BODY AND SOUL
EPISODE 2

From Studio C Chicago, this is “Body and Soul,” a show that covers the waterfront of 1930s and ’40s jazz and swing, blues, Broadway, popular song, country, rhythm & blues, movie music, and more. I'm Andy Miles and this is Bunny Berigan & His Orchestra.

Bunny Berigan & His Orchestra "Caravan" (1937)

Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five "Knock Me A Kiss" (1940)

Willie "The Lion" Smith "Echo of Spring" (1939)

Helen Forrest "Skylark" (1942)

That's Helen Forrest, "Skylark," a recording of the Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer song published in 1941 and popularized the following year by recordings like Forrest's. Mercer's lyrics to the song were written about Judy Garland, who was about 13 years his junior. The two had an affair when Garland was just 18 years old, shortly after Garland's relationship with the bandleader Artie Shaw had ended, when Shaw married Lana Turner in 1940. The Helen Forrest record was released at the time when singers were starting to take top billing over the bandleaders. That recording, which had backing by Harry James's band, went to number 11 in a year that Forrest had eight top 20 hits, including three chart toppers.

Before that, "Echo of Spring," a 1939 record by the New York stride pianist Willie "The Lion" Smith.

We also heard Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five with "Knock Me A Kiss," a hit for Decca Records in 1941.

Bunny Berrigan & His Orchestra at the top of the show with the Duke Ellington standard "Caravan," a record Berrigan released in 1937.

And you're listening to "Body and Soul." I'm Andy Miles. Thanks for joining me. Lots of good stuff on the way, including both Jimmie Lunceford and Jimmie Rodgers, and this from Bennie Moten’s Kansas City Orchestra.

Bennie Moten’s Kansas City Orchestra "Moten Swing" (1932)

Jimmie Lunceford & His Orchestra "Blues in the Night" (1941)

Jimmie Rodgers "Blue Yodel No. 9 (Standing on the Corner)" (1930)

Ray Charles "Confession Blues" (1949)

Ray Charles at the beginning of his career, when he was the 18-year-old pianist and singer for the McSon Trio, based in Seattle, Washington. The song was released as a B-side and became the first hit in the long and legendary career of Ray Charles, climbing to the number two position on the R&B chart.

Jimmie Rodgers before that, "Blue Yodel No. 9 (Standing on the Corner)," a country record from 1930 with trumpet by none other than Louis Armstrong. Armstrong's then-wife, Lil, played piano on the track, as she did on many of her husband's early recordings. The record was the only Rodgers-Armstrong collaboration, and Rodgers died just a couple years later at the age of 35.

We heard Jimmie Lunceford & His Orchestra, "Blues in the Night," a song co-written by the aforementioned Johnny Mercer for the film of the same name, which Lunceford's band appeared in. It was an instant hit, producing top 10 singles in the first months of its release for five different singers and bands, including Lunceford's, whose version spent 10 weeks on the chart in early 1942. That same year the song received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song but lost to Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein's "The Last Time I Saw Paris." For Mercer it was one of eight Oscar Best Original Song nominations he received in the '40s when he was racking up nominations almost every year, sometimes two a year; he finally won in 1946 for his song "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe."

And "Moten Swing" started that set, the original Bennie Moten version of the song from 1932. It went on to greater fame with Swing Era versions by Bennie Goodman, Fletcher Henderson, and Count Basie, among others.

From Studio C Chicago, this is "Body and Soul," a show devoted to two great decades in American music: the '30s and the '40s Next up it's Charlie Parker.

Charlie Parker "Parker's Mood" (1948)

Nat "King" Cole "It's Only A Paper Moon" (1944)

Hot Lips Page "Evil Man's Blues" (1940)

Lena Horne "I Ain't Got Nothin' But The Blues" (1944)

Lena Horne singing the blues with a smile on her lips, "I Ain't Got Nothin' But The Blues" from 1944. The song was one of Duke Ellington's Swing Era compositions and while you can't really call it a standard of the great American songbook, it was recorded by some of the great singers, like Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and of course Horne herself.

Hot Lips Page before that, "Evil Man's Blues" from 1940.

We heard Nat "King" Cole with one of his most popular records, "It's Only A Paper Moon," made with his trio in 1944 when Cole was barely 25 years old. It was a top five hit on the R&B chart, which for Cole was probably a bit of a letdown after his first four A-sides had all gone to number one on that same chart. By decade's end Cole had placed 22 songs in the top 10 of the R&B chart, as well as five in the pop chart’s top 10.

"Parkers Mood" got things started in that set, a 1948 quartet recording by Charlie Parker with Max Roach on drums, Curley Russell on bass, and John Lewis on piano.

And you're listening to "Body and Soul" from Studio C Chicago. I'm Andy Miles. One last full set of music left on the show. It starts in 1945 with Teddy Wilson, featuring Maxine Sullivan on vocals.

The Teddy Wilson Quintet with Maxine Sullivan "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" (1945)

Gene Krupa "Drum Boogie" (1940)

Roy Eldridge & His Orchestra "Wabash Stomp" (1937)

Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra "I Begged Her" (1945)

Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, "I Begged Her" from the 1945 MGM Technicolor musical "Anchors Aweigh," which also starred Kathryn Grayson and a nine-year-old Dean Stockwell. Though Sinatra sat out the war with a 4F classification for a punctured eardrum, he played sailors and soldiers throughout his movie career, including, of course, a sailor in “Anchors Aweigh.”

Before that, Roy Eldridge & His Orchestra, "Wabash Stomp" from 1937, recorded shortly after the Pittsburgh native relocated to Chicago, and not long before he dropped out of the music business for a year to study radio engineering, reportedly turned off by racism in the music industry.

We also heard Gene Krupa with his famous "Drum Boogie." Irene Daye did the lead vocal and the song's co-composer, Roy Eldridge, played trumpet on the record, having returned from his exile. Krupa and his band performed the song on the screen in the great 1941 screwball comedy "Ball of Fire," with Barbara Stanwyck lip-syncing a vocal by Martha Tilton, who, like Krupa, was best known for her work with Benny Goodman. In the film, Eldridge, the only black member of the orchestra, stands up and takes a solo, a small step for 1940s integration.

And at the top of set, Teddy Wilson, who figured prominently in the story of 1930s integration of jazz, having famously played with The Benny Goodman Trio, alongside Goodman, a Jew whose parents had emigrated from the Russian Empire, and the Polish-American Krupa. The recording we heard was also integrated, with Wilson on piano, Charlie Shavers on trumpet and Maxine Sullivan providing the vocals, alongside the white vibraphonist Red Norvo and drummer Morey Feld, who also played with Benny Goodman.

We also heard Bob Trout broadcasting over CBS Radio on August 14, 1945, five days after the United States dropped the second of two atomic bombs on the Japanese mainland. 

And you've been listening to "Body and Soul" from Studio C Chicago. I'm Andy Miles. I'm going to close the show with Campbell Aurelius Tolbert — better known as Skeets Tolbert — with "The Rhumba Blues," a record Tolbert made with his band The Gentlemen of Swing in 1941.

Skeets Tolbert "The Rhumba Blues” (1941)

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