basie and Ahmad Jamal conveyed a relaxed, confident feeling of swing. She passed away in October of 2005.

Louis Armstrong Biography
The trumpet solos and vocals of the great Satchmo are the most identifiable in jazz. This biography traces the career of Louis Armstrong from his days in New Orleans.

Dakota Staton Biography
In her early career Dakota Staton showed the influences of Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan. In later years her huskier tone leaned more toward blues and gospel. Discography is included.