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77 episodes
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James M ErringtonExplicit
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Date created
2017/08/06
Latest episode
2025/10/20
Average duration
45 min.
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44 days
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Audio time travel with mixes for every year of recorded sound, starting in the 1850s and working our way through to the present. "Radio podcasts" are bonus commentary with occasional guests. Find out more at centuriesofsound.com
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2000 Part Two – Get Me a Tape
2025/10/20
At Centuries of Sound I am making mixes for every year of recorded sound. The download here is a placeholder to appear on the podcast feed. For the full 3-hour version either see below for the Mixcloud player, or come to patreon.com/centuriesofsound for the podcast version and a host of other bonus materials for just $5 per month. You can also support me by buying one of the audio services I offer – https://centuriesofsound.com/services/
Mixcloud player with full mix – or listen on the Mixcloud website.
In the summers of my university years, I often worked at music festivals, serving fried breakfasts to the crew, and it was for this reason that I found myself at Reading on Sunday 27th August 2000. It was “rock day” and very little of interest was on for me. Looking around the grounds that day I noticed a shift had taken place – people aged 20 or older were still around in their Britpop Adidas tops and bucket hats, but now they were outnumbered by people a few years younger, with dyed hair, piercings, big boots, bootcut trousers and chains. Skate-punks, nu metallers, moshers, emos. Had this generational shift meant the sudden end of the 90s lad culture? I was about to find out.
I’d first seen Daphne & Celeste on MTV2 the previous year – their deal was subversive childish pop music – for example their debut single Oo Stick You was a catchy kids pop song which repeatedly told you (the recipient of the song) to f**k off, though obviously not in those exact words. It was very much the kind of thing I liked, and it was a pleasant surprise to see them on the bill. It turned out, however, that the rest of the crowd were not as excited to see them. Daphne & Celeste arrived on stage not only to a cacophony of booing, but home-made signs telling them to die and a constant hail of projectiles including cups full of urine. Despite this they performed two out of their three planned songs before it became impossible to continue. An hour or so later, I saw them arrive at the signing tent, where the bottling continued.
This incident has gone down in popular memory as a funny story about a hostile crowd, but it didn’t feel like that from where I was standing. Yes, it is a tale of bravery, there are very few people who could stand up and take that for near-on ten minutes. From my point of view however, it was revelatory. This “alternative” crowd that I was at least nominally affiliated with were willing to be violently abusive to two young girls, just for playing music that wasn’t to their taste. The hemmed-in aggressively straight misogyny of the 90s hadn’t gone away, it had just found a new form.
This would of course be a ridiculously myopic way to view music, but as has been established in part one, I was not engaged with contemporary music in this year. Happily, the impression I have picked up in my listen-through is not one of conservatism in new clothes, in fact it’s quite the opposite. One influence on these mixes was the mashup culture of the time, from Cassetteboy’s cheeky cut-ups to the sound collages of The Avalanches and the use of vivid, surprising samples in Hip Hop. At university I had access to an edit suite and hated the laborious process of planned three-deck video editing – but by the end of the year 2000, I’d have my first try at digital editing, where I could be free to move chunks around and play with different ways of making them fit. No doubt there were similar revelations happening around the world as producers got their hands on these newly-affordable DAWs.
Here I have tried to imitate some of the editing styles of these artists and producers. If I’ve succeeded, you shouldn’t be able to tell where they start and I begin, not without checking. If you can tell straight away, well I had a great time making it anyway, and I also feel that this is one of my favourite mixes to listen to, so hopefully you will feel the same – and forgive me for the section on the US election, which took me two weeks and convinced me that this may be the may be the turning point for our civilization.
Tracklist
0:00:00 Cassetteboy – The Parker Boy’s About Yer Know
0:00:45 Longmont Potion Castle – Get Me a Tape
(Clip from home movies – Greg)
(Clip from Sexy Beast)
0:01:26 The Avalanches – Frontier Psychiatrist
(Clip from Freaks & Geeks)
0:06:14 Cassetteboy – The Parker Boy’s About Yer Know
(Clip from The League of Gentlemen)
0:06:44 Doug Stanhope – Sicko (excerpt)
(Clip of Daphne & Celeste at Reading Festival)
0:07:09 Daphne & Celeste – Roll Call
(Clip of Daphne & Celeste at Reading Festival)
0:09:17 Busta Rhymes – C’mon All My N****z, C’mon All My Bitches
(Clip from Memento)
(Clip from As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty)
0:11:49 Lambchop – Up With People
(Clip from High Fidelity)
0:17:06 Mint Royale Feat. Lauren Laverne – Don’t Falter
(Clip from Rekjavik 101)
(Clip from home movies – Ed & Rowly)
0:21:28 Asian Dub Foundation – New Way, New Life
0:24:50 Britney Spears – Oops!…I Did It Again
0:27:29 The Gentle Waves – Partner In Crime
(Clip from In The Mood For Love)
0:31:09 St Germain – Rose Rouge
0:34:56 Suba – Felicidade
(Clip of Hubert Selby Jr Interviewed by Ellen Burstyn)
0:39:04 Antony & The Johnsons – Cripple And The Starfish
(Clip from Dinnerladies)
0:42:44 Kinobe – Slip Into Something More Comfortable
0:46:04 Lemon Jelly – The Staunton Lick
(Clip from Big Brother)
0:49:28 Adam Beyer – Untitled (A1) – Lost & Found
(Clip from Ginger Snaps)
(Clip from WWE Hell In A Cell)
(Clip from American Psycho)
(Clip from Bruiser)
0:54:06 Black Legend – You See The Trouble With Me (Original Bootleg)
0:57:16 Sugababes – Overload
(Clip from High Fidelity)
1:01:52 VNV Nation – Lastlight
(Clip from O Brother Where Art Thou)
1:06:24 Goldfrapp – Utopia
(Clip from Sexy Beast)
1:10:17 Dr. Dre ft. Eminem – Forgot About Dre
(Clip from The O-Zone – Eminem Interview)
1:11:59 Eminem – The Real Slim Shady
(Clip of Daphne & Celeste at Reading Festival)
1:14:21 Looper – Modem Song
(Clip from Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
1:17:17 Big Boss Man – Sea Groove
1:19:12 múm – Awake on a Train
(Clip from Best In Show)
1:20:43 Bersuit Vergarabat – El Gordo Motoneta
(Clip from As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty)
1:24:31 Arto Tunçboyac?yan – Mystical Pine Tree
1:26:37 Chris Morris – Andrew Morton Interview
1:30:18 M.O.P. feat. Funkmaster Flex – Ante Up (Robbing-Hoodz Theory)
(Clip from BBC Review of the Year)
1:32:34 Common – The 6th Sense
1:36:22 The Herbaliser Band – The Missing Suitcase
(Clip from Miss Congeniality)
1:39:33 Blonde Redhead – Melody of Certain Three
(Clip from The Emperor’s New Groove)
1:42:01 Deltron 3030 – Virus
(Clip from home movies – Ed & Tim)
1:45:08 Budowitz – Shapiros Korohod
(Clips from Requiem For A Dream)
1:47:10 Clint Mansell & Kronos Quartet – Lux Aeterna (Winter)
(Clip from Cartoon Network Election 2000)
(US election and aftermath collage)
1:53:28 A Silver Mt. Zion – 13 Angels Standing Guard Round The Side Of Your Bed
2:08:51 Outkast – B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad)
(OutKast – Good Hair (interlude))
2:14:01 Nelly – Country Grammar (Hot Shit)
(Clips from WWF Hardcore Championship)
2:16:19 Bomfunk MC’s – Freestyler
(Clip from The Daily Show)
2:18:18 Electrelane – Gabriel
(Clip from O Brother, Where Art Thou)
2:22:37 Oneida – Doin Business in Japan
2:24:02 Boss Hog – Monkey
2:25:55 Cat Power – Sea of Love
(Clip from Yi Yi)
(Clip from Bring It On)
2:28:13 Mya – Case Of The Ex
2:30:49 Mystikal – Shake Ya Ass
(Clip from American Psycho)
2:32:22 Clinic – 2/4
2:34:54 Black Box Recorder – The Facts Of Life (Remix By The Chocolate Layers)
2:41:15 Wu-Tang Clan – Gravel Pit
(Clip from home movies – Dan, Ed, Jamie)
2:44:31 Rui Da Silva Feat. Cassandra Fox – Touch Me (Original 12″)
2:50:02 Basement Jaxx – Bingo Bango
(Clip of Daphne & Celeste at Reading Festival)
(Clip from The Emperor’s New Groove)
(Clip from Coyote Ugly)
2:53:25 Sonique – It Feels So Good
(Clip from Broadcast interviewed by Sean Hughes)
2:55:52 Alan Braxe & Fred Falke – Intro
(Clip from Snatch)
2:58:56 Dom & Roland – Can’t Punish Me
3:01:19 S Club 7 – Reach
(Clip from Almost Famous)
3:04:50 Badly Drawn Boy – The Shining
3:09:45 Yo La Tengo – You Can Have It All
(Clip from Miss Congeniality)
3:14:20 Doves – Sea Song
(Clip from Broadcast interviewed by Sean Hughes)
3:20:29 Broadcast – Come On Let’s Go
(Clip from BBC Review of The Year)
2000 Part One – Let’s Go Back
2025/09/17
At Centuries of Sound I am making mixes for every year of recorded sound. The download here is a placeholder to appear on the podcast feed. For the full 3-hour version either see below for the Mixcloud player, or come to patreon.com/centuriesofsound for the podcast version and a host of other bonus materials for just $5 per month. You can also support me by buying one of the audio services I offer – https://centuriesofsound.com/services/
Mixcloud player with full mix – or listen on the Mixcloud website.
Do you remember them times?
Do you remember these days?
Where you could bubble in a rave
Find me in a club like
Downing pure silk like
Yeah, this is when garage was alright!
There weren’t no fighting and ting there weren’t no gun tings
It was a gyal ting, a raving ting! Bubbling ting
Ok, let’s go back
– Durrty Goodz, Switching Songs Pt 2
My first memory of the year 2000 is walking back from Lennons’ nightclub in Southampton, and sitting by myself in a freezing cold room, while in the room above my friend had sex with a girl he’d met in the club. As the sun rose, still unable to sleep, I watched the celebrations on a black & white TV, the world outside feeling more like a funeral than a celebration. I was halfway through a degree I didn’t want to do, living a lifestyle which was often fun but not really sustainable. Who I actually was and what I wanted from life was still a complete mystery. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. In 1999 I had been immersed in new music, in 2001 I would pick it up again, but this was the year we all just listened to Canterbury Scene and Krautrock. If you think this paragraph is a mess then you don’t know the half of it.
Among the things I missed out on; in the USA Timbaland was leading a revolution in perfectly produced R&B, and harder-edged alternative rockers were making jagged, angry music. In Europe, house, techno and electroclash producers were putting out work which still feels like an unsurpassed peak a quarter of a century later. And in the UK we were at the peak of UK garage, a genre whose imperial phase had been kicked off at the same club I went to – The Artful Dodger’s garage night was on Tuesdays, the indie night was on Thursdays. None of this really sunk in at the time.
The one salient point here is this: I did not really experience this year myself, I have had to piece it together from available evidence. The news events of this year are either a mystery to me or things I heard about only later. The new music here was all discovered later, with the exception of Emiliana Torrini’s “Unemployed In Summertime” – which I heard while being unemployed in the summertime, aged 21, and found memorable for this reason, and V/VM, who were memorable for other reasons. For the first time I have included some clips of home videos in the mix, but the narrative has once again made itself, if there even is a narrative. It is, it turns out, a pretty good year.
Tracklist
(New Year Montage – various clips)
0:01:15 Azzido Da Bass – Dooms Night (Timo Maas Remix)
(Clip from In The Year 2000)
(Clip from The Simpsons)
(Clip from Amores Perros)
(Clip from home videos – Ed)
0:04:47 Sunship – Cheque One-Two (Original Mix)
(Clip from Sexy Beast)
0:08:46 Primal Scream – Swastika Eyes (Jagz Kooner mix)
0:11:13 Life Without Buildings – Let’s Get Out
0:15:01 Emiliana Torrini – Unemployed In Summertime (LP mix)
(Clip from Memento)
0:17:58 Ghostface Killah feat. The RZA – Nutmeg
0:19:59 Chris Morris & Michael Alexander St John – Club News
0:22:46 Jonas Mekas – As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
0:22:54 Boards Of Canada – Kid For Today
0:25:56 Roni Size & Reprazent – System Check
(Clip from Big Brother UK)
0:28:33 The Hives – Die, All Right!
