#0057: This Week On The Air–April 21, 2026

Hello again! It’s time once again for yours truly to hit the airwaves on your favorite radio station, datafruits.fm.

If you missed me last week, don’t worry; I missed you too. And if anything, I’m annoyed that we didn’t get to do one of The Classic Bits on this program: playing an episode of The T-Men on tax day. (No, not that kind of T-men. Not trans men. Taxmen. Wrong men. Different kind of men.) So, if you missed your yearly installment of the hardest accounting specialists this side of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, check out last year’s show, where I fantasize about cute trans men and Reagan getting shoved off a balcony in equal measure.

Sadly, I had to actually spend all of last Tuesday doing my taxes rather than making jokes about income inequality and defenestration, so we were AWOL last week. We’ll have more Gay Tax Time exploits for you next year, I promise. For now, though, here’s what we’re playing this evening.

Talkie Time: That Hammer Guy - Contract On A Dead Man / The Dead Dame In The Park

The last time we listened to Mickey Spillane’s personal fantasy (and no, I am not talking about the eroticism-laced-with-transphobia surrounding the trans character Juno in Vengeance Is Mine, I’m talking about Mike Hammer as a concept), we made a crack or two about the terrible television adaptations of Hammer. Tonight, however, there’s something local going down here on the silver screens in my current stomping grounds of Madison, WI.

Cinesthesia is back at the Madison Public Library, and tonight at 6:30 they’re broadcasting the one and only Mike Hammer in the 1955 Robert Aldritch film Kiss Me Deadly, a fast and loose adaptation of Spillane that features far less pizza-chomping sitcom-esque antics than the ’90s television adaptation. And, becuase I will never pass up a chance to spread the Good Word about my favorite bumbling iron-packing horndog and the troubled, complicated author who brought him to bloody life in pulp and in paperback, we’re listening to two more of the few surviving epsiodes of the 1950’s radio adaptation of the one and only Mike Hammer.

First off, we’ve got “Contract On A Dead Man”, originally aired on April 21, 1953, and starring Larry Hayes as “That Hammer Guy”. After that, we’ve got Ted DeCorsia taking the title role slot in “The Dead Dame In The Park”, which originally aired on February 10, 1953.

The Jazz Program And The Case Of The Philly Funk, Part 1: Catalyst’s “Catalyst” (1972) / The Odean Pope Quintet’s “Fresh Breeze” / Tyrone Brown String Sextet’s “Song of the Sun”

Alright, buckle up. We’ve got yet another formal first in Jazz Program history: I actually had to make a Discogs account instead of just linking to them all the time.

Here’s the setup. At the end of last episode I mentioned that this week’s show would answer the question of “whatever happened to the funkiest band you’ve never heard?”. As some of you probably suspected, you can thank my love of references and guessing games for that one.

Jazz buff trivia-nerd listeners had an extra week to figure it out, but if you didn’t: I was talking about Philadelphia’s Catalyst, whose discography was re-released by 32 Groove in 1999 under the title The Funkiest Band You’ve Never Heard. Tonight’s show (well, last week’s show, technically) is a “where are they now?” exploration of the band’s work and the work they made after their breakup following 1976’s A Tear And A Smile.

HOWEVER. It turns out that one of those artists has exactly one record to his name, and that record is not available ANYWHERE. Not on streaming, not on download sites, not at my local library, not at any of the record shops near me. Nowhere.

So, I finally had to do the thing I’ve somehow managed to avoid doing in over half a decade of hunting down rare grooves and sharin’ ’em with you fine folks. I had to buy a record off Discogs. It’ll be here sometime in the next month or so, but while we wait…honey I promised you some Philly free jazz, and you can’t never say I ain’t did nothin’ for ya.

We’re starting it off with the record that started it all: Catalyst, by (you guessed it) Catalyst, released in 1972 on Cobblestone Records. In this original lineup, we’ve got Eddie Green on keys, Sherman Ferguson on drums, Odean Pope on woodwinds, and Al Johnson on bass…for most tracks. Anthony Jackson and Ron Baker also swap in on this record, and Johnson would later be replaced by Tyrone Brown, who we’ll be hearing more from later on tonight.

After that, we’ll follow the woodwind section onwards in time, all the way to 2010, with Odean Pope as bandleader in the Odean Pope Quartet’s Fresh Breeze, released in the Spirit Room series of records by avant-garde label CIMP¹.

And finally, we’ll catch up with the bass section (at least of their later records), as we track down stringed instrument enthusiast Tyrone Brown. Brown actually has one of the heftiest discographies of the four, including a fascinating album of compositions inspired by the work and life of Expressionist painter Herbert Gentry. We’ll get to that in a future episode; if there’s anything so far up my alley it’s not funny, it’s “jazz record inspired by a painter’s oeuvre”. But for now, we’re heading to the turn of the millenium, with the Tyrone Brown String Sextet’s Song Of The Sun, released in 2000 on the Naxos Jazz label.

Welp, we’ve covered two of the four (technically there’s five, if you count Al Johnson) members of the band. Who’s got a record coming in the mail for Piper? Which records will we check out next? I’ll leave that as an exercize for the reader. See if you can figure it out!

That about covers this week’s show! Next week, we’ll be heading over to Japan for a deep-sea dive into the world of listening rooms and liner notes, and I might just take some photos along the way. Crime related photography. You understand, of course. (Yes, this is another puzzle for you to figure out. See if you can guess what I mean, and email me at piperbomb (at) protonmail (dot) com if you think you can guess next week’s programming for either The Jazz Program or Talkie Time; if you can, I’ll give you a shoutout on-air!)

If you’re reading this the day of, and you can make it in tonight, you should 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: on datafruits dot fm..

Footnotes…