The Big Band Jazz Review

08/08/2022

Or a Trombone! which I play😀

20/07/2022

We play many types of music, all played by Big Bands- from today and yesterday.

Visit our internet page to listen to our stream and learn about our internet radio station! 😎👍

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26/06/2022

19/06/2022

Wishing all the Fathers, Grandfathers, Godfathers, Foster Fathers, Step Fathers and people who fill a fatherly role in someone’s life a Happy Fathers Day!

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30/05/2022

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08/05/2022

To all the Mothers, Grandmothers, God Mothers, and anyone else who fulfills a motherly role in someone’s life-Happy Mother’s Day!

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19/04/2022

Yep! 🎼🎵🎹🎺🎷

17/04/2022

Happy Easter to our listeners, friends and family from The Big Band Jazz Review.

Listen to us anytime 🎶🎵🎼🎷💃🕺

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17/03/2022

Wishing all of our listeners, friends and followers the luck of the Irish!

01/03/2022

Happy Paczki (Poonch-key) Day from the Big Band Jazz Review (here in Chicago)!

14/02/2022

Happy Valentine’s Day from The Big Band Jazz Review!

31/12/2021

Wishing our listeners, your friends and your families a very Happy New Year from Kevin & Julie! 🍾🥂

26/12/2021

The Big Band Jazz Review wishes a
Happy Kwanzaa to our fans celebrating today!

24/12/2021

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays from Kevin & Julie at The Big Band Jazz Review!

20/12/2021

Another Big Band Jazz Review Birthday this month……

Steve Tyrell (born Stephen Louis Bilao III, December 19, 1944 age 77) is an American singer and record producer.

He won a 2004 Grammy Award as the producer of the Rod Stewart album Stardust: The Great American Songbook, Volume III. He has hosted a jazz radio program on KKJZ in Los Angeles.

Tyrell was head of A&R and promotion at Scepter Records. He produced B.J. Thomas' hits "Hooked on a Feeling" and "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head". He wrote "How Do You Talk to an Angel" for the TV show The Heights (American TV series) and "Hold On" for Jamie Walters, "It's Only Love" for B.J. and Elvis Presley.

He sang "The Way You Look Tonight" on the Father of the Bride (1991 film) soundtrack. He has released several albums of jazz standards.

The Big Band Jazz Review plays several of Steve’s songs on our station.

20/12/2021

The Big Band Jazz Review remembers another December big band birthday.

Stanley Newcomb Kenton (December 15, 1911 – August 25, 1979) was an American popular music and jazz artist.

As a pianist, composer, arranger and band leader, he led an innovative and influential jazz orchestra for almost four decades. Though Kenton had several pop hits from the early 1940s into the 1960s, his music was always forward-looking.

Kenton was a salient figure on the American musical scene and made an indelible mark on the arranged type of big band jazz.

Kenton's music evolved with the times from 1940 through the 1970s. He was at the vanguard of promoting jazz and jazz improvisation through his service as an educator through his Stan Kenton Band Clinics. The "Kenton Style" continues to permeate big bands at the high school and collegiate level, and the framework he designed for the "jazz clinic" is still widely in use today.

Starting in the waning days of the big band era, Kenton found a multitude of ways in which to progress his art form. In his hands the size of the jazz orchestra expanded greatly, at times exceeding forty musicians. The frequency range (high and low notes) was also increased with the use of bass trombones and tuba, and baritone and bass saxophones. The dynamic range was pushed on both ends; the band could play softer and louder than any other big band. Kenton was the primary band leader responsible for moving the big band from the dance hall to the concert hall.

Kenton was also a pioneer in the field of jazz education, creating the Stan Kenton Jazz Camp in 1959 at Indiana University.

The Kenton Alumni of musicians, arrangers, singers and future bandleaders reads like a Who’ Who of the Jazz & Big Band world.

The Big Band Jazz Review plays various Stan Kenton selections.