0:31:10 Destiny’s Child – Jumpin, Jumpin
(Clip from home videos – Rowley & Jamie)
0:33:35 Jamie Lidell – La Scappin Rood
(Clip from Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
0:34:36 Aaliyah – Try Again
(Clip from Meet The Parents)
0:37:39 Mala Rodríguez – Tengo Un Trato
(Clip from Final Destination)
(Clip from Billy Elliot)
(Clip from Yi Yi)
0:39:14 Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Storm
(Clip from BBC Review of The Year)
0:44:38 Anaal Nathrakh – The Supreme Necrotic Audnance
0:45:46 Radiohead – Idioteque
(Clip from Jackass)
0:49:16 DJ Zinc – 138 Trek
0:52:43 Fragma – Toca’s Miracle
(Clip from The Beach)
(Clip from home videos – Ed & Rowley)
0:54:17 Phoenix – Too Young
0:57:18 Two Lone Swordsmen – Brootle
(Clip from BBC Review of The Year)
(Clip from home videos – Adam & Olly)
0:59:09 Fiona Apple – Paper Bag
(Clip from Sexy Beast)
1:02:35 PJ Harvey – Good Fortune
1:05:46 Elliott Smith – Can’t Make a Sound
1:08:50 Belle and Sebastian – Judy Is A Dickslap
(Clip from The Simpsons)
(Clip from interview with Broadcast)
1:11:38 Mos Def – UMI Says
1:16:27 Susumu Yokota – Genshi
(Clip from Dancer In The Dark)
1:20:56 Brave Captain – Tell Her You Want Her
(Clip from Requiem For A Dream)
1:24:06 Shiina Ringo – Tsumitobachi
(Clip from Black Books)
1:29:34 Papa Reu – Shine (feat. TC, C-Note & Lil’ O) (Screwed & Chopped)
1:31:59 Faye Wong – Chanel
(Clip from Yi Yi)
1:34:37 The Flaming Stars – Some Things You Don’t Forget
1:35:38 Green Velvet – Flash (Danny Tenaglia’s Prepare To Dub)
(Clip from Freaks & Geeks)
1:38:03 Fatboy Slim – Sunset (Bird Of Prey)
(Clip from Harvey Birdman)
1:42:05 Playgroup – Make It Happen (Soulwax Remix)
1:43:41 Super Furry Animals – Ymaelodi A’r Ymylon
(Clip from home videos – Biggsy)
1:45:47 Peaches – F**k The Pain Away
(Clip of Hubert Selby Jr Interviewed by Ellen Burstyn)
1:47:29 Laurent Garnier – The Man With The Red Face
(Clip from Best in Show)
1:51:01 Sweet Female Attitude – Flowers
1:53:50 Monsta Boy – Sorry (I Didn’t Know)
1:56:36 MJ Cole – Sincere
2:01:35 Freescha – Lift
(Clip from Best in Show)
(Clip from home videos – Dan)
2:05:27 At The Drive-In – One Armed Scissor
(Clip from Da Ali G Show)
2:09:10 Queens of the Stone Age – Feel Good Hit Of The Summer
(Clip from Sexy Beast)
2:11:42 Dandy Warhols – Horse Pills
(Clip from home videos – Ed & Tim)
2:14:33 The New Pornographers – Letter From an Occupant
2:18:13 All Saints – Black Coffee
(Clip from The Beach)
(Clip from High Fidelity)
2:23:09 Johnny Cash – The Mercy Seat
(Clip from Final Destination)
2:27:44 V/Vm – Two Can Play That Gammon
2:29:07 Electric Wizard – Vinum Sabbathi
2:31:54 Bantam Rooster – You’re the Sun
2:33:09 Add N To (X) – Brothel Charge
2:36:00 Oxide & Neutrino – Bound 4 Da Reload (Casualty)
(Clip of John Peel)
2:38:25 Ballboy – I Hate Scotland
(Clip from Vince Russo shoot on Hulk Hogan)
2:42:17 Sigur Rós – Dánarfregnir og jarðarfarir
2:46:11 Daft Punk – One More Time
2:51:19 Spiller – Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)
2:54:55 Photek – Infinity
(Clip from Erin Brokovich)
(Clip of Hubert Selby Jr Interviewed by Ellen Burstyn)
2:58:36 Clearlake – Winterlight
1950 Part Two
2025/07/15
At Centuries of Sound I am making mixes for every year of recorded sound. The download here is a placeholder to appear on the podcast feed. For the full 3-hour version either see below for the Mixcloud player, or come to patreon.com/centuriesofsound for the podcast version and a host of other bonus materials for just $5 per month.
Mixcloud player with full mix – or listen on the Mixcloud website.
It will be spring soon –
And I, whose childhood
Is a forgotten boredom,
Feel like a child
Who comes on a scene
Of adult reconciling,
And can understand nothing
But the unusual laughter,
And starts to be happy.
Philip Larkin, Coming (1950)
As we saw in part one, the middle of a century is a time for looking back as well as looking forward, nostalgia for the unremembered past of previous generations mingled with excitement at progress both technical and social. The flipside of this is a lack of concern with what’s popular now. The music business tends to jump on bandwagons whenever it can, but in 1950 there isn’t a clear bandwagon to jump on, so musicians seem more than ever to be given the leeway to mess around to find out what the next thing might be.
The story of the last few years has been the rise of rhythm and blues / jump blues, but as we turn the decade it seems to be in a lull. Of course, we know this will not last – in January 1950 Sam Philips opened his Memphis Recording Service studio, initially in order to bring R&B artists to a mainstream (i.e. white) audience. In 1951 the studio would record “Rocket ‘88”, in 1952 Philips would found Sun Records, and in 1953 they would make the first recordings of Elvis Presley.
In New York, meanwhile, Charlie Parker’s trumpet player had decided to branch out on his own after attending discussions and jam sessions at Gil Evans’ place on 55th Street. Through 1949 and 1950 he got some of these likeminded people together to record a series of sides for Capitol. Sadly, the record company had very little idea what to do with this music, first releasing two 78RPM singles, then an EP in 1954. By 1957 Miles Davis had become famous enough that Capitol finally put out all of the tracks bar one, under the name “Birth of The Cool.” Was ‘Cool Jazz’ a real genre at this point? Would it ever be a proper genre? Hard to say, but if it has a foundational text, this is it.
If you were to pinpoint a single genre to represent the year, however, it would probably be pop music, currently in a Hollywood musical-influenced style with no pretentions to be anything more than a commercially successful novelty. However winsomely cheesy the taste of the public might be, jobbing songwriters were ready to cater for them, in a way reminiscent of the Tin Pan Alley days of 50 years prior. “If I Knew You Were Comin’ I’d’ve Baked a Cake” – one of the best-selling records of the year – is a great example, an almost sickeningly twee song with a title in the third conditional, written by three men – middle-aged veteran songwriter Al Hoffman, Broadway writer Bob Merrill and comedy musician Al Trace – and performed by TV and radio star Eileen Barton. Within a decade this sort of thing will in theory be all in the past, but in reality will have been supplanted by a similar, if more sophisticated operation around The Brill Building.
Tracklist
0:00:00 Fumio Hayasaka – Clip from Rashomon OST
(Clip from Ernest Useman – Square Dance Instructions)
(Clips from The Les Paul Show)
0:01:26 Perez Prado – Mambo No. 5
(Clip from The Les Paul Show)
0:03:39 T-Bone Walker – Strollin’ With Bones
(Clip from Bold Venture – Blue Moon)
0:06:09 Jimmy Preston – Oh, Babe!
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
0:09:15 Dee Stone & His Melody Hillbillys – Mountain Swing
0:10:28 Red Ingle And His Orchestra – Comin’ ’round The Mountain March
(Clip from The Last Date)
0:13:18 The Eddie Condon Orchestra – At The Jazz Band Ball
(Clip from The Les Paul Show)
0:15:53 Margaret Whiting With Joe ‘Fingers’ Carr – Let’s Do It Again
0:18:13 Edward R. Murrow – Excerpt From The Album ‘I Can Hear It Now’ Volume 3
0:18:26 Duke Ellington And His Orchestra – Mood Indigo Cut
0:23:40 Philip Larkin – Coming
0:24:18 Stan Freberg – John And Marsha
(Clip from Light Crust Doughboys)
0:26:54 Atanas Velyov – Bisero Kerko
(Clip from Cinderella)
0:28:39 Patti Page With Orchestra Under The Direction Of Jack Rael – The Tennessee Waltz
0:31:38 Charlie Parker Quintet – Bird Of Paradise
(Clip from Using Your Voice)
0:34:11 Miguel Aceves Mejía Con El Mariachi Vargas De Tecalitlán – Entre Copa Y Copa
(Clip from Steven Wright)
0:36:59 Nathan Abshire And His Pine Grove Boys – Chere Te Mon
(Clip from BBC Archive)
0:39:36 Suchitra Mitra – Kon Khepa Srabon
0:40:37 Stella Haskil – Mes Tis Polis Ta Stena (Alleyways Of Istanbul)
0:43:47 Jean Bosco Mwenda – Masanga
(Clip from Bold Venture)
0:46:44 Alwatan Musical Club – Ee, Baba Pakistani
(Clip from All About Eve)
0:49:18 Percy Mayfield And Orchestra – Please Send Me Someone To Love
(Clip from What to Do on a Date)
0:52:12 Johnny Otis’ Congregation; Little Esther, Mel Walker, And Lee Graves – Wedding Boogie
(Clip from Uno speech)
0:55:48 Wu Yingyin – Ping Shui Xiang Feng
(Clip of Mao Zedong)
0:58:44 Calvin Boze – Safronia B.
1:01:03 Sarah Vaughan – Ain’t Misbehavin’
(Clip from Celia Jordan)
1:04:03 Clara Haskil – Domenico Scarlatti’s Keyboard Sonata In C Major
(Clip from Much Binding in The Marsh)
1:07:08 Alick Nkhata – Shalapo
(Clip from In A Lonely Place)
1:09:28 Claudio Villa Con Orchestra Dir. Dal M.O Piubeni – Luna Rossa
1:11:02 Stan Kenton & His Orchestra – Cuban Episode
1:12:22 The Charlie Parker Quartet With The Joe Lippman Orchestra – Dancing In The Dark
(Clip from Suspense)
1:15:38 Araci De Almeida Com Quartejo Continental – Palpite Infeliz
(Clip from Basil Rathbone reads The Masque of The Red Death)
1:18:15 Bill Snyder And His Orchestra – Bewitched
1:20:54 Léo Ferré – La Vie D’artiste
(Clip from Andre Breton interview)
1:23:00 Spike Jones And His City Slickers – Black Bottom
1:25:29 Spike Jones And His City Slickers – Hut Sut Song (Excerpt)
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
1:25:53 Phil Harris – The Thing
(Clip from Adventures of Maisie)
1:28:13 Ella Fitzgerald With Ellis Larkins – How Long Has This Been Going On?
1:31:26 Pablo Casals And Paul Baumgartner – Adagio And Allegro Ma Non Troppo
1:35:22 Wanda Landowska – Prelude Xxi In B-Flat
1:38:48 Mahalia Jackson – Just Over The Hill
(Clip from Les Paul Show)
1:40:29 Les Paul – Little Rock Getaway
(Clip from BBC Archive – Chair Bodgers)
1:43:08 Jussi Björling With The Swedish Radio Orchestra – E Lucevan Le Stelle
1:45:32 Édith Piaf – Hymne À L’amour
(Clip from BBC Archive)
1:48:25 Yma Sumac – Ataypura (High Andes)
(Clip from Adventures of Maisie)
1:51:37 Jo Stafford With Paul Weston And His Orchestra – No Other Love
1:53:32 The Louis Armstrong All-Stars – New Orleans Function
(Clip from Suspense)
1:58:19 Eve Young – (If I Knew You Were Comin’) I’d’ve Baked A Cake
1:59:19 Eileen Barton – If I Knew You Were Comin’ I’d Have Baked A Cake
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
2:01:37 Burl Ives – Fooba Wooba John
2:02:42 Mohammed Rafi And Suraiya – Dhadak Dhadak Dil
(Clip from Light Crust Doughboys)
2:03:48 Harry Choates And His Fiddle – Louisiana Boogie
(Clip from Light Crust Doughboys)
2:06:20 Hank Snow And His Rainbow Ranch Boys – I’m Movin’ On
(Clips from You Bet Your Life)
2:09:07 Jerry Byrd – Three String Swing
(Clip from Suspense – Blood On The Trumpet)
2:11:47 Gary Crosby – Play A Simple Melody
(Clip from Suspense – Blood On The Trumpet)
2:14:40 Rosita Serrano – Cielito Lindo
2:17:34 Tex Williams And His Western Caravan – Wild Card
2:19:51 Quartetto Cetra – Nella Vecchia Fattoria
2:21:20 Chandiram Walipuria & Shanti – Laija Chhallian
(Clip from Let’s Make A Sandwich)
2:22:45 Conlon Nancarrow – Study For Player Piano No. 3a
(Clip from New Look At The H-Bomb)
2:24:21 The Paramount Studio Orchestra – The Comeback (Sunset Blvd)
2:27:16 Machito And His Orchestra – Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite
(Clip from Batman Mystery Club)
2:32:36 Reuben Sarkisian – Hallay
(Clip from Inner Sanctum)
2:35:53 Marian Anderson And Franz Rupp – Franz Schubert’s Dem Unendlichen
2:37:17 The Charles Brown Trio – Black Night
(Clip from Swingtime in The Rockies Introduction)
2:38:58 Roy Brown – Love Don’t Love Nobody
(Clip from Suspense)
2:41:38 Miles Davis – Moon Dreams
2:44:50 Don Byas – Stardust
(Clip from All About Eve)
2:46:14 Mary Martin And Arthur Godfrey – Go To Sleep, Go To Sleep, Go To Sleep
2:49:29 Josh White And His Guitar – Wanderings
2:52:40 Atahualpa Yupanqui – Baguala
(Clip from BBC Archive)
2:54:11 Laughing Eyes – Lullaby
2:55:23 Pierre Henry – Bidule En Ut
2:56:04 Pierre Schaeffer – Prosopoppe 1
2:57:56 Thewaprasit Ensemble – Phleeng Khuk Phaat
2:59:05 Harry Partch – Cloud-Chamber Music
3:02:56 Chemutoi Ketienya And Kipsigi Girls – Chemirocha
3:04:16 Udi Hrant Kenkulian – Armenian Dance
(Clip from Batman Mystery Club)
3:05:55 Rosa Eskenazi – E Kardia Mou Theli
3:07:30 Dinu Lipatti – Impromptu No. 3 In G-Flat Major
(Philip Larkin reading “At Grass”)
3:12:19 Prophet Powers – The Tree Of Life Is Waiting For Me
3:14:47 Muddy Waters – Rollin’ Stone
(Clip from Speech – Using Your Voice)
3:16:15 The Ravens – Count Every Star
(Clip from Light Crust Doughboys)
3:19:11 Guy Lombardo – Enjoy Yourself
(Clip from Les Paul Show)
(Clip from The Last Date)
3:21:16 N/A – Dawn Chorus, East Africa
1950 Part One
2025/03/31
At Centuries of Sound I am making mixes for every year of recorded sound. The download here is a placeholder to appear on the podcast feed. For the full 3-hour version either see below for the Mixcloud player, or come to patreon.com/centuriesofsound for the podcast version and a host of other bonus materials for just $5 per month.
Mixcloud player with full mix – or listen on the Mixcloud website.
