It’s Tuesday, and you all know what that means–it’s time for Talkie Time and The Jazz Program on your favorite radio station, datafruits.fm! Here’s what we’re playing tonight!
Talkie Time Presents A Valentine’s Day Special…Kind Of : The Shadow Commits Bigamy – The Bride Of Death / The Devil Takes A Wife
And yes, I do own a copy of this.
…Yes, I am aware that no one is going to get this joke.
HOWEVER.
Putting aside a terrible pulp-paperback pun at James M. Fox’s expense, there’s a LOT of “WIFE OF-” and “BRIDE OF-” type beats going on in a lot of the speculative-fiction/horror shows in the history of old-time radio.
And–seeing as Valentine’s Day is in 3 days–what better and more romantic show could we play to talk about love, romance, and that lovely feeling in your heart of hearts than the show about some vampiric twink with a trench coat, a tommy gun, and “the hypnotic power to cloud men’s minds”?
That’s transition goals right there, if you ask me.
We’re starting things off with “The Bride of Death”, which originally aired on March 6th, 1938 – I say “originally” because there are two episodes by this name, hence the joke behind this week’s show name1 – is first up, featuring such lovely and sweet themes as “a human sacrifice-happy cult” and “some dude named Prophet of the Ancient One”. Sadly, Nyarlathotep was not available for a tap-dance number.
Next up, we’ve got “The Devil Takes A Wife”, originally airing on December 8, 1946 and featuring Bret Morrison as the titular Shadow. There’s no actual wifery to be had this episode, sadly, but it does feature a bunch of gullible saps sending half their cash to some goth chick who calls herself the Devil’s Bride. I’m sure we could make at least a couple jokes about modern love out of that.
The Jazz Program: Archie Shepp Plays For The Losers - Painted Lady (with Abbey Lincoln) / Blue Ballads / Wo!man (with Joachim Kühn)
One of the hardest cover photos to ever grace any album ever recorded. Also, I want that bodysuit.
Technically, this is our Valentine’s Day episode.
If you’re a long-time listener of the show, you might be genuinely confused as to why I’m saying “technically” here–hell, we’ve literally played two hours of J Dilla before, so if anything this is the closest to a “jazz-centric Jazz Program Valentine’s Day Special” we’re going to get.
And it is! All three of these albums share a common theme–they’re all by the legendary Archie Shepp, and they’ve all got something to do with women. Thing is, while Blue Ballads is hands-down one of my favorite jazz records ever recorded, it is absolutely not what I would call romantic. Forlorn? Yes. Heartbroken? absolutely. Inordinately impassioned? Always. But not romantic.
And that’s just one record out of the three. I’ve tried to keep it somewhat consistent on this week’s playlist, but Shepp generally isn’t much of a crooner as much as he is a wailer–I’ve once described a track of his on another record as “neck deep in the bottle and crying its heart out”2– and he’s absolutely more of a free jazz man than a one-trick pony. Hell, the title of this week’s installment quite literally comes from another Archie Shepp record., which starts with a funk anthem and ends with a 21 minute free-jazz piece.
This ain’t “John Coltrane Plays For Lovers”, is what I’m tellin’ you. Leave your date at home, kids. We gettin’ wild with it tonight.
With that said, in order: we’ve got his suitably swanky 1981 collaboration with Abbey Lincoln, “Painted Lady” (or Golden Lady, as the original Inner City Records release calls it), then the aforementioned 1996 classic in misery, Blue Ballads. After that, we’ve got something a bit newer; namely, his mellow-yet-somber 2011 collaboration on the Archie Ball label with German pianist Joachim Kühn, “Wo!man”.
I wouldn’t call it a Valentine’s Day episode, but I would love to see you there. Tune in!
Aaand that’s it for this week! This is the first installment since the hiatus ended that I’ve written some new schedules rather than re-using old programs, and I genuinely hope you all enjoy them! If you’re reading this the day of, and you can make it in tonight, 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.
Footnotes…
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Whooo boy. If there was ever a reason why I put footnotes on this site, this bad-joke-tangent is it.
So, there are technically two episodes with this exact name. There’s the Season One episode featuring Orson Welles in the role of The Shadow, which is the one we’ll be hearing this evening. There’s also the Season 13 episode, which featured Bret Morrison in the title role, has an actual writing credit by one Peter Barry, and aired on January 15, 1950. That episode, as best I can tell, was not preserved and is lost media.
Regardless, there are two episodes titled “THE BRIDE OF DEATH”, and assuming he didn’t get divorced somewhere in there…well, let’s hope Death lives in Utah. ↩︎ -
I’d link you to the full quote, but it’s been archived and I don’t really have time to resurrect an entire archive for the sake of sourcing one of my own quotes. So here’s the full excerpt, from the now-offline September 2023 Jazz Program calendar, which began with a series of write-ups on my favorite interpretations of “Autumn Leaves”:
“Starting this off with a cover of the original French, Archie’s saxophone cries out at its most mournfully in this version of Les Feuilles Mortes. Released on Japan’s Venus Records, this sounds like it could have been on my beloved Shepp Quartet record Blue Ballads, if Blue Ballads was recorded neck deep in the bottle and crying its heart out. Harold Mabern’s piano playing on this track is absolutely superb as well, providing a melancholy hand on the listener’s shoulder as Archie’s saxophone wails out against the cruel world and the heartache it causes. The whole album is absolutely worth a listen, if for no other reason than this track.” ↩︎