the Club McKenzie: Your 1920s Jazz Speakeasy
Series produced by Guy Rathbun
Joe "King" Oliver
A weekly program of Music and Stories for "The Jazz Age."
Across the spectrum of pop and jazz from the late teens to the early 1930s, this weekly series from the Club McKenzie invites you the share in the talents and tales of the musicians and performers that created an unforgettable era.
624 Pieces
By the late 1920s the day of the sheet music was fading as fewer family members had the musical talent. Piano’s were replaced by the phonograph. Wh...
Bought by KCBX
With the public's thirst for jazz, the number of record producers increased very quickly in the 1920s. Sounds good. But most of those new comers we...
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Among all of the wonderful bands of the 1920s, only a hand full had the same personnel for a long period of time: Duke Ellington, Count Basie and L...
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With the exception of the piano, stringed instruments were the outsiders in early jazz. They were restricted to the rhythm section, and not conside...
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A look at the origins of the word “jazz”. Would you believe that the root of the word is absolutely not what you think it is? After all this time, ...
Bought by WEAA, WNMU-FM, and KCBX
When musicians began migrating north to Chicago in 1917, there was one item that was a must. Besides their suitcase and instrument, they had to hav...
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Three of the biggest names in 20th century popular music. All of them started their careers before jazz reached north of Kansas City, but years lat...
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Second cousins, you might say. As jazz evolved, it adopted many other musical genres. Vaudeville was a natural. It welcomed the peculiar and experi...
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The Blues was never expected to join the British royalty, but in the 1920s, the musical genre morphed and shifted its course. When jazz melded with...
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A commonly used word for someone who played piano. Three of those artists are featured. One from the south, Jelly Roll Morton, East, Duke Ellington...
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Buzz translates to rumor, and if Chicago was anything in the 1920s jazz and rumor were the glue. There was constant buss around political intrigue,...
Bought by WXAV 88.3FM Chicago and KCBX
The fixture of the 1920s and early ‘30s was a result of the Volstead Act that introduced America to prohibition, and fostered the nightclubs that s...
Bought by KCBX
This program features a cross section of musicians … with paraphrases from Bill Crow’s book “Jazz Anecdotes”. Humorous stories about by Louis Armst...
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Quite a number of jazz musicians who were too young to take part in traditional jazz of the 1920s, joined the Revivalist era of the 1940s. To them ...
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You’d be hard press to find more enthusiastic musicians who anticipated and relished every beat. McKinney’s Cotton Pickers were a young group who a...
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In the earliest years of jazz, the process of recording wasn’t close to being perfected. Microphones didn’t exist. Vocalists had to belt out their ...
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Soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet is among the giants of early jazz. An equal of Louis Armstrong. Yet, he is not that well remembered. Part of the ...
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Master and pupil, James P. Johnson and Thomas “Fats” Waller. James P. created stride. He and Fats popularized it. Their work in the 1920s influenc...
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Although the isn’t as well known today, Red Allen was favorably compared with Louis Armstrong in the 1920s and ‘30s. He managed to perform with som...
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By the mid 1920s, Harlem had completed its renaissance in art and literature. Now it was time for the music to complete the circle. At its height, ...
Bought by KCBX