The mid-point of the 20th century feels superficially like its fulcrum. The first half has been an upward struggle (two world wars, a great depression, a devastating pandemic) but also a tale of progress – we have gone from racist parlour songs recorded on cylinders to cool jazz LPs and proto rock & roll singles. Now it’s a smooth ride downhill through the 50s, 60s, 70s, and so on. Culture will become more free and less imposing, the cold war will gradually cool down and end, we will see Fukuyama’s end of history. Of course, for most of you, who lived through the last half of the 20th century, that will immediately ring false. It’s so reductive that it’s essentially nonsense, the joys and the horrors of the late 20th do not form a pattern easy enough to sum up in a page, let alone a paragraph. And so (this is my point, sorry) goes for the first half. Listening through these mixes I hope you’ve been able to feel how society and how art has shifted, not as a smooth process but as a tortuous web being pulled in many directions at once, and any simple narrative is in essence a lie.
So if I were to say “something is in the air in 1950” or talk about the “zeitgeist”, you should know that this is probably nothing more than apophenia – “the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things” – but this is how it is with every story anyway, you pick up a feeling and go with it.
So what is the story this time? In a sense 1950 is a particularly unremarkable year for music. Jazz is stalled somewhere between bebop and post-bop. Rhythm & blues or jump blues seems to be finally winding down from the frenetic energy it had in ’48 and ’49, much as rock & roll would wind down in the early 60s. Outside of Hank Williams, Western swing seems to be taking a bit of a breather too. Even Hollywood musicals seem to be largely spinning their wheels after their golden age, but before Singin’ In The Rain led their revival a couple of years later. But sometimes you need a bit of calm to show the lay of the land around you, and you know what? There’s really something special going on here.
This may still have been a duller than usual mix if it hadn’t been for the work of Michael Daddino’s project “1950: The Bomb in the Heart of the Century” originally from 1950. A playlist, initially on Spotify, but most recently on Mixcloud, it’s a lot more detailed and a lot longer than a Centuries of Sound mix, and demonstrates a good deal more work – I try to get these things out in a month, not that I have really met that goal of late, and naturally my research phase can only go so far. So instead of reinventing everything, I have used the flow of this mix (and around 50% of the music selections) as a framework, and have built everything else around it.
The bomb in the title is not merely a metaphor. 1950 does seem to be the year that the Cold War really set in, especially in terms of the nuclear arms race. The USSR conducted their first nuclear test in 1949, and not long after President Truman announced the plan to develop the hydrogen bomb, which would be ready in 1952. Being confronted by the enormity of this so soon after the end of the war must have felt like whiplash, and the prospect of mutually assured destruction before the foretold 2000 years must have been terrifying to many. A couple of selections here discuss this directly. Others were still excited about this new technology. The cover image for this mix comes from the case of the “Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory” – an experimental kit briefly on sale to children in 1950 which contained genuine radioactive material, a cloud chamber and a Geiger counter. For the makers, they seem to be presenting the new decade as an exciting new phase of technological progress.
Tracklist
(Clip from BBC at Lime Grove)
0:00:04 La Scala Orchestra (Wilhelm Furtwängler, Cond.) – Excerpt From Prologue Of Richard Wagner’s Götterdämmerung
(Clip from The Last Date)
(Clip from Use Your Voice)
(Clip from New Look at The H Bomb)
0:01:23 The Swan Silvertones – Jesus Is God’s Atomic Bomb
(Clip from New Look at The H Bomb)
(Clip from William Faulkner – Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech)
0:04:16 Rev. J.B. Crocker – Sermon, Hallelujah Amen
(Clip from Milton Berle Show)
0:06:01 Judy Garland And The MGM Studio Chorus – Get Happy
0:08:12 Bud Powell – Get Happy
0:10:44 Judy Garland And The MGM Studio Chorus – Get Happy (Reprise)
(Clip from Sunset Boulevard)
0:11:18 Maddox Brothers And Rose – Water Baby Blues
(Clip from Suspense)
0:13:24 Beny Moré Con Pérez Prado – Babarabatiri
(Clip from Benny Goodman introduction)
(Clip from What To Do On A Date)
0:15:51 Abe Ellstein’s Orchestra With Dave Tarras – Second Avenue Square Dance
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
0:19:27 Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie – An Oscar For Treadwell (Alternate Take)
(Clip from The Last Date)
0:22:12 The Dominoes – Sixty-Minute Man
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
0:23:52 Hardrock Gunter & The Pebbles – Birmingham Bounce
(Clip from BBC – Hotel TVs)
0:26:44 George Sibanda – Sivele Sithandana
(Clip from In A Lonely Place)
0:28:23 Mita Stoicheva – Stori Se Horo Golyamo
0:30:09 Einer Nielsen – Phantom Stimmen
0:30:28 Marjorie Mazia, B.J. Walberg, And Gary Walberg – Out West
(Philip Larkin – Spring)
0:32:40 Walter Gieseking – La Cathédrale Engloutie
(Clip from Using Your Voice)
0:35:57 Friedel Hensch Und Die Cyprys – Holdrio- Liebes Echo
(Clip from What To Do On A Date)
0:39:05 Skeets Mcdonald – The Tattooed Lady
(Clip from Benny Goodman introduction)
(starts with solo harmonica + echo)
0:42:11 Red Foley – Old Kentucky Fox Chase
(Clip from BBC Archive – Tottenham Pudding)
0:44:59 Pink Anderson – I Got Mine
(Clip from BBC Archive – Lime Grove)
0:46:57 Moises Ribeiro Manjati And Grupo Manjacaziana – Meu Amor Era Aviado
(Clip from All About Eve)
0:49:53 Lata Mangeshkar – Chhed Sakhi Sargam
0:53:14 Tito Puente And His Orchestra – Swinging The Mambo
(Clip from BBC Archive – Chair Bodgers)
0:56:30 Henri Salvador – Le Loup, La Biche Et Le Chevalier
0:58:53 Clarence Garlow – Bon Ton Roulet
(Clip from The Last Date)
1:01:19 Bulawayo Sweet Rhythms Band – Hondo Chiwutsi
1:03:19 Wynonie Harris – Good Morning Judge
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
1:06:13 Edmundo Ros And His Rumba Band – Mambo Jambo
(Clip from Sunset Boulevard)
1:09:01 Quinteto Pirincho – Arrabalera
(Clip from Basil Rathbone reads Edgar Allen Poe)
1:11:41 Orquesta Aníbal Troilo Con Jorge Casal – Che Bandoneón!
1:13:42 Berliner Philharmonisches Orchester – Adagio From Haydn’s Symphony No. 104 In D Major
(Philip Larkin – Wants)
1:16:33 Groupe De Jeunes Filles De Bamako – Celu Mankan
(Clip from What To Do On A Date)
1:17:45 The Roy Eldridge Quartet – Nuts
1:20:57 Noro Morales And His Orchestra – Up And Down Mambo
(Clip from BBC Archive – Dubbing Theatre)
1:23:48 Kasagi Shizuko – Kaimono Boogie
(Clip from Cinderella)
1:27:11 Carlos And Trianita Montoya – Alegrias
(Clip from How to Make A Sandwich)
1:28:18 Elias Nelushi – Kama Kalinyana
1:29:28 Arsenio Rodriguez Y Su Conjunto – Anabacoa
(Clip from Benny Goodman introduction)
1:32:20 Celia Cruz Con El Conjunto Sonora Matancera – Cao, Cao Maní Picao
(Clip from What To Do On A Date)
1:34:01 Louis Prima And Keely Smith – Oh, Babe
1:37:03 Lalo Guerrero Y Sus Cinco Lobos – Chicas Patas Boogie
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
1:40:01 Hank Williams – Why Don’t You Love Me
1:42:20 Webb Pierce – In The Jailhouse Now
1:43:23 Bobbejaan Schoepen – Cowboy Jimmy
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
1:45:43 Sister Slocum & Her Little Brother – Whistlin’ Boogie
(Clip from BBC Archive – Bristol Brabazon)
1:48:55 Lord Beginner And The Calypso Rhythm Kings – Victory Test Match
1:50:44 Dúo Los Compadres – Caña Quemá
(Clip from William Faulkner – Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech)
1:52:48 Moondog – Moondog’s Symphony, Part 1
1:54:40 Bom Amberton – Nahawand No.2
1:55:00 Eliazale Kazinduki Horn Band – Nkete
1:56:33 Carmen Miranda And The Andrews Sisters With Vic Schoen And His Orchestra – Ca-Room-Pa-Pa
1:58:47 Mickey Katz And His Orchestra – Yiddish Mule Train
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
2:01:18 Roy Milton – Information Blues
2:03:12 Doc Sausage – Rag Mop
2:04:18 Tiny Bradshaw – Well Oh Well
2:06:56 Cecil Gant – We’re Gonna Rock
(Clip from Basil Rathbone reads Edgar Allen Poe)
2:09:12 Jascha Heifetz And Emanuel Bay – Grigoras Dinicu’s Hora Staccato
(Clip from BBC Archive – Robot Tortoise)
2:11:33 Pancras Mkwawa – Ngosingosi
(Clip from Rashomon)
2:13:28 Champion Jack Dupree With Big Chief Ellis And His Blues Stars – Deacon’s Party
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
2:16:24 Stubby Kaye – Sit Down You’re Rockin’ The Boat
(Clip from All About Eve)
2:18:32 Betty Hutton And Howard Keel – Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better
(Clip from What To Do On A Date)
2:21:38 Rose Murphy – Busy Line
(Clip from BBC Archive – TV Transmitters)
2:24:27 Humberto Morales Y Su Ritmo – Jungle Mambo
(Clip from What To Do On A Date)
2:27:09 Tennessee Ernie Ford – Shotgun Boogie
2:29:39 Bill Monroe And His Blue Grass Boys – Uncle Pen
(Clip from In A Lonely Place)
2:31:03 Hank Williams – Long Gone Lonesome Blues
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
2:33:21 Lord Kitchener With Cyril Blake’s Calypso Serenaders – The Underground Train
2:36:13 Chuy Reyes And His Orchestra – Oink, Oink Mambo
(Clip from Using Your Voice)
2:38:53 Doris Day With Gene Nelson A
2024 (Preview mix)
2025/02/15
At Centuries of Sound I am making mixes for every year of recorded sound. The download here is a placeholder to appear on the podcast feed. For the full 3-hour version either see below for the Mixcloud player, or come to patreon.com/centuriesofsound for the podcast version and a host of other bonus materials for just $5 per month.
Mixcloud player with full mix – or listen on the Mixcloud website.
At the end of 2024 I suddenly found myself immersed in new music again, and while putting together a list of favourites, I thought – why not make a mix? So here it is, very little in the way of speech clips, essentially this is just three hours of pop(ish) music, which eventually I’ll come back round to.
Hope you enjoy it, and 1950 is up next, no worries.
Tracklist
0:00:00 Doechii – Denial Is A River
0:02:39 Sofie Royer – I Forget (I’m So Young)
0:06:40 Kiesza – I Go Dance
0:08:45 Charli XCX & Lorde – girl, so confusing
0:11:50 Billie Eilish – LUNCH
0:14:43 Eirik Hegdal & Eklektisk Samband – Vibratochess
0:17:33 Bob Vylan – Hunger Games
0:21:09 4am Kru & Papa Levi – Ribena
0:23:44 Machinedrum – ‘ZOOM (feat. Tinashe)
0:26:32 Low Poly – Automatic
0:28:47 Wilkinson & NORTH – Balance
0:31:44 Kabin Crew & Lisdoonvarna Crew – The Spark
0:34:07 Selecta J-Man & MC Spyda – Foundation Style
0:38:14 james K – Blinkmoth (July Mix)
0:40:41 Sky Ferreira – Leash
0:44:43 Arooj Aftab – Raat Ki Rani
0:49:46 Blazers – Deep Waves
0:54:36 God Colony & Roy – Loss Is Not Infinite
0:58:34 Clairo – Sexy To Someone
1:01:57 Laura Marling – Caroline
1:05:09 Beth Gibbons – Floating On A Moment
1:08:04 Kelly Lee Owens – Dreamstate
1:13:10 Jane Panika & Hagop Tchaparian – Alice In Orchidverse
1:17:33 A.G. Cook – Soulbreaker
1:20:52 aespa ??? – Supernova
1:23:43 Ke$ha – Joyride
1:26:12 Javiera Mena – Entropia
1:29:21 Magdalena Bay – Image
1:32:40 Charli XCX & Billie Eilish – Guess
1:35:02 salute & Rina Sawayama – ‘saving flowers
1:38:25 Dj Brunin XM, MC Pipokinha, Bibi Babydoll – Os Novinhos Que
1:40:56 Poppy – they’re all around us
1:44:18 Ozoda – Ko’k jiguli
1:47:16 Delaporte – Subete La Radio
1:49:23 Caribou – Broke My Heart
1:52:08 Skrillex, Hamdi, Taichu & Offiah – Push
1:54:56 Charli XCX – Von Dutch
1:57:07 Mokotron – Waerea
1:58:55 Tyler, The Creator – Noid
2:01:34 Sade Abu – Young Lion
2:04:55 Paul Cousins – Thought Loops
2:08:19 Clinic Stars – I Am The Dancer
2:14:04 Mica Levi – slob air
2:18:38 Yaeji – booboo
2:22:10 Maruja – The Invisible Man
2:28:03 Blood Wizard – Devil Dressed In Disguise
2:31:18 Willow – Symptom of Life
2:34:24 Theodora ft. Jeez Suave – Kongolese Sous BBL
2:37:04 Sahra Halgan – SHARAF
2:40:59 Camila Cabello ft. Playboy Carti – I Luv It
2:42:45 Sabrina Carpenter – Espresso
2:45:36 Chappell Roan – Good Luck, Babe!
2:49:04 Mabe Fratti – Enfrente
2:53:01 The Cure – Alone
Radio Podcast #25 – 1917
2025/01/26
Audio curator James Errington is joined by jazz historian Joe Moore to discuss the astonishing year of 1917, when a new music called “Jass” or “Jaz” or “Jazz” swept the world, changing it forever. A genuinely astonishing time for music, brought to life with contemporary archive sounds.