14/12/2021

A belated BIG BAND JAZZ REVIEW birthday to Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra.

He was born on December 12, 1915, in Hoboken, New Jersey. He died on May 14, 1998, in Los Angeles, California.

A teenaged Sinatra decided to become a singer after watching Bing Crosby perform in the mid-1930s. He'd already been a member of the glee club in his high school and began to sing at local nightclubs. Radio exposure brought him to the attention of bandleader Harry James, with whom Sinatra made his first recordings, including "All or Nothing at All." In 1940, Tommy Dorsey invited Sinatra to join his band. After two years of chart-topping success with Dorsey, Sinatra decided to strike out on his own.

Between 1943 and 1946, Sinatra's solo career blossomed as the singer charted a slew of hit singles. The mobs of bobby-soxer fans Sinatra attracted with his dreamy baritone earned him such nicknames as "The Voice" and "The Sultan of Swoon."

Sinatra made his movie acting debut in 1943.

Sinatra's popularity began to slide in the postwar years, however, leading to a loss of his recording and film contracts in the early 1950s.

But in 1953, he made a triumphant comeback, winning an Oscar for supporting actor for his portrayal of the Italian American soldier Maggio in the classic From Here to Eternity. Although this was his first non-singing role, Sinatra quickly found a new vocal outlet when he received a recording contract with Capitol Records in the same year. The Sinatra of the 1950s brought forth a more mature sound with jazzier inflections in his voice.

Having regained stardom, Sinatra enjoyed continued success in both movies and music for years to come.

He continued to be a formidable chart presence. When his record sales began to dip by the end of the 1950s, Sinatra left Capitol to establish his own record label, Reprise. In association with Warner Bros., which later bought Reprise, Sinatra also was nicknamed “Chairman of the Board” when he founded Reprise.

By the mid-1960s, Sinatra was back on top again. He received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and headlined the 1965 Newport Jazz Festival with Count Basie's Orchestra. This period also marked his Las Vegas debut, where he continued on for years as the main attraction at Caesars Palace. As a founding member of the "Rat Pack," alongside Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop, Sinatra came to epitomize the hard-drinking, womanizing, gambling swinger—an image constantly reinforced by the popular press and Sinatra's own albums. With his modern edge and timeless class, even radical youth of the day had to pay Sinatra his due.

Sinatra had a big hit in 1966 with the Billboard No. 1 track "Strangers in the Night," which won a Grammy for record of the year. He also recorded the duet "Something Stupid" with his daughter Nancy, who'd previously made waves with the feminist anthem "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'." The two reached No. 1 for four weeks with "Something Stupid" in spring 1967. By the end of the decade, Sinatra had added another signature song to his repertory—"My Way," which was adapted from a French tune and featured new lyrics by Paul Anka.

After a brief retirement in the early 1970s, Sinatra returned to the music scene.

Frank worked with some of the best arrangers, musicians, and big bands throughout his career including: Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie, Nelson Riddle, Billy May, Quincy Jones, Sammy Nestico, and others.

In 1993, at the age of 77, he gained legions of new, younger fans with the release of Duets, a collection of 13 Sinatra standards that he rerecorded, featuring the likes of Barbra Streisand, Bono, Tony Bennett and Aretha Franklin.

With a show business career that spanned more than 50 years, Sinatra's continued mass appeal can best be explained in the man's own words: "When I sing, I believe. I'm honest."

(Info used from biography.com and Wikipedia)

08/12/2021

The Big Band Jazz Review remembers Sammy Davis, Jr. on his birthday.

Samuel George Davis Jr.
(December 8, 1925 – May 16, 1990).

Sammy Davis Jr. overcame prevailing racism to establish himself as an entertainment legend, becoming a successful comedian, actor, dancer and singer.

As part of the Rat Pack, with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, Davis was known for films like Ocean's 11 and Sergeants 3 along with his partying ways. As his fame grew, his refusal to appear in any clubs that practiced racial segregation led to the integration of several venues in Miami Beach and Las Vegas.

