The Big Broadcast

No Moonlight, No Serenade

by Rich Conaty

The timeline for "The Big Broadcast" is mid-1920s to mid-30s. It can go back one hundred years or more, depending on requests and birthday tributes, but rarely gets beyond the late 1930s. That can create problems when somebody like Benny Goodman is being saluted, or, as tonight, Jimmy Dorsey and Glenn Miller. Most of the big names of the Swing Era got their start as sidemen in the 1920s, but public recognition didn't come for another decade or more.

A "New" Stormy Weather

by Rich Conaty

Ethel Waters introduced "Stormy Weather," written by Ted Koehler & Harold Arlen, in the 1933 "Cotton Club Parade." She was accompanied by Duke Ellington's Orchestra.  The song was a hit, and it was recorded by Waters (for Columbia), Ellington (Brunswick) and even composer Arlen for Victor Records.  All were issued contemporaneously, along with at least a dozen more versions in the USA and UK.  They weren't covers in the sense we think of them today; the song was the thing. 

Haven, I'm in Haven

by Rich Conaty
Andrew Wittenborn

There are seven birthday salutes on tonight's "Big Broadcast," including Dolly Dawn (pictured at the 1000th BB in 1992), who got her start singing with the George Hall band, which played at the NYC's Taft Hotel. Another is songwriter Haven Gillespie, who started out as a newspaperman; turning to composing in the early 1920s. One of his best known songs, "Beautiful Love," is included on the latest "Big Broadcast" collection.

To quote myself: