Hello and welcome to Jazz of Two Decades.

This will be music of the 1940s and the 1950s - music and jazz from two very important decades in the history of jazz.

Music representative of the styles and the sounds of people like Ellington, Count Basie, Stan Kenton.

And in order to recreate the entire sound o this particular era in a short t to recreate the entire sound of this particular era in a short time, our guests on the program toda include the Clairton High School Stage Band under the direction of Joe Campus, The Mark Wallace Quintet, and a very fine pianist by the name of Lou Schreiber.

So let's begin first with Edward Kennedy Ellington, “The Duke” whose music is perhaps commo to all decades in jazz anyway.

He formed his first band way back in 1917, which was an important year for other reasons.

It was in 1917 that the Original Dixieland Jazz Band recorded the very first jazz tunes ever put on record.

Then there was another fellow that was born in 1917.

His name was John Birks Gillespi better known as “Dizzy.” In 1931, Ellington's tune “It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing” gave us the name for one of the most important big band eras in jazz, the swing era.

The stage band has a tune representative of a more contemporary swing or jump tune called “All Right, Okay, You Win.” Count Basies band came along a bit after Ellington, but it wasn't really until 1935 that Basie came into national prominence.

One night out of Kansas City, Benny Goodman and John Hammond, jazz historian, heard a Basie broadcast on the radio and booked them into New York City, where they were an instant success.

It's kind of tough to describe the Basie sound, the tight rhythm section.

One of his sidemen, I think, captured it in a quote when he said, “The Count don't really play nothing, but it sure sounds great.” Here's a tune called Basie Straight Ahead.

You can't really leave the 1940s without mentioning something about Bop or Bebop or Rebop, as it was sometimes called.

And if Bop had a birth place, it would have to be the jam sessions, originating about 1941 at a Harlem nightspot called Minton's.

If Bop has a father, you might have to say it would be the late, great Charlie “The Bird” Parker, a saxophonist whose influence kind of carried the movement at the time - all through the 40s.

Bop was designed so that in order to give musicians some rhythmic and melodic freedom they hadn't had with the big bands.

The Mark Wallace Quintet had something representative of Bop, and it's titled, “So What?” On to the 1950s, and the arrival of a very fine classical concert pianist from Canada by the name of Oscar Peterson.

From England, the former Ted Heath accordionist by the name of George Shearing, who formed his quintet.

Now we have the beginnings of the cool, progressive, small unit sound of the early 1950s.

The Jerry Mulligan's, the Brubeck's.

Young pianist Lou Schreiber, has something representative of the Oscar Peterson technique, the execution that's practically unparalleled among jazz pianists - a tune called Waltz for Debby.

You hear the name Stan Kenton, you think of passages like soaring brass choirs and dissonant modal passages, augmented diminished notes.

This typifies what is and was a musical rebel: Stan Kenton, a man who could orchestrate a very difficult piece but allow bar after bar of open music in which his featured performers could solo to their hearts delight.

This was the essence of the Stan Kenton approach to music.

One innovation that Stan really gotten credit for was the fact that in 1947, he hired a Brazilian guitarist by the name of Laurindo Almeida, incorporating the Brazilian samba into American jazz.

Today, we call that Bossa Nova.

But that was back in 1947.

The stage band returns with a ballad, and a ballad is a vehicle in which you can taste the beauty of the cantonesque type of arrangement, Here's That Rainy Day.

The title of the final selection is Equinox, which is perhaps appropriate because it's a term that implies change or a condition of change.

And in the 1950s, w had a wealth of change in jazz.

It was in the 50s that some of the groups, like the Modern Jazz Quartet, began to incorporate overtones of classical music into the standard jazz format.

We had the classical tunes, which were called in some respects, “Third Stream” or “Third Rail” music.

Then we had the extensions of the mainstream sound, pioneered by one of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time, Miles Davis, along with another cohort by the name of John Coltrane, a saxophonist, a protege of the Charlie Parker.

This was a sound that began to incorporate everything that was good in music at the time.

A tune representative of the sound Equinox, performed by the Mark Wallace Quintet.

And that's our short story on jazz from the 1940s and the 1950s.

There's still jazz of the 1920s, 30s, 60s and beyond, but that will have to wait for another time.

On behalf of the Clairton High School Stage Band with Joe Campus, the Mark Wallace Quintet, pianist Lou Schreiber, this is Bernie Armstrong.

Thank you very much for being our guest on Jazz of Two Decades and saying goodbye for now.