You can also tune in to Cambridge Radio tonight at 7pm GMT and hear a “new” best of compilation for the shows for 1911, 1912 and 1913. Listening options can be found at http://cambridge.radio/
Support Centuries of Sound and access a treasure trove of bonuses at http://patreon.com/centuriesofsound
At The Christmas Party Hop – Christmas Records 1955-1961
2024/12/20
At Centuries of Sound I am making mixes for every year of recorded sound. As it’s the festive season I’ve decided to use the new function on Patreon to do a couple of membership offers. Firstly I’m offering a 10% discount on all tiers, monthly and annual, just go to patreon.com/centuriesofsound and sign up with the promo code 8AA78 – Secondly, if you buy a gift membership for anyone ($5 p/m tier, annual) then I will give you a CD version of the mixes for the year of their birth (only pre-1950/1972/1989)– so cut up into CD-sized chunks each with its own artwork. For gift memberships – patreon.com/centuriesofsound/gift – then send me a message either on Patreon or by emailing james (at) centuriesofsound.com, I will get those to you within three days.
Happy Holidays everyone, here is your new Christmas mix, this one covering the shorter period of 1955-1961. I have been cutting it dangerously close because there was simply so much to pick from, this being the peak period for famous records, as far as the US is concerned at least (though you will notice a few of them missing – the aim here is to make a good mix, not to tick off all the boxes, and certain favourites are, in my opinion, just a little too annoying.) I found this to be quite an odd era, there are rock & roll Christmas records of course, but there were a lot of religious records too, recorded in luxurious high-fidelity as presents for audiophiles, and some truly great jazz records which happened to have a festive theme. So, there are roughly three movements here – a half hour of pop and novelty records, a half hour of a very religious Christmas, and a little under half an hour of cool jazz – if any of these are not your cup of tea, I’ve labelled them below, so you can skip to the part you need.
There will also be a radio version of this show (featuring my son Theo) broadcast on Cambridge Radio (formerly Cambridge 105) on Sunday 22nd December at 19:00 GMT, you can listen by following this link at the right time – https://consoles.radioplayer.cloud/8261297/index.html
I hope you all have a great break, whatever you are celebrating around now, or even if you are celebrating at all. 2024 has been yet another tough year for many, and I hope this is an enjoyable way to finish it.
Part One
0:00:00 Daphne Oram – Winters Journey (Intro) (1956)
(Clip from The Apartment – 1960)
0:00:20 Marlene Paula & The Billy Van Planck Orchestra – I Wanna Spend Christmas With Elvis (1956)
(Clip of Children Meeting Father Christmas – 1955)
0:02:32 Elvis Presley – Blue Christmas (1957)
(Clip from “Men’s Christmas” – 1961)
0:05:01 George Jones – New Baby For Christmas (1957)
(Clip from Hancock’s Half Hour)
0:07:31 Brenda Lee – Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree (1958)
(Clip from Hancock’s Half Hour – 1957)
0:09:57 Lenny Dee – Mister Santa (1961)
(Clip of Children Meeting Father Christmas – 1955)
0:12:04 Ella Fitzgerald – Frosty the Snow Man (1960)
(Clip from Lucky Strike Commercial – 1958)
0:14:37 Adam Faith – Lonely Pup (In A Christmas Shop) (1960)
(Clip from Timex Watches Commercial – 1958)
0:16:51 Ed ‘Kookie’ Byrnes – Yulesville (1959)
(Clip from Hancock’s Half Hour – 1957)
0:19:12 Stan Freberg – Nuttin’ For Christmas (1955)
0:21:32 Tom Lehrer – A Christmas Carol (1959)
0:24:06 Perry Como – Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town (1959)
Part Two
(Clip from Christmas in Bethlehem – 1961)
0:27:31 Leroy Anderson & His Orchestra – O Come, O Come Emmanuel (1955)
(Clip from Christmas in Bethlehem – 1961)
0:29:14 The Louvin Brothers – It’s Christmas Time (1960)
(Clip from Christmas in Bethlehem – 1961)
0:32:31 Vera Ward Hall – No Room At The Inn (1959)
0:34:59 Mitch Miller – Coventry Carol (1958)
(Clip from Vera Ward Hall – No Room At The Inn – 1959)
0:38:25 Nat King Cole – Away in a Manger (1960)
(Clip from Vera Ward Hall – No Room At The Inn – 1959)
0:40:16 John Klein – Gesu Bambino (1959)
(Clip from Vera Ward Hall – No Room At The Inn – 1959)
0:44:23 Johnny Mathis – It Came Upon a Midnight Clear (1958)
(Clip from Vera Ward Hall – No Room At The Inn – 1959)
0:48:04 Arthur Lynds Bigelow – Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht (1956)
0:48:55 Vera Ward Hall – No Room At The Inn (1959)
0:49:49 Chet Atkins – O Come, All Ye Faithful (1961)
0:52:03 Ewan Maccoll – Christmas Rhyme (1957)
0:52:23 Sacred Harp Singers – Sherburne (1959)
(Clip from Christmas in Bethlehem – 1961)
0:54:25 The Three Suns – Carol of the Bells (1955)
(Clip from Christmas in Bethlehem – 1961)
0:55:47 Stan Kenton – O Tannenbaum (1961)
(Clip from Night of The Hunter – 1955)
0:57:41 Percy Faith & His Orchestra – I Wonder As I Wander (1958)
(Clip from The Loretta Young Show – Christmas Day, 1955)
Part Three
0:59:52 Laurence Welk – I’ll Be Home For Christmas (1961)
1:01:58 F Navatta, F Mingole – Tu Scendi Dalle Stelle (1955)
1:04:26 Frankie Ervin & The Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers – Christmas Eve Baby (1955)
(Clip from “Trying out Turkey Plucking” – 1961)
1:07:06 The Ramsey Lewis Trio – God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (1961)
1:09:24 Putipu Band Of Capri – New Year’s Day Tarentella (1955)
(Clip from “Men’s Christmas” – 1961)
1:11:45 Duke Ellington – Sugar Rum Cherry (1960)
(Clip from “Men’s Christmas” – 1961)
(Clip from “Solo Bell-Ringer” – 1961)
(Clip from “Men’s Christmas” – 1961)
1:16:01 The Ramsey Lewis Trio – Christmas Blues (1961)
(Clip from Borden’s Egg Nog Commercial – 1956)
1:18:59 Emile Ford And The Checkmates – White Christmas (1960)
1:21:15 Father Christmas & Players – Conclusion Of Symondsbury Mummer’s Play (1958)
1949 Part Two – The 12″ Mix
2024/12/06
At Centuries of Sound I am making mixes for every year of recorded sound. The download here is only for the first hour of the mix. For the full 3-hour version either see below for the Mixcloud player, or come to patreon.com/centuriesofsound for the podcast version and a host of other bonus materials for just $5 per month. As it’s the festive season I’ve decided to use the new function on Patreon to do a couple of membership offers. Firstly I’m offering a 10% discount on all tiers, monthly and annual, just go to patreon.com/centuriesofsound and sign up with the promo code 8AA78 – Secondly, if you buy a gift membership for anyone ($5 p/m tier, annual) then I will give you a CD version of the mixes for the year of their birth (only pre-1950/1972/1989)– so cut up into CD-sized chunks each with its own artwork. For gift memberships – patreon.com/centuriesofsound/gift – then send me a message either on Patreon or by emailing james (at) centuriesofsound.com, I will get those to you within three days.
Mixcloud player with full mix – or listen on the Mixcloud website.
1949 Part Two – The 12″ Mix
How do you listen to recorded music? I feel like every phase of my life has a different answer here – the record player at home, a Walkman, a Discman, the stereo system I had when I went to university, the mp3 player that went around Asia with me, then years of phones, laptops, Bluetooth speakers, headphones, car stereos. Sometimes I would listen privately, sometimes on speakers, sometimes it would be in the background, sometimes it would have my full attention. These days it seems like, aside from the car radio, all my listening is private, streamed from computer or phone, and something feels missing. Centuries of Sound started when I was in an environment where nobody wanted to listen to music so I had to retreat into this private experience, and have I ever emerged from that? Only through sharing with you, really.
Putting on a longer piece of music, sitting down and just experiencing it – that’s just something I don’t have time for any more. It is something I miss, but it’s also something I can live without. When end of year polls come around, this is why I focus on the tracks. I like things bite-sized, not because I have a short attention span, more because there’s so much out there and only so much time I can spend with it. And yet, this thing, what is it but very long-form listening?
Putting on an LP seems like such a fundamental part of music listening for so many people, it seems odd to note that as we approach the middle of the 20th century, it’s only now that this is really becoming an option. If you were listening to a record before 1949, it was probably a 10” shellac disc with not much more than three and a half minutes of music per side, and unless you had an elaborate disc-changing machine, that’s how long you had before you had to get up and change the record. There were “albums” though, and had been for quite a while. The earliest I can find is a 1907 recording of Ruggero Leoncavallo’s 1892 opera “I Pagliacci,” starring Puerto Rican tenor Antonio Paoli, and supervised in its production by the composer himself. But these were “albums” as in a “photograph album” or a “stamp album” – a large book of separate discs. Frank Sinatra’s first album, 1946’s “The Voice of Frank Sinatra” is in this format, eight songs across four discs.
When Columbia introduced the 33? rpm 12” vinyl LP in late 1948, the focus was naturally on what it could do that shellac records couldn’t. With around 26 minutes per side, the initial focus was naturally on classical music – and of course it helped that buyers of classical music had more money and a taste for better quality recordings – LPs had “microgroove technology” that allowed for higher fidelity. Next followed Broadway shows, the more respectable kinds of jazz, and more sophisticated pop music – Frank again. What did not appear at first was the music made by and listened to by poor black people (R&B) or poor white people (country) – neither were the right sort of market. Of course, as we will be seeing in a decade and a half, their descendants would lean into the LP so much that, well, you know.
If you want to chat as listen, you can join the conversation on discord here – https://discord.gg/5a7f6wqjcJ
Track list
Intro
(Clip from Dragnet)
(Clip from The Hitchhiker)
0:00:18 Pierre Schaeffer – Vagotte
(Clip from Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts)
(Clip from Suspense)
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
0:01:16 Miles Davis – Budo
(Clip from Inner Sanctum)
July
(Clip from The Shadow)
(Clip from Jack Benny Show)
0:04:10 Jay Jay Johnson’s Boppers – Fox Hunt
(Clip from Reviewing The Year 1948)
0:07:04 George Shearing – Summertime
(Clip from Inner Sanctum)
0:10:13 Charlie Parker – Just Friends
(Clip from interview with Alphonse Picou and Paul Dominguez, Jr.)
0:13:54 Lennie Tristano – Wow (Clip)
0:14:05 Lennie Tristano – Intuition
(Clip from Review of News for the Year 1949)
0:16:31 James Moody’s Modernists – Tin Tin Deo
(Clip from Reviewing The Year 1949)
0:19:28 Blind Willie McTell – Last Dime Blues
(Clip from Reviewing The Year 1949)
0:22:52 Professor Longhair – Hey Little Girl
(Clip from interview with Alphonse Picou and Paul Dominguez, Jr.)
0:25:11 Francois Awila ye mpangi zandi – Kiboba Kiyma Nkuaku (Kikongo; Congo)
(Clip from Passport to Pimlico)
0:27:57 Joe Lutcher – Mardi Gras
(Clip from Passport to Pimlico)
August
(Clip from The Hitchhiker)
0:31:21 John Lee Hooker – Boogie Chllen
(Clip from 1949 Year In Review Headlines)
(Clip from Review of News for the Year 1949)
0:34:53 The Louvin Brothers – Blues Stay Away From Me
(Clip from Jim & Judy in Teleland)
0:38:12 Django Reinhardt – Improvisation N°4
(Clip from Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts)
0:40:42 Sticks McGhee – Drinkin’ Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee
(Clip from Fred Allen Show)
0:43:14 Charlie Parker – Blues (Fast)
(Clip from Reviewing The Year 1949)
0:45:58 Charlie Ventura – Introduction
0:46:12 Charlie Ventura – Body And Soul
0:50:13 Tito Puente – Abaniquito
(Clip from 1949 Year In Review Headlines)
0:53:13 Wanda Landowska – Prelude II In C Minor
(Clip from interview with Frank Sinatra)
0:55:05 Lennie Tristano – Digression
(Clip from interview with Alphonse Picou and Paul Dominguez, Jr.)
September
0:58:09 Sidney Bechet – September Song
(Clip from Louis Armstrong interview)
1:02:13 Atlantic Quintet – Believe It Beloved
(Clip from Louis Armstrong interview)
1:03:45 Lee Konitz Quintet – Fishin’ Around
(Clip from Louis Armstrong interview)
1:07:25 George Shearing – Midnight On Cloud 69
(Clip from advertisement for Camel Cigarettes)
1:10:53 Jay Mcshann – You, Cindy Lou
(Clip from Reviewing The Year 1949)
(Clip from Review of News for the Year 1949)
(Clip from Reviewing The Year 1949)
1:13:06 Njembe Gwet Paulemond – Paulemond a Ye Nsinga Ndinga
(Clip from The Heiress)
1:15:47 Stanley Black – Jungle Bird
(Clip from 1949 Year In Review Headlines)
(Clip from 1949 – Year In Review)
1:18:53 Charles Mingus – He’s Gone
(Clips from Stray Dog)
1:21:00 Oum Kalsoum – Al Nile
(Clip from The Hitchhiker)
October
(Clip from The Third Man)
1:23:10 Anton Karas – The Harry Lime Theme
(Clip from The Third Man)
1:25:50 Osvaldo Pugliese – Malandraca
(Clip from 1949 Year In Review Headlines)
(Clip from interview with Victor Kravchenko)
1:29:07 Pierre Schaeffer – Variations Sur Un Flute Mexicaine
(Clip from Review of News for the Year 1949)
(Clip of Mao Zedong speech)
1:30:19 Miles Davis – Move
(Clip of Bevin Speech)
(Clip from The Third Man)
1:31:50 Bismillah Khan & Party – Shehnai instrumental
(Clip from Whisky Galore)
1:35:05 Lead Belly – John Henry
1:39:56 Lead Belly – 4, 5 & 9
1:41:02 Amos Milburn – Hold Me Baby
(Clip from On The Town)
1:44:10 Ruth Brown – So Long
(Clip from Whisky Galore)
1:46:43 Dizzy Gillespie – That Old Black Magic
(Clip from Suspense – Ghost Hunt)
November
1:50:07 Ivory Joe Hunter – I Almost Lost My Mind
(Clip from Suspense – Ghost Hunt)
1:52:38 Lonnie Johnson – Blues Stay Away from Me
(Clip from 1949 Year In Review Headlines)
(Clip from 1949 – Year In Review)
1:54:43 Eddie Davis – Mountain Oysters
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
1:56:52 Lightnin’ Hopkins – Jail House Blues
1:59:28 Jerry Byrd – Steelin’ The Chimes
(Clip from Fred Allen Show)
2:01:55 Flatt and Scruggs and The Foggy Mountain Boys – That Home Above
(Clip from Dragnet)
2:03:33 Lionel Hampton And His Orchestra – Lavender Coffin
(Clip of Louis Farrakhan Playing Violin)
2:06:32 Curley Weaver – Trixie
(Clip from The Set Up)
2:08:21 Sonny Terry – Riff and Harmonica Jump
(Clip from Fred Allen Show)
2:10:56 Lucky Millinder – D Natural Blues
December
(Clip from Sir Alfred Munnings’ valedictory speech at The Royal Academy of Art)
2:13:37 Machito and His Afro-Cuban Orchestra – Tanga
(Clip from 1949 Year In Review Headlines)
2:18:52 Wynonie Harris – Sittin’ On It All The Time
(Clip from Dragnet)
2:21:40 Pee Wee Crayton – Texas Hop
(Clip from Jack Benny Show)
2:23:57 George Wallington Trio – Fairyland
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
2:26:54 Bud Powell – Sweet Georgia Brown
(Clip from Whisky Galore)
2:29:52 Lee Konitz – Retrospection
2:32:58 Surashri Kesarbai Kerkar – Desi
2:35:08 Oum Kalthoum – Yalli Kan Yechgeek Adeeni
2:37:12 Shona – Masongano
2:39:45 Jack Armstrong Chevy Chase – The Cott
Ending
(Clip from Reviewing The Year 1949)
(Clip from 1949 Year In Review Headlines)
2:43:04 The Orioles – Tell Me So
(Clips from You Bet Your Life)
1949 Part One – The 7″ Mix
2024/11/13
At Centuries of Sound I am making mixes for every year of recorded sound. The download here is only for the first hour of the mix. For the full 3-hour version either see below for the Mixcloud player, or come to patreon.com/centuriesofsound for the podcast version and a host of other bonus materials for just $5 per month. This show would not be possible without my supporters on there, so please consider signing up or sharing this with someone who may be interested.
