#0002: This Week On The Air–January 7, 2025

It’s the first Tuesday in January, and after a two-hour Rippingtons marathon to test the sound last week I think it’s about as good a time as any for Talkie Time and The Jazz Program to hop back on the airwaves.

For now, I’m going to primarily be re-playing some of my favorite show programs from the original “second run”¹ of the program. These aren’t going to be rebroadcasts, mind–none of the original shows were archived, an intentional choice I made at the time to avoid dealing with my discomfort with my voice.

Rather, we’ll be playing the exact same things we did on the original air date, with some new bits, different bump music, and (hopefully) slightly better audio and performance quality.

With that stated, we’re starting off with one of my favorite talkies ever put to tape and one of the funniest show ideas we ever recorded, in that order. Head over to Datafruits.fm/chat at 8 PM Central time tonight (that’s 9 EST, 7 PST, and 2 AM GMT) if you’d like to tune in, and read on to find out what we’re playing this evening.

Talkie Time : Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar - The Rat Pack Matter / The Wayward Fireman Matter

(This program schedule was originally aired March 20, 2023)

Johnny Dollar is one of the more interesting of the leading men in the radio noir genre for a couple reasons. Not only is he not a PI–he’s a freelance investigator for insurance companies, often going out to investigate “accidental deaths” and finding them more often than not to be murders–but he’s had more people voice him than nearly any other character in the history of radio noir dramas.

You’d think that get confusing or jarring at first glance, but every single actor who takes up the mantle plays the character very well in their own unique way. What’s more, the quirks that make up that character–including the constant note of every single conceivable expense he might need to bill the company for, to the point where you’ll start wondering if he was one of the inspirations for a certain Detective Cooper–make him easily identifiable and memorable no matter who’s playing him.

Tonight, we’ll be taking a listen to Bob Readick’s version of the wielder of the action-packed expense account, with two cases to die for. First off, it’s The Rat Pack Matter (originally aired on April 23, 1961), in which Dollar heads down to Corpus Christi to get his hands on the wheel of a sports car with a few strings attached.

After that, it’s The Wayward Fireman Matter (originally aired on February 12, 1961), in which Dollar investigates $200,000 worth of nice new buildings and a man who tends to get a bit lost to the timber.

So grab your dictaphone, hop in the Packard, and make sure to bill your employers, because it’ll be a good show that you won’t want to miss.

The Jazz Program : Tom Jones Pretends To Be An American For Two Hours, To Varied But Amusing Results - Tom / Darlin’ / The Body And Soul Of Tom Jones

(This program schedule was originally aired April 18, 2023)

Let me get a few things out of the way first.

One: I unironically love Tom Jones. Whether you classify him into vocal jazz/crooner territory or not, you can’t argue exactly how fantastic and jazzy a lot of the compositions he appears on are (I’d like to submit his record “A-Tom-Ic Jones” as evidence here), and you also simply cannot argue with that vocal range.

Wherever you classify him personally is your business. I’m playing him on The Jazz Program for the same reasons that we’ve featured both Astrud Gilberto and Portishead: because, in my mind, crooner pop/exotica (and coo-ey trip-hop, for that matter) works very well as a “gateway drug” to the more complex stuff.²

Besides, this is my show, dammit. I play what I want, and my standards for what counts as “show fodder” are looser than Tom Jones’s shirt on half his album covers.

Two:, Tom Jones is not American. He is not from down south, he’s not country, and despite what his multiple album covers with him sporting a full afro would have you believe, he’s not any kind of soul save plastic. Man’s Welsh.

That last little detail makes the three records we’re playing tonight, in which he, in order–

• covers Elvis’s “Polk Salad Annie”, a track which starts with him claiming that “some y’all never been down south”, and then proceeds with him telling you all ‘bout where he’s from, which clearly is Louisiana, on 1970’s semi-eponymous Tom,
• puts on a cowboy hat in the cover art and does his best impression of cowboy trucker’s music on 1981’s Darlin,
• and, finally, dons a very questionable afro that he genuinely thought worked for him well into the 90s, has cover artist Shel Starkman paint him like he’s about to drop the best soul-funk record you’ve ever heard in your life, and then attempts to do exactly that in 1973’s The Body And Soul Of Tom Jones,

–simultaneously infinitely amusing and incredible listens. Somehow, Atomic Jones unironically nails all three notes.

Don’t believe me? Tune in and find out.

That’s about all we’ve got for this week. Thanks again to everyone who tuned in to this year’s Jazzy Fuckin’ Holidays and last week’s Rippington New Year show for giving me enough of a kick in the pants to hop back on the air. It’s been great being back at the desk again, and here’s hoping we can keep this going in the months (and maybe years!) to come.

You’re all amazing and don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not. Stay safe out there, and I’ll see you on the air tonight and then back again next week; same time, same station.

Have a good one.

–piper

Footnotes…