Show Notes
Here’s five hours on blues and jazz singer and pianist Charles Brown. Charles Brown was born September 13, probably 1920 (usually listed 1922), on the gulf coast of Texas and raised by his educated and religious grandparents. He played piano and sang in church, and excelled as a science student. His high school chemistry teacher, who also moonlighted as a musician, took Charles under his wing, and had Charles play piano with his dance band. Brown had academic aspirations and attended Prairie View College. After graduation, Brown worked as a research chemist, eventually in government service for the war. When it was time to actually go in to the armed forces Charles was 4-F for a childhood illness. Instead, he left the science field, and the segregated South Brown decided to try his hand as an entertainer and moved to southern California. The army’s loss was our gain, as Charles blossomed in his musical career. But, in effect, he still contributed to the war effort. During World War II there was a great migration of African-Americans to California, both in the workforce of industrial factories, and servicemen stationed while awaiting shipment to the Pacific. A burgeoning black entertainment scene developed in California to entertain this swelling community. Brown’s first major engagement was at Ivie Anderson’s Chicken Shack in Los Angeles. Soon he teamed up with guitarist Johnny Moore, and they formed a trio emulating Nat King Cole’s group. (Johnny Moore’s brother Oscar was the guitarist with Cole.) Their “Three Blazers” took the elegant sound of the Nat King Cole trio and infused it with a grittier aspect. At the same time, Brown’s mellow vocal style, influenced by idols like Pha Terrell, offered a refined side of blues singing that struck a responsive chord with popular listeners. Charles Brown and Moore’s Three Blazers had monster hits such as “Driftin’ Blues” and “Merry Christmas Baby” in the postwar period. Eventually leaving the group, Brown had continued success as a single for a number of years but drifted in to obscurity. He left a string of now forgotten hit records, but a direct influence acknowledged by singers from Ray Charles onward. In the 1980's Brown was “re-discovered”, becoming a popular attraction at the famous New York nightclub Tramps, featured on an acclaimed PBS documentary, releasing a breakthrough 1986 jazz album “One More For The Road”, and taken on tour by artists like Bonnie Raitt to be exposed to a younger generation. With a base in northern California, and guitarist Danny Caron as musical director with a sympathetic style, Brown had great success once again touring the world and making many fine jazz records for the Muse and Verve labels, until his death in 1999. We will explore Brown’s tasty, often overlooked, jazz piano playing, and his great blues and ballad singing, sampling the recordings from across his career during this five hour radio broadcast. originally broadcast March 1, 2015
More from The Gone Sounds of Jazz with Sid Gribetz
The "Bird-Prez Birthday Broadcast", a 72 hour (and some years longer) marathon celebrating Lester Young and Charlie Parker around their birthday anniversaries, August 27 and August 29, is a long standing tradition at WKCR, and it is among our listeners' favorites. On the middle, swing, date, August 28, we play mixtures of Bird and Prez. Here’s a 183 minute long shift from the 2026 edition. Included are special segments of a half hour or so of Bird and Prez sharing the stage at the January 28, 1946 Jazz At The Philharmonic concert, and one contrasting their solos in classic big band recordings (Bird with Jay McShann and Prez in the original Count Basie orchestra), 65 minutes. There are also some portions for general listening, among which are a sampling of some Parker features with large ensembles.
