Photograph courtesy of the Eddie Randle Family
As we noted last week, Jazz Unlimited host (and Look-Listen contributor) Dennis Owsley is broadcasting an ambitious, eight-week radio documentary on the history of jazz in St. Louis. Last week's program covered Ragtime and the 1920s. This week's topic is "The Great Depression and the Beginning of World War II." From the program notes:
"The musicians and groups featured in Part Two are Red McKenzie and the Mound City Blue Blowers, Pee Wee Russell, Eddie Johnson and the St. Louis Crackerjacks, Hayes Pillars and the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra, George Hudson, Eddie Randle and the St. Louis Blue Devils, Shorty Baker, Clark Terry, Miles Davis’s trumpet teacher, Elwood Buchanon and Floyd Smith. Some of the things revealed in the second part of the documentary include:
- The lineage of the Cab Calloway Orchestra began in St. Louis
- The connection of St. Louis musicians to Fats Waller
- The disenfranchisement of minorities by the unions
- The discovery of Jimmy Blanton by people who were actually in the room
- Private recordings by the St. Louis Blue Devils
- The effect that 'Harlem Rhythm' on radio station WIL had on two major jazz stars from St. Louis"
You can still stream last week's episode on the St. Louis Public Radio site. And for all of you history nerds, if Sunday's broadcast whets your appetite to do more research on St. Louis' amazing jazz history, we shuld alert you to the existence of the National Ragtime and Jazz Archive at the Lovejoy Library at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, which is a repository for photographs, oral histories and other artifacts, including material on Eddie Randle, pictured above.
