GIANT STEPS
EPISODE 5

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 Anita O’Day.

Anita O’Day “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was” (1954)

King Pleasure “I’m Gone” (1954)

Billie Holiday with Mal Waldron and All Stars “Fine and Mellow” (1957)

Johnny Cash “There You Go” (1956)

Music from 1956, “There You Go” by Johnny Cash, the follow-up single to his first number one record on the country chart, “I Walk The Line.” “There You Go” also topped the country chart but failed to make the pop chart, as “I Walk The Line” had. Cash had five country number ones in the decade, a number he matched in the ’60s.

Billie Holiday with Mal Waldron and All Stars before that, “Fine and Mellow,” a song Holiday has the sole songwriting credit on and first recorded in 1939 as the B-side to her classic “Strange Fruit” record. The ’50s remake we just heard featured not only Mal Waldron on piano but a trio of tenor sax icons, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, and an ailing Lester Young, who would die just a few months before Holiday passed away in 1959. The group I mentioned, plus Gerry Mulligan on baritone sax, Roy Eldridge on trumpet, and others, had come together for a 1957 CBS television special called “The Sound of Jazz.” Holiday and Waldron’s all stars cut the studio version around the same time.

We also heard King Pleasure, “I’m Gone,” a 1954 A-side whose backup singers include Jon Hendricks and Eddie Jefferson, who, like King Pleasure, are recognized pioneers of the singing style called vocalese. J.J. Johnson, Jimmy Jones, and Paul Chambers are also on the Quincy Jones-arranged recording.

And Anita O-Day at the top of the show, her 1954 version of the Rodgers and Hart standard “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was,” then 15 years old and first popularized during the big band swing era.

From Studio C Chicago, this is “Giant Steps.” I’m Andy Miles. Thanks for joining me. Lots of good stuff on the way, including Bo Diddley, Dean Martin, Patsy Cline, Tito Puente, and this pair of very similar ballads by Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra, both released by Capitol Records in 1957.

Nat King Cole “Stardust” (1957)

Frank Sinatra “Where Are You” (1957)

Bo Diddley “Mona” (1957)

The Everly Brothers “Bye, Bye Love” (1957)

The Everly Brothers concluding a set of songs from 1957. “Bye, Bye Love” was their debut record and topped both the Cash Box and country charts. Country music legend Chet Atkins provided the guitar on the recording and Floyd Chance, a big name in country music recording sessions, was on upright bass. It was recorded in Nashville, where the Everlys had first come to Atkins’ attention when brothers Phil and Don were in high school.

Bo Diddley before that, “Mona,” the B-side to “Hey! Bo Diddley,” recorded in Chicago.

And a pair of lush 1957 ballads opened the set: Frank Sinatra’s “Where Are You” and Nat King Cole’s “Stardust,” both released by Capitol Records. Sinatra’s recording was the opening track of the Gordon Jenkins-arranged “Where Are You” album, Cole’s the opening song on the Gordon Jenkins-arranged “Love is the Thing” album.

We also heard Allen Ginsberg reading the opening lines of his famous poem “Howl,” which made headlines in 1957 when both a San Francisco bookstore manager and the poem’s publisher were arrested and a California state superior court judge subsequently ruled that the poem was of "redeeming social importance," and not obscene.

This is “Giant Steps” from Studio C Chicago. I’m Andy Miles. Next up, it’s an all-1958 set of songs that begins with June Christy.

June Christy “My One and Only Love” (1958)

Ella Fitzgerald and Paul Weston & His Orchestra “How’s Chances” (1958)

Dean Martin Volare “(Nel Blu Di Pinto Di Blu)” 1958

Dee Clark “Nobody But You” (1958)

That’s Dee Clark, “Nobody But You,” concluding an all-1958 set of songs. It was Clark’s first hit and the first of four consecutive singles he placed in the top 10 of the R&B chart in 1958 and ’59. Clark’s biggest hit came a couple years later with “Raindrops.”

Before that it was Dean Martin with “Volare,” a hit record in 1958. The more popular version by the Italian Domenico Modugno was Billboard’s number one record of 1958 and picked up both Song of the Year and Record of the Year awards at the first-ever Grammys, in the spring of 1959. “Volare” also had success in the Eurovision Song Contest, which was just a couple years old at that point.

We heard Ella Fitzgerald with the backing of Paul Weston & His Orchestra from her 31-song, two-record set, “Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Irving Berlin Song Book,” which I consider to be the best of all of her songbook albums of the late ’50s and early ’60s. The song was “How’s Chances,” which Berlin had written 25 years earlier.

And June Christy at the top of the set, “My One and Only Love,” from her 1958 album “June’s Got Rhythm.” Bud Shank provided the flute on the track.

From Studio C Chicago, this is "Giant Steps," a show devoted to a great decade in American music: the 1950s. One last full set of music on the show; it starts with Jack Scott.

Jack Scott “The Way I Walk” (1959)

Patsy Cline “Walkin’ After Midnight” (1956)

Stubby Kaye “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ The Boat” (1950)

Tito Puente “Mambo Beat” (1957)

The great Tito Puente, “Mambo Beat,” a record from 1957.

Stubby Kaye before that, his rousing “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ The Boat” from the “Guys and Dolls” musical, which Kaye reprised in the film version five years later. I recently learned that “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ The Boat” belongs to the Broadway tradition of second-act showstoppers called “11 o’clock numbers.”

We heard Patsy Cline with “Walkin’ After Midnight.” That was her first hit record, a crossover success on the country and pop charts. Cline’s four previous singles had failed to chart but she had the chance to perform “Walkin’ After Midnight” on a CBS Television program at the beginning of 1957. The audience response was positive and a recording followed, rushed out to stores just weeks after the television performance. And then Cline’s next 12 singles failed to chart, before she scored a series of hits leading up to the plane crash that tragically ended her life in 1963 at the age of 30.

And Jack Scott at the top of the set, “The Way I Walk,” a top 40 hit for the rockabilly singer-songwriter in both the U.S. and his native Canada.

And that just about concludes another episode of “Giant Steps.” I’m Andy Miles. Thanks for joining me. I’m going to close the show with a pair of songs from Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s great jazz score to the 1959 film “Anatomy of a Murder,” which starred James Stewart and Lee Remick and was directed by Otto Preminger. Ellington, Stayhorn, and the band picked up a trio of Grammys for the score, which Columbia Records released as a soundtrack album in 1959. The film was nominated for six Oscars, but none of them for the music, surprisingly. We’re going to first hear the main title song.

Duke Ellington “Main Title and Anatomy of a Murder,” “Way Early Subtone” (1959)

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