Mixcloud player with full mix – or listen on the Mixcloud website.
1949 Part One – The 7″ Mix
2024 has been the year of my 45th birthday (yes, still so young, I know) and the number has set me thinking about the importance of the 45RPM 7” single in my life. I’ve been playing them as long as I can remember, receiving packages of remaindered singles in the 1980s, buying a few every week at Magpie Records in Worcester in the mid-90, traveling with me in a big stripy box as I moved around, and now there they sit on my shelves still, though I don’t have a functioning stereo system now. My LPs, undoubtedly worth more, were left in the locked room of a friend in Southampton nearly 20 years ago and never recovered, it’s annoying, but not something I lose sleep about, the singles are much more important. Beside all the memories, there’s something about the format that seems kind of perfect. Small enough to comfortably carry around, each side just containing a few minutes of music, there’s something at once unfussy and potentially extravagant about both form and content. Singles like the one you see in the picture here often have larger holes, indicating their use in a jukebox, this little disc adaptable enough to be used as a replicable part in any number of mass produced machines. And that of course means b-sides, a chance for the act to try out something new without the risk of a negative reaction, and in many cases the disc would be flipped by a dj, and the b-side could be the hit that changed everything.
In short, the 7” vinyl single is one of the most important inventions of the 21st century, and it all started in 1949, when RCA released their new format, replacing the larger, more brittle shellac discs with a new compound – polyvinyl chloride. As when most new formats are introduced, RCA were engaged in a war with a competitor, Columbia’s 12” vinyl LP – only in this case the two formats had very different niches, and could (after a couple of years) be played by the same equipment, so both survived.
The original 7” single wasn’t in exactly the standard form we know today. The larger, jukebox-sized hole in the centre came as standard, as did coloured vinyl. The idea was that each genre would have its own colour, with red for pop music, green for country, yellow for children’s records, and a confusion of other shades for jazz, R&B, classical and so on. As should be clear to anyone listening to this mix, the differences between these genres were particularly muddy in 1949, and the idea was soon dropped.
The change was not, of course, immediate. Most of the music in this mix was still issued on 78RPM shellac discs, and they would continue to be manufactured all the way through the 50s, and in some countries even into the 70s. But the time was certainly ripe for a cheap, portable, harder to shatter format, and even if rock and roll had not already begun in all but name, early 1950s pop music would also suit it well. We are three years away from the introduction of the UK singles chart, and the 7” record’s abilities and limitations would do a great deal to set the parameters of popular music as we know it.
Track list
Intro
(Clip from interview with Johnny St. Cyr)
0:00:03 RCA Victor Orchestra – South Pacific Overture
(Clip from NBC News)
0:00:33 Jnan Prakash Ghose – Tabla Instrumental
January
(Clip from 1949 Year In Review)
(Background from Pierre Schaeffer – Vagotte)
(Clip from Dragnet)
(Clip from Reviewing The Year 1949)
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
0:04:00 Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five – Saturday Night Fish Fry
0:06:58 Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs – Foggy Mountain Breakdown
(Clip from 1949 The Year in Review Headlines)
0:09:58 Tennessee Ernie Ford – Cry Of The Wild Goose
(Clip from Harry S Truman Inauguration)
0:13:50 Doris Day – Again
(Clips from Harry S Truman Inauguration)
0:16:55 Machito and His Afro-Cuban Salseros – Babarabatiri
(Clip from Harry S Truman Inauguration)
0:20:31 Babs Gonzales – Prelude to a Nightmare
(Clip from interview with Albert Glenny)
0:22:56 Dizzy Gillespie – Jump-Did-Le-Ba
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
0:25:26 Frank Sinatra & Gene Kelly – New York, New York
(Clip from Frank Sinatra interview)
0:28:39 Charlie Ventura – East Of The Sun
(Clip from So Much For So Little)
0:31:50 Evelyn Knight And The Stardusters – A Little Bird Told Me
February
(Clip from 1949 The Year in Review Headlines)
0:34:36 The Angelic Gospel Singers – Touch Me, Lord Jesus
(Clip from Reviewing The Year 1949)
0:36:39 Ruth Brown – I’ll Get Along Somehow
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
0:40:11 Fats Domino – The Fat Man
(Clip from Dragnet)
(Clip from So Much For So Little)
0:42:49 Roy Brown – Butcher Pete, Pt. 1
(Clip from The Heiress)
0:44:41 Roy Brown – Butcher Pete, Pt. 2
(Clip from Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts)
0:46:00 Jerry Byrd – Steel Guitar Rag
(Clip from interview with Johnny St. Cyr)
0:48:56 George Lewis & His New Orleans Music – Yaaka Hula Hickey Dula
(Clip from interview with Alphonse Picou and Paul Dominguez, Jr.)
0:51:51 Brew Moore – Gold Rush
0:54:55 Lead Belly – Sugared The Beer
0:55:46 Lead Belly – Salty Dog
(Clip from interview with Johnny St. Cyr)
March
(Clip from NBC TV News)
0:59:11 Hank Williams – I Just Don’t Like This Kind Of Living
(Clip from Reviewing The Year 1949)
1:02:07 Goree Carter – Back Home Blues
(Clip from Jack Benny Show)
(Clip from Fred Allen Show)
1:04:10 Myrta Silva & Sonora Matancera – La Tremenduca
(Clip from Suspense)
(Clip from NBC TV News)
1:07:30 Takamine Hideko – Ginza Kankan Musume
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
(Clip from Inner Sanctum)
1:09:06 Bill Monroe and The Bluegrass Boys – I’m Going Back to Old Kentucky
1:09:22 Bill Monroe and The Bluegrass Boys – Blue Grass Stomp
(Clip from White Heat)
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
1:11:17 Professor Longhair – Mardi Gras In New Orleans
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
1:14:27 Bull Moose Jackson – Why Don’t You Haul Off And Love Me
(Clip from Inner Sanctum)
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
1:16:17 Betty Hutton – Hamlet
(Clip from Frank Sinatra interview)
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
(Clip from interview with Johnny St. Cyr)
1:19:27 Noro Morales & His Orchestra – 110th Street And 5th Avenue
(Clip from Jack Benny Show)
April
(Clip from Review of News From The Year 1949)
(Clip from Reviewing The Year 1949)
1:22:36 Firehouse Five Plus Two – Everybody Loves My Baby
(Clip from Review of News From The Year 1949)
1:25:45 A. Rahman & Columbia Orchestra – Oh, Juita Ku
(Clip from Reviewing The Year 1949)
1:27:46 Elton Britt & The Skytoppers – Candy Kisses
(Clip from The Shadow)
1:29:55 Dinah Washington – Baby Get Lost
(Clip from The Jack Benny Show)
(Radio jingle for Lipton Tea)
1:32:54 South Pacific Original Broadway Cast – I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair
1:36:19 South Pacific Original Broadway Cast – Happy Talk
(Clip from Jim & Judy in Teleland)
1:39:49 Todd Duncan and Chorus – A Bird of Passage, Thousands of Miles (Reprise)
(Clip from Jour de feté)
1:41:41 Charles Trenet – Mes jeunes années
(Clip from Frank Sinatra interview)
(Clip from So Much For So Little)
1:43:51 Texas Slim – Devil’s Jump
(Clip from So Much For So Little)
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
1:45:53 Doris Day – I Don’t Wanna Be Kissed By Anyone But You
May
(Clip from Reviewing The Year 1949)
1:49:02 Marlene Dietrich – Kisses Sweeter Than Wine
(Clips from 1949 The Year in Review Headlines / Reviewing The Year 1949)
1:53:01 Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield) – You’re Gonna Miss Me
(Clips from 1949 The Year in Review Headlines / Reviewing The Year 1949)
1:56:00 Roberto Firpo – Instrumental – De Mi Arrabal
(Clip from 1949 The Year in Review Headlines)
1:58:14 Billie Holiday & Her Orchestra – I Loves You Porgy
(Clip from Review of News for The Year 1949)
2:01:31 Arsenio Rodriguez Y Su Conjunto – Dundunbanza
(Clip from Late Spring)
2:03:19 Sanjou Machiko – Karisome no Koi
(Clips from Late Spring)
2:08:14 Ichi no Maru – Shamisen Boogie Woogie
(Clips from Late Spring)
2:10:25 Jerry Byrd – Steelin’ The Blues (voc. Rex Allen)
(Clip from Frank Sinatra interview)
2:13:26 The Five Scamps – Red Hot
(Clip from White Hot)
2:15:60 TJ Fowler – Tj Boogie
(Clip from interview with Johnny St. Cyr)
June
(Clip from 1949 The Year in Review Headlines)
2:18:29 Nathan Abshire – Pine Grove Blues
(Clip from Reviewing The Year 1949)
2:21:31 Jewel King – 3 x 7 = 21
(Clip from Reviewing The Year 1949)
2:23:33 Big Joe Turner – Jumpin’ at the Jubilee
(Clip from A Warning To Travelers)
2:25:13 Noro Morales – Serenata Ritmica
(Clip from A Warning To Travelers)
2:28:15 Sugar Chile Robinson – Numbers Boogie
(Clip from A Warning To Travelers)
2:30:57 Evelyn Knight – Powder Your Face With Sunshine
(Clip from Frank Sinatra interview)
(Clip from The Shadow)
2:33:25 Frank Floorshow Culley – Central Avenue Breakdown
2:34:37 Carl Stalling – Variations on Johann Strauss
(Clip from So Much For So Little)
2:34:45 Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys – Ida Red Likes the Boogie
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
(Clip from Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts)
2:37:30 Hank Williams – I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry
Outro
(Clip from Suspense)
(Clip from White Heat)
(Clip from Frank Sinatra interview)
2:41:05 The Robins – If It’s So Baby
(Clip from The Shadow)
(Clip from NBC News)
(Clip from Le Silence De La Mer)
2:44:35 RCA Victor Orchestra – South Paci
Centuries of Sound Presents – Halloween Records from the 50s
2024/10/29
This Centuries of Sound mix comes courtesy of my supporters at patreon.com/centuriesofsound – join them for as little as $5 per month and get a full archive and a host of bonus material.
Tracks
0:00:00 Jeff Alexander & Alfred Hitchcock – Music to Be Murdered By (1958)
0:01:36 Screamin’ Jay Hawkins – I Put A Spell On You (1956)
0:04:00 Clip from Invasion of The Body Snatchers (1956)
0:04:22 Bert Convy – The Monster Hop (1958)
0:06:47 Clip from Diabolique (1955)
0:06:48 Tony & The Monstrosities – Igor’s Party (1959)
0:09:02 Clip from The Fly (1958)
0:09:13 The Hollywood Flames – Frankenstein’s Den (1958)
0:11:18 Clip from Them! (1954)
0:11:35 The Swinging Phillies – Frankenstein’s Party (1957)
0:14:10 Nelson Olmstead – Excerpt from The Mummy’s Foot by Theophile Gautier (1956)
0:14:35 Bob McFadden & Dor – The Mummy (1959)
0:16:32 Clip from Horror Of Dracula Trailer (1958)
0:16:58 The Duponts – Screamin Ball (At Dracula Hall) (1958)
0:19:12 Clip from Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)
0:19:17 Calypso Carnival featuring King Flash – Zombie Jamboree (Back To Back) (1956)
0:21:46 Clip from House on Haunted Hill (1959)
0:22:05 Jack Rivers – Haunted House Boogie (1951)
0:24:47 Clip from The Thing (1951)
0:25:02 The Five Blobs – The Blob (1958)
0:27:29 Clip from Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)
0:27:43 Sheb Wooley – The Purple People Eater (1958)
0:29:53 Nelson Olmstead – Excerpt from The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson (1956)
0:30:05 The Poets – Dead (1958)
0:31:57 Clip from Night of The Demon (1957)
0:32:12 Eartha Kitt – I Want To Be Evil (1953)
0:35:41 Clip from Sleeping Beauty (1959)
0:35:55 Howlin’ Wolf – Evil Is Goin’ On (1954)
0:38:43 Clip from The Quatermass Xmeriment (1955)
0:39:04 Paul J Smith – The Monster! (From 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea) (1954)
0:40:15 Clip from Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956)
0:40:25 Akira Ifukube – Horror in the Water Tank (1954)
0:40:40 Clip from The Headless Ghost (1959)
0:41:02 Nightmares – The Headless Ghost (1959)
0:42:41 Clip from Bell, Book and Candle (1958)
0:42:59 Kip Tyler – She’s My Witch (1958)
0:45:13 Clip from Bell, Book and Candle (1958)
0:45:26 Frank Sinatra – Witchcraft (1957)
0:48:09 Clip from The Night of the Hunter (1955)
0:48:16 Gene Vincent – Race With The Devil (1956)
0:50:16 Clip from The Thing That Couldn’t Die Trailer (1958)
0:50:30 The Calvanes – Horror Pictures (1958)
0:52:30 Clip from Horror Of Dracula (1958)
0:53:27 Archie King – The Vampires (1959)
0:55:44 Clip from The Creature With The Atom Brain (1955)
0:56:00 The Zanies – The Mad Scientist (1958)
0:57:50 Einer Nielsen – Phantom Stimmen (1950)
0:58:07 Bobby Christian With The Allen Sisters – The Spider & The Fly (1958)
1:00:09 Clip from House of Wax (1953)
1:00:23 The Revels – Dead Mans’ Stroll (1959)
1:02:48 Dick Jacobs and his Orchestra – Main Title from The Horror of Dracula (1958)
Radio Podcast #24 – 1916
2024/09/24
This time James Errington is joined by John Ashlin to explore the music of 1916. While Europe lies devastated in the midst of the darkest year of the first world war, America is hotting up, with the birth of jazz and blues music imminent, while the old world of Vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley is struggling to adapt.
