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Thursday
PODCAST EMR004
vintage summer radio program
30 July 1949, from otrcat.com, a vintage broadcast (edit) of a Chicago Summer Theater of the Air. This program Music In The Air features the music of Jerome Kern, George Gershwin and others. Performers are Virginia Parker, Bruce Foote and Barnard Isso. This unique radio show was created during the rising popularity of operas and dramas in the 1940s with an attempt to add high culture to American entertainment. The operas were sensitively translated into English and were supplemented by strong story dramas. The combination was quite successful and the show covered a variety of operas such as Madame Butterfly, The Vagabond King, The Merry Widow and many others. The show was 60 minutes long as the creators prided themselves in utilizing the complete music and intended plot for each opera...OTRCAT.COM
Episodic Log -
Monday
birth anniversary conductor CARMEN DRAGON
CARMEN DRAGON conductor, arranger –received an Oscar for best score (w/Morris Stoloff) for “Cover Girl” (1944) – musical director for films “Lovely To Look At” and “The Kid From Brooklyn” -rec. w/Hollywood Bowl Symphony for Capitol. Conducted radio orchestra for many Hollywood based network shows in the 1940's. Carmen Dragon was born on July 28, 1914 and died March 28, 1984. Dragon was born in Antioch, California. He was very active in pops music conducting and composed scores for several films, including At Gunpoint (1955), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Night into Tomorrow (1951), and Kiss Tomorrow Good-bye (1950). He conducted the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra, and they performed on the "Standard Oil Hour," broadcast on NBC for elementary schools in the late 1940s through the 1950s. The show was sponsored by Standard Oil Company of California, but other than the name there were no commercials. The program featured a high quality introduction to classical music for young people growing up in the 1940s and early 1950s. Dragon made a series of popular light classical albums for Capitol Records during the 1950s with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. Some of these recordings have been reissued by EMI on CD. Carmen Dragon is the father of harpist Carmen Dragon and Daryl Dragon of the 1970s pop music duo The Captain & Tennille.
WEB - SHOP Carmen Dragon
Saturday
Theater of Hits
VICTOR HERBERT melodies on Theater of Hits a musical public service transcription from 1954. Host John Bachowner presented Broadway musical songs performed by the United States Marine Band, under the direction of William F. Saddleman. Each show welcomed listeners as if they were coming to the theatre to see a live performance. So, find your seats and settle in for this performance of Victor Herbert favorites on Theatre of Hits as presented by the US Marine Corp.
Thursday
PODCAST EMR003
Robert Farnon
24 JULY 1917 Birth of Canadian-English composer Robert FARNON in Toronto, Ontario. d-Guernsey, 23 APR 2005.
Farnon was commissioned as a captain in the Canadian Army and became the conductor/arranger of the Canadian Band of the Allied Expeditionary Force sent overseas during World War II, which was the Canadian equivalent of the American Band of the AEF led by Major Glenn Miller. At the end of the war, Farnon decided to make England his home, and he later moved to Guernsey in the Channel Islands with his wife and children. He was considered by his peers the finest arranger in the world, and his talents influenced many composer-arrangers including Quincy Jones, all of whom acknowledge his contributions to their work. Conductor Andre Previn called him "the greatest writer for strings in the world." Robert Farnon died at the age of eighty-seven at a hospice near his home of forty years in Guernsey. He was survived by five children.
Farnon Society Biography | WEB | IMAGES | SHOP Robert Farnon
Sunday
Johnny and Cleo at 80
JAZZ singer Dame Cleo Laine and her husband Sir Johnny Dankworth have the delightful insouciance that comes with having lived a full and happy 80 years on this planet.
MORE | ON THE WEB | IMAGES | SHOP Cleo Laine Johnny Dankworth
Saturday
Your Hit Parade
Your Hit Parade was a popular American radio and television program, sponsored by Lucky Strike cigarettes and broadcast from 1935 to 1955 on radio, and 1950 to 1959 on television. During this 24-year run, the show had 19 orchestra leaders and 52 singers or groups. Each Saturday evening, the program offered the most popular and bestselling songs of the week. The earliest format involved a presentation of the top 15 songs. Later, a countdown with fanfares led to the top three finalists, with the number one song for the finale. Occasional performances of standards and other favorite songs from the past were known as "Lucky Strike Extras."
ON THE WEB | IMAGES | SHOP Your Hit Parade
Friday
Ed Ames
Ed Ames (born Edmund Dantes Urick on July 9, 1927) is an American popular singer and actor.
He is best known for his Pop and Adult Contemporary hits of the 1960s like "When the Snow is on the Roses" and the perennial "My Cup Runneth Over." He also was originally part of a popular singing group of 1950s called The Ames Brothers.
MORE WIKI BIO | ON THE WEB | IMAGES | SHOP Ed Ames
Thursday
Jo Stafford has died
Jo STAFFORD ...R.I.P. .....Nov. 12th 1917/July 16th 2008
Jo Stafford (born Jo Elizabeth Stafford born November 12, 1917, in Coalinga, California was an American pop singer whose career spanned the late 1930s through the early 1960s. Stafford is greatly admired for the purity of her voice and is considered one of the most versatile vocalists of the era. She is also viewed as a pioneer of modern musical parody, having won a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album in 1961 (with husband Paul Weston) for their album Jonathan and Darlene Edwards in Paris.
ON THE WEB | SHOP Jo Stafford
Happy Birthday Diahann Carroll
DIAHANN CARROLL born on 17 July 1935, Nee Carol Diahann Johnson. The singer/actress of stage (“No Strings”) and screen (“Carmen Jones”) has Recordings on RCA, United Artists, and Columbia. She is an American Academy Award-nominated, Golden Globe and Tony Award-winning actress and singer.
MORE from Wiki Bio | ON THE WEB | IMAGES | Shop: DIAHANN CARROLL
Wednesday
Ginger Rogers
16 JULY 1911 - Birthday Ginger Rogers (Virginia Katherine McMath), Academy Award winning American actress, singer and dancer who partnered with Fred Astaire...("Did everything he did but backwards and in high-heels")
Died 25 April 1995. Rogers introduced some celebrated numbers from the Great American Songbook, songs such as Harry Warren and Al Dubin's "The Gold Diggers' Song (We're in the Money)" from Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), "Music Makes Me" from Flying Down to Rio (1933), "The Continental" from The Gay Divorcee (1934), Irving Berlin's "Let Yourself Go" from Follow the Fleet (1936) and the Gershwins' "Embraceable You" from Girl Crazy and "They All Laughed (at Christopher Columbus)" from Shall We Dance (1937). Furthermore, in song duets with Astaire, she co-introduced Berlin's "I'm Putting all My Eggs in One Basket" from Follow the Fleet (1936), Jerome Kern's "Pick Yourself Up" and "A Fine Romance" from Swing Time (1936) and the Gershwins' "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" from Shall We Dance (1937). Ginger Rogers won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her starring role in 1940s Kitty Foyle...dramatized on radio's Lux, Presents Hollywood:
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