Jazz shouldn’t be viewed as music that originated in New Orleans in the late 19th century and simply spread around the country over the next 150 years.
To add a couple of tidbits regarding Benny Goodman at the Palomar.
1) Network remote concert broadcasts were just one aspect of the impact of radio on Goodman’s triumph. Another innovation of radio came from the beginnings of the practice of DJs spinning studio records on their shows. Al Jarvis had the hot show on KFWB in Los Angeles in that idiom, and he championed Benny
On Goodman’s 1935 nationwide tour heading west, reactions and attendance were disappointing and dispiriting. But when the band reached the final stop in California, the audience was primed because DJ Jarvis was regularly playing Goodman discs on his radio show. He was so influential that the youths responded and turned out, anxiously awaiting the opportunity to hear him in person.
2) While the overall Palomar experience propelled the fame of swing, it’s interesting that the initial CBS broadcast (included here) was of their first set, which consisted of stodgy routine material that didn’t engage the crowd, and can’t serve us contemporary listeners to grasp what the excitement was all about. The later sets that night (which were not broadcast) had Goodman playing some of his Fletcher Henderson arrangements and other new stuff which is what sparked the ongoing swing enthusiasm.
This is a highly interesting post for me because I'm interested in US radio since many years. Since I'm in Berlin, Germany I had the luck to hear US radio direct here in the city. AFN (American Forces Network) Berlin was on the air from 1945-1994. Of course when I started to hear this station when I was a teenager in the early 80's there wasn't so much jazz. But AFN Berlin had a local DJ, Mark White, who came to Berlin in 1953 and stayed here ever since. He died at the age of 88 years in 2013. He came to Germany as an american soldier and then became a DoD (Department of Defense) civilian and helped to establish AFN Munich. Then he was in Nuremberg for a short time and finally in Berlin in 1953. His show "The Big Bands" had a significant influence on me becoming a jazz fan. So here you can hear american radio in Berlin, Germany with an american DJ in 1980. 🙂📻
Good stuff, Marc! I’m also thinking how inchoate recording technology came with the emergence, not of just swing rhythm, but the unscored sounds of jazz “monkeyshines”--improvisation. Without records, those emergent notes would have been lost to history. This, of course, would have affected the entire future development of the music. Here, “oral history” shows up in the playing itself!
I’m also thinking about the gigantic dance hall tax of the 1940s--although this does not involved technology...
Very interesting piece. I started listening to AM radio in the early '50s, age 10-11, in WV. As noted in an early comment, my gateways were Clear Channel AM stations (high power, covered large parts of the country with little interference). WWL (New Orleans) and WCCO (Minneapolis) were CBS affiliates, WHO was ABC, WMAQ (Chicago) and WHAM were NBC, WCFL was Mutual. All of them had hip DJs playing jazz late at night. So did the NBC affiliate in my home town and the CBS affiliate in Charleston, WV, 50 miles away, both lower power to cover their cities. Most of this faded into black by the end of the '60s. Delayed posting this, because I needed to look up their network affiliations. :)
To add a couple of tidbits regarding Benny Goodman at the Palomar.
1) Network remote concert broadcasts were just one aspect of the impact of radio on Goodman’s triumph. Another innovation of radio came from the beginnings of the practice of DJs spinning studio records on their shows. Al Jarvis had the hot show on KFWB in Los Angeles in that idiom, and he championed Benny
On Goodman’s 1935 nationwide tour heading west, reactions and attendance were disappointing and dispiriting. But when the band reached the final stop in California, the audience was primed because DJ Jarvis was regularly playing Goodman discs on his radio show. He was so influential that the youths responded and turned out, anxiously awaiting the opportunity to hear him in person.
2) While the overall Palomar experience propelled the fame of swing, it’s interesting that the initial CBS broadcast (included here) was of their first set, which consisted of stodgy routine material that didn’t engage the crowd, and can’t serve us contemporary listeners to grasp what the excitement was all about. The later sets that night (which were not broadcast) had Goodman playing some of his Fletcher Henderson arrangements and other new stuff which is what sparked the ongoing swing enthusiasm.
This is a highly interesting post for me because I'm interested in US radio since many years. Since I'm in Berlin, Germany I had the luck to hear US radio direct here in the city. AFN (American Forces Network) Berlin was on the air from 1945-1994. Of course when I started to hear this station when I was a teenager in the early 80's there wasn't so much jazz. But AFN Berlin had a local DJ, Mark White, who came to Berlin in 1953 and stayed here ever since. He died at the age of 88 years in 2013. He came to Germany as an american soldier and then became a DoD (Department of Defense) civilian and helped to establish AFN Munich. Then he was in Nuremberg for a short time and finally in Berlin in 1953. His show "The Big Bands" had a significant influence on me becoming a jazz fan. So here you can hear american radio in Berlin, Germany with an american DJ in 1980. 🙂📻
https://pixeldrain.com/u/7AKcMEXv
Good stuff, Marc! I’m also thinking how inchoate recording technology came with the emergence, not of just swing rhythm, but the unscored sounds of jazz “monkeyshines”--improvisation. Without records, those emergent notes would have been lost to history. This, of course, would have affected the entire future development of the music. Here, “oral history” shows up in the playing itself!
I’m also thinking about the gigantic dance hall tax of the 1940s--although this does not involved technology...
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/how-cabaret-taxes-hobbled-swing-music-cleared-the-dancefloor-and-gave-birth-to-the-bebop-revolution/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323628804578348050712410108
https://yesterdaysamerica.com/the-death-of-swing-music/
AVAST!
Peter G from Boston
Very interesting piece. I started listening to AM radio in the early '50s, age 10-11, in WV. As noted in an early comment, my gateways were Clear Channel AM stations (high power, covered large parts of the country with little interference). WWL (New Orleans) and WCCO (Minneapolis) were CBS affiliates, WHO was ABC, WMAQ (Chicago) and WHAM were NBC, WCFL was Mutual. All of them had hip DJs playing jazz late at night. So did the NBC affiliate in my home town and the CBS affiliate in Charleston, WV, 50 miles away, both lower power to cover their cities. Most of this faded into black by the end of the '60s. Delayed posting this, because I needed to look up their network affiliations. :)
God bless jazz FM radio, the great educator. Thanks for sharing, Jim.