GIANT STEPS
EPISODE 2

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 Sonny Rollins. 

Sonny Rollins “St. Thomas” (1956)

Frank Sinatra “Can’t We Be Friends” (1955)

Oscar Peterson “I Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good)” (1959)

Buddy Holly “Learning the Game” (1959)

Buddy Holly with “Learning the Game,” a song not released in his short lifetime.  It came out a year after his 1959 death on what was then the second in a string of posthumous releases containing unreleased songs like that one.

Oscar Peterson before that, “I Got it Bad and That Ain't Good” from the Verve Records release “Oscar Peterson Plays the Duke Ellington Songbook.”  

We heard Frank Sinatra with a gem from his classic album “In the Wee Small Hours,” released in 1955 on Capitol Records.  That song, “Can't We Be Friends,” was recorded in an evening session of February 8, 1955, with a five-piece band behind Sinatra and an arrangement by Nelson Riddle.

And at the top of the set, “St. Thomas” from saxophone colossus Sonny Rollins, from his 1956 album “Saxophone Colossus.” 

We also heard dialogue from “Northwest By Northwest”: Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint flirting on a train in the 1959 classic Hitchcock film, whose score we will no doubt hear on a future episode of this program.  

And you're listening to “Giant Steps” from Studio C Chicago.  I'm Andy Miles. Lots of good stuff on the way, including Johnny Cash, Gene Kelly, The Modern Jazz Quartet, and this pair of tracks from “West Side Story.”

“The Dance at the Gym” from the original “West Side Story” cast recording (1957)

André Previn and His Pals Shelly Manne and Red Mitchell “Jet Song” (1959)

Joe Williams “Thou Swell” (1956)

Harry James & His Orchestra “Melancholy Rhapsody” (1950)

That's music from the soundtrack to the 1950 film “Young Man with a Horn.”  The horn was played by big band leader Harry James, the horn player by Kirk Douglas, starring alongside Doris Day and Lauren Bacall in a film directed by Michael Curtiz, who was actually no stranger to directing musical biopics — this one loosely based on the life of trumpeter Bix Biederbecke — even though Curtiz is better known for taut melodramas like “Mildred Pierce,” “Casablanca,” and “Angels with Dirty Faces.”

We heard “Thou Swell” from a Verve Records release called “The Greatest!! Count Basie Plays, Joe Williams Sings Standards,” released in 1956. By then the song was almost 30 years old, having made its debut in the Rogers and Hart musical “A Connecticut Yankee” in 1927.  

And before that a couple tracks from “West Side Story,” which made its Broadway debut in 1957.  We heard “The Dance at the Gym” from the original Broadway cast recording, and “Jet Song” from André Previn and His Pals Shelly Manne and Red Mitchell, one of a series of records Previn and Manne made together in trios, putting their mark on Broadway shows like “Bells are Ringing,” “Pal Joey,” “My Fair Lady,” and the best of them all, “West Side Story.”  Previn died in 2019 at the age of 89.  You'll hear his work often on this show.

And this show is “Giant Steps” from Studio C Chicago.  I'm Andy Miles.  We're gonna to take a break from the brassy bands and smooth songbook vocals to hear some folk, country, and blues now, starting with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee.

Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee “Sportin’ Life” (1958)

Johnny Cash “I Walk the Line” (1956)

Buddy Guy “Sit and Cry (The Blues)” (1958)

Big Bill Broonzy “Black, Brown and White” (1951)

That's Big Bill Broonzy with “Black, Brown and White” from 1951.  Broonzy was born in the South but came north to Chicago in his late teens hoping to make his name in what was then becoming a hotbed of blues, Chicago, Illinois. By the time that record came out Broonzy was also associated with the American folk music revival that began in the postwar ’40s.  But even as he toured the country, at several points sharing a bill with the writer and broadcaster Studs Terkel, he held down a job as a custodian at Iowa State University.

Before Big Bill Broonzy we heard another legend of Chicago blues who was just getting his start when Broonzy died in 1958. I'm talking about Buddy Guy. We heard “Sit and Cry the Blues,” his very first single, released in 1958 when Guy was just 22 years old.

Johnny Cash, “I Walk the Line” before that, released in 1956.  It was just the third single released by Cash at that early point in his career and the first of several of his songs to top the U.S. country chart. That one also broke into the top 20 on Billboard's pop chart in the summer of 1956, selling 2 million copies.  

“Sportin’ Life” at the top of the set, a song from Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee from 1958.

From Studio C Chicago, this is “Giant Steps.”  I'm Andy Miles. Back to the brass now.  It's Alexander Courage with “Hot Rod Rumble.”

Alexander Courage “Hot Rod Rumble” (1958)

The Red Garland Trio “Hey Now” (1957)

Gene Kelly “Love Is Here To Stay” (1951)

The Modern Jazz Quartet “Willow Weep For Me” (1956)

Modern Jazz Quartet there with “Willow Weep For Me.”  John Lewis, piano; Milt Jackson, vibraphone; Percy Heath, double bass; Connie Kay, drums.

Before that we heard Gene Kelly, “Love Is Here to Stay” from “An American in Paris,” in a scene he shared with Leslie Caron, one of the great romantic song and dance sequences in American film history.  

We heard “Hey Now” from The Red Garland Trio, a tune Garland wrote with Sonny Gordon and released on the trio's 1957 album “Groovy.”

And “Hot Rod Rumble,” the main theme from a mostly forgotten 1957 low-budget drag racing drama. Music by Alexander Courage, better known as Sandy Courage, with trumpeter Maynard Ferguson in the brassy 34-piece band.  

Well, that brings us almost to the end of another episode of “Giant Steps.”  I'm Andy Miles. Thanks for joining me.  

To close the show, I have the closing theme from the French film classic “The 400 Blows.”  It's called “Trinity and Finale,” from 1959.

Jean Constantin “Trinity and Finale” (1959)  

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