Support Centuries of Sound and access a treasure trove of bonuses at http://patreon.com/centuriesofsound
1948 Part Two – Move
2024/07/24
At Centuries of Sound I am making mixes for every year of recorded sound. The download here is only for the first hour of the mix. For the full 3-hour version either see below for the Mixcloud player, or come to patreon.com/centuriesofsound for the podcast version and a host of other bonus materials for just $5 per month. This show would not be possible without my supporters on there, so please consider signing up or sharing this with someone who may be interested.
Mixcloud player with full mix – or listen on the Mixcloud website.
1948 Part Two – Move
In part one we saw how tape technology was transforming the sound of the world in 1948. In part two we’ll take a cue from another new development – the long playing record. When I first heard that the LP had been less than twenty years old when Sgt Pepper was released – or just eleven years old when Kind of Blue was released, it seemed hard to believe. I was so accustomed to thinking of music as naturally fitting in this format – two sides of around 20-25 minutes each. But until now, nobody was experiencing music like that. There were “albums” it’s true – there had been since the Edwardian age – but these were “albums” in the “photo album” sense. Booklets of perhaps eight double-sided shellac discs, with sides numbered under the assumption that they would be played as a stack on top of a record player (side one matched with side eight maybe.) These cumbersome things were meant for classical music, and not anything as disposable as jazz. But jazz was one step ahead already. By now of course we have this wave of Be Bop artists, often playing improvised music for hours on end, also very much unsuited to a short side of shellac.
Columbia’s new long playing discs (and RCA Victor’s new 7” singles) do not make up a substantial proportion of this mix, but where last time everything was a tape cut up, this time we’re more in the realm of the sometimes meandering, sometimes slow groove building world made possible by this new medium. This is less of a mix to pay attention to, and more a mix to sit back and enjoy. Which is the way forward? We’ll just have to see. The decade is almost over, we’ve come a long way, but there’s one last shock for us before we reach the heart of the century.
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Full index of episodes at https://centuriesofsound.com
Tracklist
Intro
(Clip from Naked City)
0:00:00 John Cage & Jay Gottlieb – Dream
(Clip from BBC Archive)
(Clip from Inner Sanctum)
(Clip from Truth or Consequences)
(Clip from Atomic Energy Is Your Business)
0:00:54 Brother Bones And His Shadows – Sweet Georgia Brown
(Clip from Top Tunes of 1948)
0:03:51 Cold Storage Rhythm – Skokiaan
(Clip from Top Tunes of 1948)
0:06:24 Blue Ridge Quartet – Hard Times Will Soon Be Over
Part One – Rock
(Clip from interview with Frank Sinatra)
0:09:02 Wynonie Harris – Good Rockin’ Tonight
(Clip from interview with Frank Sinatra)
0:11:45 Bill Moore – We’re Gonna Rock
(Clip from Top Tunes of 1948)
0:14:23 Jimmy Liggins – Cadillac Boogie
(Clip from This is Bing Crosby)
0:16:28 Wild Bill Moore – Rock and Roll
(Clip from Top Tunes of 1948)
0:19:17 Amos Milburn – Chicken-Shack Boogie
(Clip from interview with Vera Hall)
Part Two – Move
0:21:23 Crown Price Waterford – Move Your Hand, Baby
(Clip from Spike Jones Show)
0:23:06 Milt Jackson & Thelonious Monk – Misterioso
(Clip from Exploding Cigarettes Prank)
(Clip of Symphony Syd introducing Miles Davis Band)
0:27:26 Miles Davis – Move
0:30:36 Charlie Parker – Relaxin’ at the Camarillo
0:32:54 Hazel Scott – Love Will Find A Way
(Clip from Top Tunes of 1948)
Part Three – Mist
0:35:07 Pee Wee King – Bull Fiddle Boogie
(Clip from interview with Frank Sinatra)
0:37:43 Rip Ramsey – Wanderers Swing
(Clip from interview with Vera Hall)
(Clip from Bertrand Russell / Fr Frederick Copleston debate on existence of God)
0:40:24 Kenny Clarke – Algerian Cynicism
(Clip from The Original Amateur Hour)
0:43:12 Duke Ellington & His Orchestra – Lady Of The Lavender Mist
0:46:27 Thelonious Monk – Evonce
(Clip of Helen Keller speaking)
Part Four – Size
(Clip from Top Tunes of 1948)
0:49:33 Nellie Lutcher – Fine Brown Frame
(Clip from The Original Amateur Hour)
0:52:30 Julia Lee – King Size Papa
(Clip from The Original Amateur Hour)
0:55:09 John Lee Hooker – Boogie Chillen
(Clip from The Original Amateur Hour)
0:58:03 Big Jay McNeeley’s Blue Jays – The Deacon’s Hop
(Clip from The Chicken of Tomorrow)
1:00:52 Joe Swift – That’s Your Last Boogie
Part Five – Twist
(Clip from interview with Vera Hall)
1:03:54 Dizzy Gillespie – Prince Albert
(Clip from The Treasure of The Sierra Madre)
1:08:43 Paul Williams Sextette – The Twister Pt. 1
1:10:08 Paul Williams Sextette – The Twister Pt. 2
(Clip from Believe It Or Not)
1:11:16 Tuareg Women of Adrar des Iforas – Air de Kel Ajjer (Rhythme Ellehelleh)
(Clip from Bertrand Russell / Fr Frederick Copleston debate on existence of God)
1:12:53 Pablo Casals – Manel Sarerra Puigferrer Dubte
Part Six – Run
(Clip of Edward R Murrow)
1:15:39 Louis Jordan – Run Joe
(Clip from The Original Amateur Hour)
1:17:52 Machito and His Afro-Cuban Salseros – Asia Minor
1:19:50 Henry Salvador – Maladie D’amour
(Clip from Red River)
1:22:05 Nellie Lutcher and Her Rhythm – There’s Another Mule In Your Stall
(Clip from The Original Amateur Hour)
1:24:53 Roy Brown – Mighty, Mighty Man
Part Seven – Rope
(Clip from Bicycle Thieves)
1:27:35 Howard McGhee Sextet with Milt Jackson – Merry Lee
(Clip from The Original Amateur Hour)
1:29:43 Lonnie Johnson – Tomorrow Night
(Clip from Kraft Music Hall)
1:32:48 Charles Trenet – Une Noix
(Clip from Rope)
1:34:56 John Cage & Jay Gottlieb – Dream
1:37:23 The Trumpeteers – Milky White Way
Part Eight – Hate
(Clip from Bertrand Russell / Fr Frederick Copleston debate on existence of God)
1:39:34 The Pilgrim Travelers – I Want My Crown
(Clip from Drunken Angel)
1:42:48 Thelonious Monk – Suburban Eyes
(Clip from Key Largo)
1:45:54 Milt Jackson & Thelonious Monk – Epistrophy
(Clip from Key Largo)
(Clip from Spike Jones Show)
1:49:31 Pee Wee Crayton – Texas Hop
(Clip from Brighton Rock)
1:52:13 Victor Silvester – Golden Earrings
(Clip from Brighton Rock)
Part Nine – Love
1:54:39 The Orioles – It’s Too Soon To Know
(Clip from This Is Bing Crosby)
1:57:32 Paula Watson – A Little Bird Told Me
2:00:08 Sister Rosetta Tharpe – Little Boy, How Old Are You?
(Clip from interview with Vera Hall)
2:02:38 Ella Fitzgerald – Robbin’s Nest
(Clip from interview with Carmen Miranda)
2:05:55 Line Renaud – Etoile Des Neiges
Part Ten – Mirth
(Clip from Hamlet (Gielgud – BBC Radio))
2:08:46 Tadd Dameron Sextet – The Squirrel
(Clips from Hamlet (Olivier – Film))
2:12:48 Miles Davis – Budo (Hallucinations)
(Clip from Hamlet (Olivier – Film))
2:17:06 Sonny Thompson – Long Gone, Part 2
(Clip from Macbeth (Welles – Film))
2:19:59 Wynonie Harris – Blow Your Brains Out
(Clip from Macbeth (Welles – Film))
2:23:43 Charlie Parker – Embraceable You
Part Eleven – Stew
(Clip from The Jack Benny Program)
2:26:31 Hal Singer Sextette – Beef Stew
(Clip from The Spike Jones Show)
2:30:13 Camille Howard – X-Temperaneous Boogie
(Clip from The Jack Benny Program)
2:32:15 Erskine Hawkins – Corn Bread
(CLip from The Jack Benny Program)
2:34:33 Tommy Sargent – Steel Guitar Boogie
(Clip from The Original Amateur Hour)
2:37:31 Hazel Scott – Dancing On A Ceiling
(Clip from Germany Year Zero)
Ending
(Clip from Top Tunes of 1948)
(Clip from Calvacade of 1948)
2:40:25 Nat King Cole – Nature Boy
(Clip from Calvacade of 1948)
(Clip from The Phil Harris & Alice Faye Christmas Show)
2:43:05 Peggy Lee – Don’t Smoke In Bed
(Clip from BBC Archive)
(Clip from Top Tunes of 1948)
2:46:14 Russ Morgan – So Tired
(Clip from 1948 Year In Review)
(Clip from Germany Year Zero)
1948 Part One – Something Big Out Of Something Little
2024/06/12
At Centuries of Sound I am making mixes for every year of recorded sound. The download here is only for the first half-hour of the mix. For the full 3-hour version either see below for the Mixcloud player, or come to patreon.com/centuriesofsound for the podcast version and a host of other bonus materials for just $5 per month. This show would not be possible without my supporters on there, so please consider signing up or sharing this with someone who may be interested.
Mixcloud player with full mix – or listen on the Mixcloud website.
1948 Part One – Something Big Out Of Something Little
It started with Bing Crosby wanting to improve his golf. Bing was a big golfer (in fact he would die on a golf course three decades later) but it was difficult to find the time for it when he was spending four days a week recording radio shows – and because of the time differences he’d often have to perform the whole show twice. Pre-recording had been suggested, but the quality of a half-hour disc side was not up to scratch. (LPs would also be introduced in 1948, but we’re not in 1948 yet) and the radio stations just would not accept it. So for 18 months, there was an impasse. But luckily there was a way out.
At the end of the second world war, Jack Mullin, a member of the US Signal Corps, had been tasked with finding out about German electronics. One day at the headquarters of Radio Frankfurt, he made a discovery. Magnetic recording had been around for nearly half a century at this point, but it always gave a distorted, inadequate sound. Not here. The AEG ‘Magnetophon’ was capable of recording and reproducing sounds to a fidelity completely unheard of before. You could even speed up or slow down tapes without any significant loss. Mullin took two of these machines back to the USA and spent the next couple of years trying to convince anyone that they were of use, until finally Murdo MacKenzie, an assistant to Crosby, was impressed enough to try them out. Within a few months, he was able to record shows in bulk, edit them at his leisure, and spend more of his time playing golf.
A studio musician often used by Crosby was one Les Paul, these days of course better known for his development of the electric guitar, but in the mid 40s more of a jobbing session guitarist. Paul had played a major role in Crosby’s 1945 number one “It’s Been a Long, Long Time,” for example. Crosby showed the new tape-recording devices to Paul and encouraged him to build a studio, where he experimented with the first multitrack tape recordings. Until this point, of course, every record you hear is in essence a live recording. A minor quirk here perhaps is that the two apparently multitracked selections (“Lover” and “What Is This Thing Called Love?”) actually date from before he successfully constructed his multitrack studio, instead they were constructed by recording and altering the speed of acetate discs – on “Lover” for example, that’s eight different Les Pauls playing along at different speeds.
Les Paul wasn’t the only person experimenting with tape recording, of course. In France we also have Pierre Schaeffer, the father of Musique Concrète. Cutting up, rearranging and juxtaposing sounds was not a new idea (is there ever really a new idea?) as you will perhaps remember from the Dziga Vertov sound collages used in the 1925 mix. But Schaeffer’s experiments do mark the start of a movement, and one which will be important to these mixes from now on, starting from this one.
Listening to this mix, you will likely find it noticeably different from those before, and there’s a reason. In this half, inspired by Les Paul, Pierre Schaeffer and even Bing Crosby, as well as the new popular, advertising-supported media, we have a quick-moving cut-up style. This includes all of the year’s news. Next time we’ll be taking a break from all of that in any case.