Celebrating the great songwriter of Americana, Johnny Mercer, for five hours. The program starts with a review of his early career as an actor and singer. It also includes a look at his impact as a founder of Capitol Records. But of course the essence and core of the show are his hip and magnificent songs that endure forever. As one of my “Jazz Profiles” presentations, the main focus is observing jazz influences on his art. We explore his collaborations with Harold Arlen, Hoagy Carmichael and other great composers, and his legendary pieces which have become jazz standards in addition to their place in the great popular songbook – ranging from Blues In The Night, Skylark, Come Rain or Come Shine, One For My Baby, Jeepers Creepers, Too Marvelous For Words, That Old Black Magic, I Remember You, Laura, I Thought About You, and so many more. The final three hours is a cornucopia of listening pleasure to recordings of Mercer classics by great jazz artists. Billie, Ella, Louis, Dinah, Carmen, Jackie Paris, Johnny Hartman, Aretha Franklin, Cassandra Wilson, Etta Jones, and Etta James, to name just a few. originally broadcast November 15, 2009re-broadcast May 23, 2021
From the August 4, 2026 Louis Armstrong WKCR special on his baptismal birth date, here’s a show with two separate features, about an hour each -- Pops in duets (with Duke, Ella, Bing, Carmen, Billie and Lotte Lenya); and another focusing on Armstrong with the Luis Russell band in the late 1930s on Decca. These two thematic segments are interspersed with some unstudied tracks for general listening appeal.
This program presents the masterwork collaborations of John Coltrane with Miles Davis, in context. It can serve as a history primer “Jazz 101" for the jazz lay person; for the aficionado, it can simply be an opportunity to submerge oneself in five hours of intense musical enjoyment. Miles Davis was a teenage trumpet prodigy who came to fame during the bebop years of the 1940's. Despite this reputation and additional successful endeavors, such as with the Birth of the Cool band and other post bebop ensembles, by the mid-1950's Miles had fallen from popularity and was also in ill health. Saxophonist John Coltrane had some accomplishments as a professional jazz musician but in the mid-1950's was mostly performing around his home turf in Philadelphia and searching to develop his sound. Miles Davis regained notoriety with his captivating performance at the 1955 Newport Jazz Festival. In its wake, he was signed to a lucrative contract by major record label Columbia and was booked for many significant concerts and tours. Assembling a new band for these engagements, Davis hired Coltrane for the saxophone chair, and had the stellar rhythm section of Red Garland piano, Paul Chambers bass, and Philly Joe Jones at the drums. From the fall of 1955 through the spring of 1957 this group performed regularly and made numerous now-classic recordings to finish Miles’s existing Prestige Records obligations. When released to begin fulfilling his new Columbia contract, Davis made sessions to constitute the acclaimed “‘Round About Midnight” album on Columbia. Later in 1957 Miles fired Coltrane and Philly Joe, and he moved on to orchestral projects with Gil Evans and a sojourn in France where he did film scores for Louis Malle. Meanwhile Thelonious Monk combined with Coltrane in their legendary association and six month long Five Spot gig, which helped Coltrane’s musical growth to new heights. In 1958, Miles Davis re-formed his combo, bringing back Coltrane, adding the alto sax of Cannonball Adderley, experimenting with different pianists in addition to Garland, such as Bill Evans and later Wynton Kelly, and drummers such as Art Taylor and Jimmy Cobb, to add further textures and flavors to the ensemble. The 1958 band produced great Columbia recordings “Milestones” and the Green Dolphin Street session with Evans, among others. With their continued advances, and adaptation of “modal” styles, the Davis-Coltrane musical collaborations hit its zenith in early 1959. The Miles Davis group created the most famous jazz album of all time, “Kind Of Blue”. At the same time, Coltrane, preparing to leave Davis and emerge in his own stardom, broke out with his “Giant Steps” LP, and moved on in his own career. Finally, as a savory dessert, Coltrane would reunite with Davis for special concert tours in Europe and elsewhere in 1960, and he sat in on Davis’s 1961 “Someday My Prince Will Come” album.
The "Bird-Prez Birthday Broadcast", a 72 hour (and some years longer) marathon celebrating Lester Young and Charlie Parker around their birthday anniversaries, August 27 and August 29, is a long standing tradition at WKCR, and it is among our listeners' favorites. From the 2026 edition, here's a segment that includes a survey of Lester Young's recordings with small groups during the Big Band years of the 1936-1940 period when he was in the Count Basie orchestra.