A Tony-nominated performer, Davis was also associated with popular recordings like "I've Gotta Be Me", Mr. Bojangles and the No. 1 hit "The Candy Man." He died of throat cancer on May 16, 1990.

07/12/2021

The Big Band Jazz Review remembers a birthday today.

Louis Leo Prima-
(December 7, 1910 – August 24, 1978) was an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, and trumpeter. While rooted in New Orleans jazz, swing music, and jump blues, Prima touched on various genres throughout his career: he formed a seven-piece New Orleans-style jazz band in the late 1920s, fronted a swing combo in the 1930s and a big band group in the 1940s, helped to popularize jump blues in the late 1940s and early to mid 1950s, and performed frequently as a Vegas lounge act beginning in the 1950s.

A tireless showman and an underrated musical talent, Louis Prima swung his way to icon status thanks to an irresistible, infectious sound whose appeal translated across generations.

Nominally a swing artist, Prima's distinctive sound also encompassed New Orleans-style jazz, boogie-woogie, jump blues, R&B, early rock & roll, and even the occasional Italian tarantella. Regardless of what form his music took, it swung hard and fast, with a rolling, up-tempo shuffle beat that helped some of his earlier material cross over to R&B audiences (his songs were also covered by jump blues artists from time to time).

His greatest period of popularity coincided with his marriage to singer Keely Smith, whose coolly sophisticated vocals and detached stage manner made a perfect counterpoint to Prima's boisterous presence: mugging, clowning, and cavorting around the stage with the boundless enthusiasm of a hyperactive boy.

Perhaps because Prima refused to take his music too seriously, sober-minded jazz critics often dismissed him as a mere entertainer, overlooking his very real talent as a jazzman. He was a capable, gravelly-voiced singer modeled on Louis Armstrong, boasting a surprising range, and was also a fine trumpet player, again in the irrepressible mold of Armstrong; what was more, he wrote Benny Goodman's perennial swing smash "Sing, Sing, Sing."

Prima's impact on popular culture was also significant; his pronounced ethnicity made it safe for other Italian-American singers to acknowledge their roots, and he was the first high-profile musical act to take up regular residence in the lounges and casinos of Las Vegas, helping to start the city's transformation into a broader-based entertainment capital.

His musical legacy proved long-lasting, as covers of his classics became modern-day hits for David Lee Roth and Brian Setzer; additionally, the '90s swing revival, which sought to re-emphasize the danceability and sense of fun that had largely disappeared from jazz, brought Prima's music back into the limelight (as well as the good graces of critics).

01/12/2021

Especially for those who play or read music….

It’s Yoda on the Coda!

29/11/2021

The Big Band Jazz Review wishes a Happy Hanukkah to all of our friends and fans!

28/11/2021

We are pleased to gradually mix in some Holiday Season & Christmas Big Band music to the radio station for your enjoyment!

We hope it helps you enjoy the season & our station just a little bit more!

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25/11/2021

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our Big Band Jazz Review friends and fans, your families and friends too!

In 1827, the noted magazine editor and prolific writer Sarah Josepha Hale—author, among countless other things, of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb”—launched a campaign to establish Thanksgiving as a “national holiday”.

For 36 years, she published numerous editorials and sent scores of letters to governors, senators, presidents and other politicians, earning her the nickname the “Mother of Thanksgiving.”

Abraham Lincoln finally heeded her request in 1863, at the height of the Civil War, in a proclamation entreating all Americans to ask God to “commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.”

He scheduled Thanksgiving for the final Thursday in November, and it was celebrated on that day every year until 1939, when Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the holiday up a week in an attempt to spur retail sales during the Great Depression.

Roosevelt’s plan, known derisively as Franksgiving, was met with passionate opposition, and in 1941 the president reluctantly signed a bill making Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November.