Tracklist
0:00:00 Pierre Schaeffer – Etude Violette
(Clip from The Red Shoes)
(Clip from Edward R Murrow – I Can Hear It Now)
(Clip from Unknown Radio show)
0:01:01 Les Paul – Lover
(Clip from The Original Amateur Hour)
(Clip from Howdy Doody)
(Clip from NBC Cavalcade of 1948)
(Clip from Howdy Doody)
(Clip from The Life of Riley)
(Clip from 1948 Year In Review)
(Clip from 1948 Television Commercial)
January
(Clip from The Jack Benny Program)
0:04:44 Texas Ruby & Curley Fox – Come Here Soon
(Clip from The Chicken of Tomorrow)
(Clip from US propaganda film)
0:07:44 Charlie Parker’s All Stars – Constellation
(Clip from 1948 A Year of Great Decision)
(Clip from US propaganda film)
0:10:16 Raj Kapoor – Solah Baras Ki Bhayee Umariya
(Clip from NBC Cavalcade of 1948)
(Clip from 1948 Year In Review)
(Clips from NBC News of The World)
(Clip from 1948 Year In Review)
(Clip from NBC News of The World)
(Clip of Pierre Schaeffer – Etude Violette)
(Clip from Atomic Energy Is Your Business)
(Clip from NBC News of The World)
February
(Clip from 1948 A Year of Great Decision)
(Clip from The Life of Riley)
0:16:12 Woody Herman And His Orchestra – Sabre Dance
(Clips from CBC – John Fisher on Post-War Europe)
(Clips of Pierre Schaeffer – Etude Violette)
0:19:43 Muddy Waters – I Feel Like Going Home
(Clip from 1948 Television Commercial)
(Clip from Atomic Energy Is Your Business)
(Clip from The Chicken of Tomorrow)
0:23:22 Willy Walden & Piet Muyselaar – Jantje Is Gaan Voetballen
(Clip from 1948 A Year of Great Decision)
(Clip from The Profit Motive)
(Clip from Pepsodent TV Commercial)
(Clip from BBC Archive)
March
(Clip from CBC – The Atom Bomb)
(Clip of Banta Trance Speech)
0:25:06 Youkoui Bamileké – Ngwop
(Clip from Inner Sanctum)
(Clip from The Life of Riley)
(Clip from 1948 Year In Review)
(Clip from Fitch Bandwagon)
0:27:14 Mado Robin – Air De La Reine De La Nuit
(Clip of Banta Trance Speech)
(Clip from Atomic Energy Is Your Business)
0:28:59 Spike Jones & His City Slickers – Ill Barkio
(Clip from The Phil Harris & Alice Faye Show)
(Clip from The Chicken of Tomorrow)
(Clip from US Propaganda Film)
(Clip from The Chicken of Tomorrow)
(Clip from 1948 A Year of Great Decision)
(Clip of Pierre Schaeffer – Etude Violette)
April
(Clip from 1948 Year In Review)
0:32:30 Rose Murphy – Cecilia
(Clip from The Profit Motive)
(Clips from BBC Archive – Budget Day)
0:36:35 Red Ingle & The Natural Seven – Cigareetes, Whuskey, And Wild, Wild Women
(Clip from Fitch Bandwagon)
(Clip from The Jack Benny Programme)
(Clip from US Propaganda Film)
(Clip from 1948 Year In Review)
0:39:45 Astor Piazzolla – Villeguita
(Clip from Nederlands In Zeven Lessen)
May
(Clip from 1948 Year In Review)
(Clip from Dennis Day)
(Clip from 1948 A Year of Great Decision)
(Clip from The Life of Riley)
(Clip from This Is Bing Crosby)
0:42:29 Peggy Lee – Why Don’t You Do Right?
(Clips from NBC Dewey-Stassen Debate)
0:46:39 Sotiría Béllou & Vasílis Tsitsánis – Péfteis Se Láthi
(Clips from NBC Clifton Utley commentary on Palestine)
(Clip from newsreel – Haganah Troops Occupy Jaffa)
(Clip from Edward M Murrow – I Can Hear It Now)
0:50:30 Dalila Rochdi – Haragli Guelbi, Pt. 1
(Clip from The Chicken of Tomorrow)
(Clip of Peter Lorre on Spike Jones Show)
(Clip from Inner Sanctum)
(Clip from 1948 A Year of Great Decision)
(Clip of Banta Trance Speech)
June
(Clip from BBC Archive)
(Clip of guest appearance by Frank Sinatra)
(Clip from Jack Benny Show)
0:54:13 Mukesh & Shamshad Begum – Raat Ko Jee Chamke Taare Aag
(Clip from 1948 A Year of Great Decision)
(Clip from 1948 Year In Review)
(Clip from Cavalcade of 1948)
(Clip of Harry S Truman describing the blockade of Berlin)
0:57:55 Elder A. Johnson – God Don’t Like It
(Clip from 1948 Year In Review)
1:00:21 Willie Gumede & His Concertina Band – U Gumede
(1948 TV Commercial)
(Clip from The Profit Motive)
(Clip from The Life of Riley)
July
(Clip from 1948 Year In Review)
(Clips from BBC Archive)
(Clip from 1948 Year In Review)
1:04:17 Arthur Smith – Guitar Boogie
(Clips from Clement Atlee – The New Social Services and The Citizen)
(Clips from National Health Service Story)
1:09:51 Les Paul – What Is This Thing Called Love?
(Clips from Cavalcade of 1948)
(Clip from Alastair Cooke Letter From America)
(Clip from The Original Amateur Hour)
1:14:07 Roy Hogsed – Cocaine Blues
(Clips from BBC – Last German POWs leave the UK)
(Clip from This Is Bing Crosby)
(Clip from BBC Archive)
(Clip from Fitch Bandwagon)
August
(Clip from Strom Thurmond’s Swimming Pool Speech)
(Clip from The Profit Motive)
(Clip from Strom Thurmond’s Swimming Pool Speech)
(Clip from Fitch Bandwagon)
1:18:32 Tex Williams – Drop Dead
(Clips from Cavalcade of 1948)
1:20:07 Pierre Schaeffer – Etude Pathetique
(Clip from What is Television?)
(Clip from Inner Sanctum)
1:20:57 Ann Miller – Shakin’ The Blues Away
(Clip from Cavalcade of 1948)
(Clips from BBC Archive)
(Clip from 1948 TV Commercial)
September
(Clip from BBC Archive)
(Clip from The Original Amateur Hour)
(Clip of Banta Trance Speech)
1:24:15 Dave Brubeck – How High The Moon
(Clips from BBC Archive)
1:29:32 The Sauceman Brothers – Hallelujah We Shall Rise
(Clip from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not)
(Clip from What is a Television?)
(Clip from Fitch Bandwagon)
1:31:04 Standard Radio Sound Effect – Canadian Geese
(Clip from BBC Archive)
(Clip from The Profit Motive)
(Clip from 1948 Television Commercial)
(Clip from WXQR Halloween Nightmare)
(Clip from Pierre Schaeffer – Etude Pathetique)
(Clip from 1948 Year In Review)
October
(Clip from 1948 Television Commercial)
(Clip from Atomic Energy Is Your Business)
(Clip from 1948 A Year of Great Decision)
(Clip from 1948 Year In Review)
1:33:32 John Lee ‘Sonny Boy’ Williamson – Stop Breaking Down
(Clip from The Jack Benny Program)
(Clip from The Profit Motive)
(Clip from Truman Address in St Louis)
1:36:22 Dick Wellstood – So in Love
(Clip from WXQR Halloween Nightmare)
(Clip
1947 Part Two – Boptamism
2024/04/10
At Centuries of Sound I am making mixes for every year of recorded sound. The download here is only for the first half-hour of the mix. For the full 3-hour version either see below for the Mixcloud player, or come to patreon.com/centuriesofsound for the podcast version and a host of other bonus materials for just $5 per month. This show would not be possible without my supporters on there, so please consider signing up or sharing this with someone who may be interested.
Mixcloud player with full mix – or listen on the Mixcloud website.
1947 Part Two – Boptamism
A baby boom – a notable increase in babies born – may indicate many socio-economic factors at play, but most of these factors are refractions of hope. Hope that there will be a good world for your children to become adults in, hope that you will be able to provide everything they need, hope that the path of your new family will not be littered with traps and nasty surprises. As I write this in 2024, birth rates in western countries have been in decline for decades, but in 1947 we were just on the spike of the “baby boom” which was so notable it gave its name to a generation. Is this then a time of hope? Will this mix sound optimistic and hopeful?
There was an idea at one point that these mixes would provide some sort of historical narrative into the years in question. Was it an idea that I had, or was it thrust on me by the war? It’s truthfully hard to say, I was already arranging things (not music) month by month back in 1939, maybe it’s a habit I’ve slipped into. In any case the arrangement has now become fairly meaningless (with a couple of exceptions I’ll come to in a moment), just a way to break up years into more manageable chunks or chapters, for example October is fairly bop-heavy and December is winding down for the Christmas section.
That’s the second exception in this mix, the first is the independence of India and Pakistan, a large public event with newsreels and speeches to sample, but whose ramifications wouldn’t be as easy to capture. In China the civil war turned a corner, with the Nationalists increasingly looking doomed. Communists also officially took power in Poland. The spread of communism triggered The Truman Doctrine, as good a date as any for the start of The Cold War. Is any of this evident from this mix? Well no, not at all. This of course does not mean that these things are unimportant, it just means that they haven’t yet impacted the cultural record, or at least my cultural record.
The people – the musicians – here were interested in exploring their art, they were interested in entertaining, they were interested in making people dance, they were interested in making something new. All art is in some sense political, and their stretching out in this freedom to create and share tells you something about their mood. The prospect of nuclear war, even of the Korean War, were not yet in the air. So to answer my own question, yes, we are still in the brief window of hope, but we can grasp this from the absence. There are other things to write about than existential dread.
If you want to chat as listen, you can join the conversation on discord here – https://discord.gg/5a7f6wqjcJ
Tracklist
0:00:00 George Melachrino Strings – Serenade (Drigo)
(Clip from Inner Sanctum – Death Bound)
(Clip from ITMA – Royal Command Performance)
0:01:20 Dizzy Gillespie – Cubana Bop
July
0:04:24 Danny Kaye – Manic Depressive Presents
0:05:15 Forrest Sykes – Tonky Boogie
(Clip from ITMA – Royal Command Performance)
0:08:33 Jo Stafford & Red Ingle – Temptation
(Clip from Danny Kaye – Manic Depressive Presents)
0:11:40 Spike Jones – I’m Getting Sentimental Over You
(Clip from High-Diving Hare)
0:14:19 Jack Mcvea’s All Stars – Open The Door Richard
(Clip from Home Record of a Birthday Party)
0:17:14 Hank Williams – I’m A Long Gone Daddy
(Clip from The Lady From Shanghai)
0:20:01 Utah Smith – I Got Two Wings
0:23:09 Bama – How I Got In The Penitentiary (Interview)
0:23:52 Bama – Stackerlee
0:26:02 Vladimir Horowitz – Variations On A Theme From Bizet’s Carmen
(Clip from Dark Passage)
0:28:25 Kenneth Anger – Spoken introduction from ‘Fireworks’
0:29:21 Barry Ulanov’s All Star Metronome Jazzmen – 52nd Street Theme
(Clip from Easy To Get)
0:31:02 Amos Milburn – Down The Road A Piece
(Clip from The Walgreen Show with Bob Hope)
August
(Clip from India Breaks Free – British Pathe)
0:34:07 Harmonicats – Peg O’ My Heart
(Clip from India Breaks Free – British Pathe)
0:36:45 Surashri Kesarbai Kerkar – Gaud Malhar
(Clip from India Breaks Free – British Pathe)
(Clip from Nehru Speech)
(Clip from India Breaks Free – British Pathe)
0:40:51 Sonny Thompson W. The Sharps & Flats – Long Gone
(Clip from Shy Guy)
0:43:57 Tampa Red – Let’s Try It Again
(Clip from British Movietone Review of The Year)
0:47:01 Dodo Marmarosa – Dodo’s Dance
(Clip from British Movietone Review of The Year)
0:50:37 Roy Acuff – Freight Train Blues
(Clip from British Movietone Review of The Year)
0:53:16 Signe Flatin – Skuldalsbruri
0:54:45 Kiko Kids – Tom Tom
(Clip from Slick Hare)
0:57:43 The Big Three Trio – Signifying Monkey
(Clip from Slick Hare)
1:00:47 Louis Jordan – Barnyard Boogie
(Clip from The Walgreen Show with Bob Hope)
1:03:40 Tex Williams – Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)
(Clip from Shy Guy)
September
(Clip from Fibber McGee & Molly)
1:06:41 The Bopland Boys – Cherokee (Jeronimo)
(Clip from The Lady From Shanghai)
1:12:04 Julia Lee – Snatch And Grab It
(Clip from Easy To Get)
1:14:03 Bull Moose Jackson – I Want A Bowlegged Woman
(Clip from Dark Passage)
1:17:16 Todd Rhodes Orchestra – Blues For The Red Boy
(Clip from Inner Sanctum – Death Bound)
1:19:57 Les Baxter – Mist O´the Moon
(Clip from Black Narcissus)
1:22:51 Spade Cooley – Oklahoma Stomp
(Clip from Monsieur Verdoux)
1:25:38 Wynonie Harris – Good Rockin’ Tonight
(Clip from How To Discipline Children)
1:28:09 Bill Harris All Stars – A Knight In The Village
(Clip from Out Of The Past)
1:32:34 Xavier Cugat – Miami Beach Rhumba
1:34:26 Chano Pozo Y Su Ritmo De Tambores – Tambombarana
(Clip from Speech to the Berlin Philharmonic)
1:36:55 Astor Piazzolla – Se Armó
October
(Clip from It’s That Man Again)
1:38:46 Wayne Raney – Lost John Boogie
1:41:22 Dizzy Gillespie – Emanon / Things To Come
(Clip from Shy Guy)
1:44:51 Dexter Gordon – The Duel
(Clip from Out Of The Past)
1:47:16 Lionel Hampton – Mingus Fingers
(Clip from The Lady From Shanghai)
1:50:33 Dodo Marmarosa Trio – Bopmatism
(Clip from Easy To Get)
1:53:49 Charlie Parker All Stars – Chasin’ The Bird
(Clip from The Jazz Singer – Radio Play)
1:56:37 Thelonious Monk – ‘Round Midnight
1:59:14 Billie Holiday – Solitude
2:02:16 Frank Sinatra – Try A Little Tenderness
(Clip from Dark Passage)
2:05:25 The Trenier Twins – Hey Sister Lucy
November
(Clip from British Movietone Review of the Year)
2:07:56 Stella Haskil – Bir Allah
(Clip from British Movietone Review of the Year)
2:09:52 Kasagi Shizuko – Airei Kawaii Ya
(Clip from Danny Kaye – Manic Depressive Presents)
2:12:24 Sarah Vaughan – I’m Gonna Sit Right Down And Write Myself a Letter
(Clip from You Bet Your Life)
2:14:53 Maddox Brothers & Rose – Milk Cow Blues
(Clip from Crowing Pains)
2:18:09 Bill Monroe And The Bluegrass Boys – Blue Grass Breakdown
(Clip from Shy Guy)
2:20:50 Roy Brown – Lolly Pop Mama
(Clip from Easy To Get)
2:23:08 Jimmy Liggins – Cadillac Boogie
(Clip from Easy To Get)
2:25:45 Walter Brown & Jay Mcshann Quartet – W. B. Blues
2:28:11 Albert Ammons & His Rhythm Kings – Swanee River Boogie
2:30:40 T-Bone Walker – Bobby Sox Blues
(Clip from Home Record of a Birthday Party)
2:33:27 Leadbelly – Laura
December
(Clip from Odd Man Out)
2:35:30 Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup – That’s All Right
(Clip from It’s That Man Again)
2:36:36 Tiny Bradshaw – Take The Hands Off The Clock
(Clip from Tweety Pie)
2:39:13 Spike Jones & His City Slickers – I Kiss Your Hand Madame
(Clip from It’s That Man Again)
2:41:14 Watanabe Hamako – Tokyo No Yoru
(Clip from Shanghai)
2:43:13 The Barton Brothers – Cockeyed Jenny
2:44:40 Abbott & Costello – Christmas Tree
2:47:31 Frankie Laine – That’s My Desire
(Clip from The Bishop’s Wife)
2:50:49 Sarah Vaughan – The Lord’s Prayer
(Clip from Miracle on 34th Street)
2:53:39 Sister Rosetta Tharpe And Marie Knight – Beams Of Heaven
(Clip from Miracle on 34th Street)
2:56:19 Nat King Cole Trio – For Sentimental Reasons
(Clip from Life of Riley)
2:58:25 Jacob Do Bandolim – Flamengo
(Clip from Truth or Concequences)
Ending
3:00:21 Miles Davis – Out Of Nowhere
(Clip from The Lady From Shanghai)
3:04:35 Nat King Cole Trio – There I’ve Said It Again
(Clip from Monsieur Verdoux)
3:07:45 Cecil Gant – Special Delivery
(Clip from Inner Sanctum – Death Bound)
(Clip from Danny Kaye – Manic Depressive Presents)
1947 Part One – Cubana Bop
2024/02/22
At Centuries of Sound I am making mixes for every year of recorded sound. The download here is only for the first half-hour of the mix. For the full 3-hour version either see below for the Mixcloud player, or come to patreon.com/centuriesofsound for the podcast version and a host of other bonus materials for just $5 per month. This show would not be possible without my supporters on there, so please consider signing up or sharing this with someone who may be interested.
