(Yeah, the 'smart' answer might be '1935-1945', but I was hoping for slightly more specific comments
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Moderators: Mr Awesomer, JesseMiner, CafeSavoy
Amongst other things. Earlier that night, there seems to have been a little something going on at Carnegie Hall. Amen to the time machine suggestion.trev wrote:I think you'll find a certain battle of the bands took place
I'd be at Carnegie Hall for the Goodman concert the same night. Wouldn't miss the Honeysuckle Rose jam, all 16 minutes of swinging awesomeness with jazz superstars including Basie, Lester Young and Buck Clayton! Maybe head up to the Savoy afterward.penguin wrote:Hell, I can do better than that. I'll give you an exact date and place:
January 16th, 1938, Savoy Ballroom, New York, New York.
It's the first one I'm programming into my time machine when it comes in the post.
It's a time machine - I can do the concerts in the reverse order (and multiple times, just have to careful I don't end up dancing with myself, wonder what sort of paradox that would create).Toon Town Dave wrote:I'd be at Carnegie Hall for the Goodman concert the same night. Wouldn't miss the Honeysuckle Rose jam, all 16 minutes of swinging awesomeness with jazz superstars including Basie, Lester Young and Buck Clayton! Maybe head up to the Savoy afterward.penguin wrote:Hell, I can do better than that. I'll give you an exact date and place:
January 16th, 1938, Savoy Ballroom, New York, New York.
It's the first one I'm programming into my time machine when it comes in the post.
I think '38 was the pinnacle year of swing although '37 was pretty good too for the hard swinging sound that I dig from both big bands and smaller groups.
Yes, that was the sort of question in my mind when I started the thread - songs recorded in year X versus year Y versus year P. I found it really interesting making separate playlists by year, and then playing at random from that year only. After a while, you sort of become used to the 1937 sound, as opposed to the 1939 sound or the 41 sound. I was listening to songs from 37, and then 38, and thought the 37 lot sounded much more exciting. But then I listened a second time and started to like the 38 selectionanton wrote:I'll interpret the question as: "If you had to DJ for three hours and could only use music recorded one specific year, what year would that be?"
I agree that it's fun to trace how artists develop over time. Also it's interesting to see which songs they keep in their book and how they've changed (e.g., old and new testament "Shorty George") and also which songs they didn't seem to repeat (e.g., "shout and feel it"). Ellington did alot of both since some of his songs were designed for specific instrumentalists and he would retire them until he had an instrumentalist who he felt could do it justice. Also Duke was open to ideas from the instrumentalists, so when Ray Nance joined the band he added to violin to C Jam Blues and it has pretty much stuck.dogpossum wrote: So I guess I tend to favour particular artists (especially ones like Basie and Ellington who had such long careers) rather than particular years. I like hearing how their music changes over the years.
I'm also beginning to get interested in groups of artists playing in particular cities in particular years/series of years. I like the thought of a town full of musicians influencing each other... if I had access to a time machine (after flying to the US) I'd probably visit a particular city and wander around during the evening into the early hours. I'd need a guide who knew a bunch of fun people, and that guide'd probably have to be male, as I'm not sure a white chick like myself would have a terribly great time wandering the streets of a foreign city in the middle of the night in the early 20th century. I'd like to see the big names, but I'd also like to see smaller names - the venue and vibe of the gig would be as important as the actual musicians, I think.