Hey, y’all! Good to see you. It’s Tuesday, and you know what that means; it’s once again time for Talkie Time and The Jazz Program on your favorite radio station, datafruits.fm!
Let’s see what we’ve got playing tonight…
Talkie Time : Dick Lawrence Review - Lost Pilot Of A Lost Age
(This program originally aired May 16, 2023.)
RIP to yet another fantastic classical music station. And yes, I am still mad about what the LCMS did to Classic 99.
Broadcast from the legendary (and now overtaken by a soft rock station and apparently wiped from the face of Wikipedia) classical station WNIB in Chicago in the ’80s and ’90s, The Dick Lawrence Review is an interesting case in the history of narrative radio. A writer & vintage music historian who got his start in the early 1970s at WXFM with a “Roaring 20s” show, Dick’s radio programs combined vintage music, pulp magazine stories, and what he called “audio archeology, a restoration of antiq sounds”.
I haven’t managed to find many recordings of his show (or even a photo of the man), and the ones I could track down have very little in terms of metadata and broadcast dates, but the ones I have found are fantastic. We’ll be listening to “Lost Pilot Of A Lost Age” tonight.
The Jazz Program : Eric Dolphy - The Complete Uppsala Concert (1961) / Live At The Gaslight Inn (1962)
(This program originally aired August 1, 2023.)
Tonight's Homework; if you haven't listened to this yet, fix that.
Eric Dolphy needs no introduction; but if you need one anyways, go check out the cornerstone he chucked into the foundations of avant-garde jazz, Out To Lunch. We aren’t doing that tonight, however. If you haven’t heard it, that’s your homework. If you have, that’s still your homework. Go listen to Out To Lunch. Hasn’t aged a damn day.
What we are doing is checking out two fairly rare live performances from three and two years prior to this masterwork’s recording and release, respectively. Starting us off is The Complete Uppsala Concert, recorded at Västmanlands-Dala Nation in Uppsala, Sweden, and released in 2005 on Gambit Records.
After that, we’ve got Live At The Gaslight In, recorded in 1962 at one of Bob Dylan’s favorite haunts, pressed into vinyl by Italian bootleggers Ingo and re-relased by a plethora of labels including Stash Records and Lone Hill in Japan and Spain, respectively, and featuring none other than Herbie Hancock himself on piano, playing both with and against Dolphy at various moments. Absolutely worth a look.
That’s all for this week! Thank you so much for reading, and I do hope you enjoy tonight’s show. We’re back to reruns as I finish up this month’s Clippings column. They’re good reruns though, I promise.
Speaking of which: if you’re reading this the day of, and you can make it in tonight, you should come hang out in the chat with us on Datafruits! We’ve got a good crowd of folks in the chat every week, and whether you have a suggestion for a future show or just want to hang out and chat with fellow jazz enjoyers, you’re welcome here with us.
You’re all amazing and don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not. Stay safe out there, and I’ll see you back again next week. Same time, same station: on datafruits dot fm..