Mixcloud player with full mix – or listen on the Mixcloud website.
1947 Part One – Cubana Bop
From time to time in music there are sparks which briefly spring to life, then almost immediately fizzle out again, but not without leaving long-lasting reverberations. One of these moments began in the summer of 1947, when 32-year-old dancer, bodyguard, shoeshiner and noted percussionist Chano Pozo arrived in New York on a passenger ship from the rich man’s playground of Havana. Raised in one of the most dangerous slums in Cuba, Pozo had found himself in reform school at the age of 13, only having had three years of education. His crime may have been the accidental killing of an American tourist. While there he learned not only literacy and the Afro-Caribbean religion Santería, but also to play a range of percussion instruments. On release he became a “rumbero” – the beating heart of a musical/dance troop at carnival, and after only a few years he had had become perhaps the most famous one in Cuba.
He may have achieved fame, but there was no fortune to be found in working-class Cuba, and in 1947 he decided to move to the USA, where a nascent Cuban music industry was already in place. Band leader Mario Bauza, who already had a good deal of success, arranged a series of recording sessions for Pozo, and at a party at Harlem in September introduced him to Dizzy Gillespie, who was already interested in Cuban music, and who immediately invited him to join his band. Before the end of the month they would be on stage together at Carnegie Hall.
The music that Gillespie and Pozo made together in the next 15 months is so arresting that it’s astonishing that it isn’t better-known. Perhaps the musicianship on display prevented anyone else from easily borrowing. In any case the 75 years since have done nothing to blunt its power. Taking all the unpredictable, stimulatingly jarring musical shapes from be bop and fusing them to this driving, complex Cuban rhythm is nothing short of magical.
The collaboration was cut short prematurely when Pozo was murdered by another Cuban expat outside a Harlem bar, but by that point Pozo and Gillespie had collaborated on Cubana Be, Cubana Bop, Tin Tin Deo and Manteca, all to be featured prominently in these two mixes.
There’s been a bit too much history in Centuries of Sound of late, too many events taking place. This is supposed to be a celebration and exploration of sound. Sure, 1947 traditionally marks the start of the Cold War – and there is one large international event which we’ll get to in part two – but I’m pleased to say there’s little sign of it here. When I listen back to the records (and the sounds) here the joy in experimentation is the biggest takeaway. I hope it is for you too.
If you want to chat as listen, you can join the conversation on discord here – https://discord.gg/5a7f6wqjcJ
Tracklist
0:00:00 Unknown Birds – Birdsong (from Louis Kaufman – Vivaldi Four Seasons intro)
(Clip from You Bet Your Life – Secret Word ‘Air’)
0:00:36 Dizzy Gillespie – Cubana Be
(Clips from Are You Popular?)
(Clip from Easy To Get)
0:02:59 Amos Milburn – Chicken Shack Boogie
January
0:05:25 Charlie Parker Quintet – Bird Of Paradise
(Clip from Alastair Cooke – Letter From America – New Year 1947)
(Clip from Are You Popular?)
0:08:31 Maddox Brothers & Rose – Honky Tonkin’
(Clip from The Walgreen Show – Groucho Marx/Bob Hope)
0:11:01 Ella Fitzgerald – How High The Moon
(Clip from Are You Popular?)
0:14:23 Wild Bill Moore – We’re Gonna Rock
0:16:11 Frank Sinatra & Jimmy Durante – From The Heart
0:20:47 Spike Jones & His City Slickers – William Tell Overture
0:23:54 Sonny Boy Williamson II – Shake That Boogie
(Clip from You Bet Your Life – Secret Word ‘Air’)
0:26:53 Sister Rosetta Tharpe And Marie Knight – Up Above My Head I Hear Music In The Air
(Clip from Monsieur Verdoux)
0:29:19 Julia Lee – Tell Me, Daddy
(Clip from Easy To Get)
0:32:18 Little Brother Montgomery Quintet – El Ritmo
(Clip from Home Record of a Birthday Party)
0:35:21 Tadd Dameron Sextet – The Chase
February
(Clip from Bob Hope & Bing Crosby – The Road To Hollywood)
0:38:26 Chet Atkins – Canned Heat
(Clip from Dark Passage)
0:41:51 Hank Williams – Move It On Over
(Clip from Montreal By Night)
0:44:45 Chano Pozo Y Su Orquestra – Rumba En Swing
0:47:18 Dizzy Gillespie – Manteca
(Clip from Human Reproduction)
0:50:20 Manhattan Paul & Paul Bascomb Orchestra – Rock And Roll
(Clip from Alan Lomax – What Makes A Work Song Leader?)
0:53:18 ’22’ With Little Red, Tangle Eye, & Hard Hair – Early In The Mornin’
(Clip from Alan Lomax – What Makes A Work Song Leader?)
0:55:39 Tangle Eye – Tangle Eye Blues
(Clip from Black Narcissus)
0:58:00 John Cage, Maro Ajemian, William Masselos – Three Dances for Two Pianos
(Clip from Marlon Brando – Screen Test for Rebel Without A Cause)
0:59:48 Nellie Lutcher – He’s A Real Gone Guy
(Clip from Inner Sanctum – Death Bound)
1:02:51 Vladimir Horowitz – The Hut On Fowl’s Legs
(Clip from The Postman Always Rings Twice)
(Clip from The Lady From Shanghai)
(Clip from The Postman Always Rings Twice)
1:06:15 Charlie Parker Quintet – Superman (The Hymn)
March
(Clip from British Movietone Review of the Year)
1:08:48 Band Of The Gold Coast Police – Dagomba
(NBC in Chicago ident)
1:11:41 Muddy Waters – I Feel Like Going Home
(Clip from Out of the Past)
1:15:01 Betty Hutton – I Wish I Didn’t Love You So
1:17:41 Henry Red Allen – Indiana
(Clip from India Breaks Free – British Pathe)
1:21:34 Ivory Joe Hunter – I Like It
(Clip from Oor Willie – The Man With Many Voices)
1:24:13 Johnny Doran – My Love Is In America
(Clip from Oor Willie – The Man With Many Voices)
1:27:01 Pete Seeger – Come All Fair Maids
(Clip from Don’t Be A Sucker)
1:29:48 Robert Mitchum – Foolish Pride
(CLip from The Lady From Shanghai)
1:32:59 The Four Aces Of Western Swing – Yodel Your Blues Away
(Clip from Lux Radio Theatre – The Jazz Singer)
1:35:46 Freddy Martin & His Orchestra – Managua, Nicaragua
(Clip from Lux Radio Theatre – The Jazz Singer)
1:37:12 Edmundo Ros – Manana
April
1:39:10 Ella Logan & Donald Richards – Look To The Rainbow (Introduction)
1:39:27 Annie Laurie – Since I Fell For You
(Clip from Black Narcissus)
1:42:21 Thelonious Monk – Who Knows?
(Clip from Dark Passage)
1:45:03 Ichimaru – Samisen Boogie
(Clip from Shanghai)
1:47:05 Yukie Kubo – Shin Shin Tankoubushi (Coalminer’s Tale)
(Clip from Shanghai)
1:49:06 Tabata Yoshiro – Machi No Dateotoko
(Clip from The Lady From Shanghai)
1:51:59 Gatemouth Moore – Did You Ever Try To Cry
(Clip from Babe Ruth – Farewell To Baseball)
1:54:10 Dizzy Gillespie & Charlie Parker – Dizzy Atmosphere
(Clip from Babe Ruth – Farewell To Baseball)
1:57:16 Bill Harris And Charlie Ventura – High On An Open Mike
(Clip from Babe Ruth – Farewell To Baseball)
2:02:03 Stan Kenton – Peanut Vendor
(Clip from Babe Ruth – Farewell To Baseball)
2:06:51 Ted Weems & His Orchestra – Heartaches
May
(Clip from Are You Popular?)
2:09:34 Ray Noble & His Orchestra – Linda
(Clip from Shy Guy)
2:13:00 Ernest Tubb – Have You Ever Been Lonely?
(Clip from Shy Guy)
2:15:48 Big Maybelle – Sad And Disappointed Girl
(Clip from DDT – So Safe You Can Eat It)
2:18:25 Mamica – Nwomboko
(Clip from DDT – So Safe You Can Eat It)
2:19:36 Woody Herman – Sabre Dance
(Clip from Along Came Daffy)
2:22:10 Cab Calloway – Everybody Eats When They Come To My House
(Clip from Along Came Daffy)
2:25:02 Spike Jones – Popcorn Sack
(Clip from Easy To Get)
2:27:39 Stick Mcghee – Drinkin’ Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee
(Clip from Crowing Pains)
2:29:46 The Sons Of The Pioneers & Roy Rogers – Cool Water
(Clip from Bob Hope & Bing Crosby – The Road To Hollywood)
2:31:58 Sons Of The Pioneers – Tumbling Tumbleweeds
(Clip from The Humpbacked Horse)
2:33:36 Joe Morris – The Applejack
June
(Clip from Don’t Be A Sucker)
2:35:15 Mahalia Jackson – Amazing Grace
(Clip from Don’t Be A Sucker)
2:38:24 Louis Kaufman – Vivaldi’s Four Seasons
(Clip from Odd Man Out)
2:41:57 Louis Jordan – Run Joe
(Clips from Montreal By Night)
2:45:19 Les Baxter – Radar Blues
(Clip from Montreal By Night)
2:48:18 Ernie Harper – Chicago Boogie
(Clip from Out of the Past)
2:51:15 Merle Travis – Sixteen Tons
(Clip of Albert Camus reading L’etranger)
2:54:12 Line Renaud – Ma Cabane Au Canada
(Clip of Albert Camus reading L’etranger)
2:56:40 Django Reinhardt Et Le Quintette Du Hot Club De France – Diminishing
2:57:36 The Stanley Brothers – Standing In The Need Of Prayer
2:59:23 Jimpson With Men Chopping Trees – No More, My Lord
(Clip from Odd Man Out)
3:00:59 Sister Rosetta Tharpe – How Far From God
Ending
(Clip from Odd Man Out)
3:03:15 Ethel Waters – A Hundred Years From Today
(Clip from Monsieur Verdoux)
3:06:13 Big Maceo Merriweather – My Own Troubles
(Clip from Monsieur Verdoux)
Podcast reviews
Read Centuries of Sound podcast reviews
kaphed 2022/03/26
Totally fascinating
I really love the radio podcasts about early recordings. Simultaneously a lesson in history and technology and art
iFoundMolly 2021/02/08
Fantastic
Just so cool. The episodes from the 1930’s are like entering an auditory museum. And the contemporary episodes (2018 & 2019) have a really eclectic mi...
ChiClif 2021/01/24
New listener and love it.
Thanks for doing this! How cool.
justinchina 2019/05/13
Immersed in a bygone era
I really love listening to these podcasts. It’s like opening a bottle found on the beach, and finding a legible 100 year-old note inside! Thank you!
VicDiesel 2018/08/02
Unique material
This podcast is a treasure, collecting horrendously obscure material from the early days of recording technology. At the moment of this writing the au...
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