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: The Black Museum - The Champagne Glass / The Claw Hammer
(This program schedule was originally aired January 23, 2024.)
The coldest motherfucker to ever do it.
You can’t step five feet into the history of old-time radio1 without running into the man himself, Orson Fucking Welles. An absolute juggernaut of the medium responsible for most folks’ main cultural touchstone when it comes to radio plays as well as an unreasonable amount of shows, one-offs, and careers, Welles is a force to be reckoned with.
The Black Museum was one of Orson’s later outings, with its original airdates starting in 1952, fourteen years after Welles and the Mercury Theater turned the world upside down with their infamous broadcast of The War Of The Worlds. The series showcases tales based on true to life cases from Scotland Yard’s murder files, with the name “The Black Museum” coming from a moniker given in 1877 by a writer of The Observer to Scotland Yard’s Crime Museum.
We’ve got “Champagne Glass” and “The Claw Hammer”, both of which were aired in the original run in 1952. (I could not find an original air date for either episode; or any of the other episodes in the series, for that matter. If you happen to know them, please reach out via email!)
The Jazz Program Gives You A TAG TEAM TABLES MATCH: Bill Evans and Jim Hall’s “Undercurrent” / Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster’s “Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster” / Antônio Carlos Jobim and Frank Sinatra’s “Sinatra–Jobim Sessions”
(This program schedule was originally aired January 2, 2024.)
GET THE TABLEEEEESSSSS
This one’s about as straightforward as you’re going to get as far as theme nights go–three albums worth of tag-teams of heavy hitters, back to back to back. You may note we’ve played at least one of these albums already–back in the day, while I was experimenting with the “artist spotlight” format we do on a weekly basis these days, I ran an episode on Bill Evans and played Undertow as the night’s closer.
It’s one of my favorite albums, however, and so we’re playing it again, along with the 1957 release “Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster” and the alternate-take collection of the absolutely legendary 1967 release “Francis Albert Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim”2, 1979’s “Sinatra-Jobim Sessions”.
I have quite a few other phenominal team-up records which I could have picked, but for now, we’ll stick to these three. Keep an eye out though; you never know when I’m gonna hit you with the 3D.
Aaand that’s it for this week! Unfortunately, we’re back to re-runs this week–I’ve got this month’s Clippings to write, as well as a few other projects and deadlines to close out–but hopefully we’ll be back to new sets and new programming again soon!
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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…or in this show’s broadcast history, for that matter. We played him just last week, actually– Orson Welles was the original voice of The Shadow, as you most likely heard in our first episode of the evening, “The Bride Of Death”! ↩︎
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If you’re a long time listener to the show and this record sounds familiar to you (aside from this particular show’s original air date) it should; I also played it during the brief period where I was trying out the Artist Spotlight format. I’ve also repeatedly referred to it as “the closest humanity will get to a perfect record”. It’s probably in my top 5, if not occupying the top slot. Francis Albert Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim is a fucking fantastic record, and everyone should listen to it at least once. ↩︎