GIANT STEPS
EPISODE 1

From Studio C Chicago, it's “Giant Steps,” exploring the brilliant corners of 1950s jazz, Broadway, popular song, rock and roll, rhythm and blues, country, folk, film music, doo-wop, mambo, and more. I'm Andy Miles, and this is B.B. King.

B.B. King “You Upset Me, Baby” (1954)

Bud Powell “Collard Greens and Black Peas” (1954)

Frank Sinatra “The Man with the Golden Arm” (1955)

Julie London “No Moon At All” (1955)

That's Julie London from her 1955 LP “Julie Is Her Name.”  It was London's debut record, released when the singer was almost 30 years old.  The song we heard was “No Moon At All,” which made its debut just eight years earlier, with a popular version by Doris Day.

Before Julie we heard a Sinatra recording so rare that I had never known of its existence until a week ago, and hadn't heard it all the way through until just now. You might have guessed that the song had something to do with the movie “The Man with the Golden Arm,” which Sinatra starred in in 1955.  The song was composed by Sinatra's main songwriting team of that decade, Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, and orchestrated by Nelson Riddle, Sinatra's go-to arranger in the ’50s. But the movie stuck with Elmer Bernstein's driving score and the Sinatra song was not released for 47 years when it finally surfaced on the box set “Frank Sinatra in Hollywood, 1940-1964.” And that's the box set I took the track from in playing it today.

We heard some early ’50s bebop courtesy of pianist Bud Powell, a song called “Collard Greens and Black Eyed Peas,” written by Oscar Pettiford.

And at the top of the set, and the top of the show, “You Upset Me Baby,” a great ’50s track from B.B. King.  Like the Bud Powell tune, that one came out in 1954, climbing to number two on the American R&B chart, King's eighth single to reach that chart's top 10.

And you're listening to “Giant Steps,” coming to you from Studio C Chicago. I'm Andy Miles.  Thanks for joining me and I hope you'll stay tuned; I’ve got music this hour from Oscar Peterson, Ray Charles, and this, the theme from Alfred Hitchcock's “Dial M For Murder.”

Dmitri Tiomkin “Dial M For Murder” (1954)

Helen Merrill “Born To Be Blue” (1954)

Oscar Peterson “I Only Have Eyes For You” (1954)

Mickey & Sylvia “Love Is Strange” (1957)

That's Mickey & Sylvia, “Love Is Strange,” a number one song on the R&B chart in 1957.  It also hit #11 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart for the duo, both of them guitarists at a time when you didn't see many women playing that instrument. The song was actually written by Bo Diddley under his wife's name and recorded by Mickey & Sylvia just a few months after Diddley's initial recording.  It was the duo's version that was released first, becoming their first of just two career hit songs.

Oscar Peterson before that, “I Only Have Eyes For You,” a song published 20 years before that 1954 trio recording by Mr. Peterson.  He also did that one with an orchestra for the 1955 album “In A Romantic Mood,” and recorded it again for a 1959 release.

The singer Helen Merrill before that with “Born To Be Blue,” a song released in 1954 when she was 25 years old and making her auspicious recording debut, with Clifford Brown on trumpet and arrangements by Quincy Jones, who was only 21 years old at the time.

And at the top of that set it was “Dial M For Murder,” the main theme from the 1954 Hitchcock film that starred Grace Kelly and Ray Milland.  The music was composed by Dimitri Tiomkin, a year before Hitchcock started working with Bernard Herrmann.  Not long before, Tiomkin did the score for the Western “High Noon,” which also starred Grace Kelly and won the Russian-born composer an Oscar for “The Ballad of High Noon,” which became a hit record for Frankie Laine in 1952.  “Dial M For Murder” picked up not a single Oscar nomination and its score is not really an aspect of the film that gets much attention, but it's certainly serviceable mid-’50s film music. I hope you agree.

We also heard the famous “shot heard around the world,” Bobby Thomson's pennant-winning three-run home run in the ninth inning at the Polo Grounds in 1951, which sent the New York Giants to a Subway Series against the Yankees, which the Yankees won in six games.  That was the legendary radio call by Russ Hodges, broadcasting over WMCA-AM that October afternoon in 1951.

From Studio C Chicago it’s “Giant Steps.”  I'm Andy Miles.  Next up it’s Ray Charles.

Ray Charles “Losing Hand” (1953)

Carol Haney with Peter Gennaro and Buzz Miller “Steam Heat” (1954)

The “5” Royals “Baby Don’t Do It” (1953)

Chris Connor “Something To Live For” (1956)

That's Chris Connor, “Something to Live For,” the first of many song collaborations by Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington.  They wrote it in 1939 and Connor recorded that version 1955.

“Baby Don't Do It” by The “5” Royals before that. That song spent three weeks at the top of the R&B chart in 1952, becoming the group's biggest hit until their next single spent five weeks as an R&B chart-topper in 1953.

From “The Pajama Game” original cast recording we heard “Steam Heat,” a song that gave choreographer Bob Fosse his start, and one that almost got cut from the show before making its Broadway debut in 1954.

Ray Charles at the top of the set doing a song called “Losing Hand” from his debut album, released in 1957, but that song was first issued as a B-side in 1953.

More Broadway now, Dean Martin singing “Just in Time” from “Bells Are Ringing.”

Dean Martin “Just In Time” (1960)

Tito Puente & His Orchestra “Cuban Nightmare” (1955)

Marlon Brando & The Guys “Luck Be A Lady” (1955)

Louis Armstrong “East of the Sun (and West of the Moon)” (1957)

Louis Armstrong, “East of the Sun (and West of the Moon),” a popular track from a 1958 album called “Louis Under the Stars,” recorded a few days after his 56th birthday.

Before that Marlon Brando and the Guys, “Luck Be A Lady” from the film version of “Guys and Dolls,” released in 1955. Brando was not lauded for his singing, and probably for good reason, but he turned in a good performance in the Sky Masterson role, which is a role that Sinatra had wanted.  Sinatra of course took the Nathan Detroit role and later released a popular version of “Luck Be A Lady.”

“Cuban Nightmare” before that, Tito Puento and His Orchestra from the mid-’50s.  

And starting things off in that set, Dean Martin's “Just in Time,” a song he released in October 1960, just a few months after he sang it in the film version that he starred in with Judy Holliday.  

And you've been listening to “Giant Steps” from Studio C Chicago.  I'm Andy Miles.

One last song on the show; it's something of a totally different tenor and tone and tempo: It’s music from the 1959 French film “Hiroshima, Mon Amour,” composed by Giovanni Fusco and Georges Delerue.  The Italian Fusco is known as well for his scores to several Antonioni films from the same time, including “L'Avventura.”  The music he composed for “Hiroshima, Mon Amour” is not only some of his best work, I think it's among the great film scores of all time. Here's an excerpt.

Music from “Hiroshima, Mon Amour,” composed by Giovanni Fusco and Georges Delerue (1959)

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