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"Class of '39" This Week on Riverwalk Jazz

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Riverwalk Jazz this week offers a musical snapshot of 1939, a year that produced some of the greatest motion pictures, jazz recordings, and songwriting of the 20th century.

Stream this hour-long show now in its entirety in Windows Media.

Musical guests for this show (in encore appearances) include piano legend Dick Hyman, vibraphonist Lionel Hampton the Canadian tenor saxophonist Brian Ogilvie, Portland- based singer Rebecca Kilgore, two veterans of the Bob Crosby Orchestra Bob Haggart and Yank Lawson and the great Australian cornetist Bob Barnard.

A decade after the crash that caused the Great Depression, Americans were eager to embrace a new sense of hope. In 1939, some of the best movies and pop songs of all time lightened the load for the 17.2 % of the population still without a job.

Swing was the thing in popular music that year. Benny Goodman reigned as the “King of Swing," and could set a room of jitterbugging teenagers on fire with his clarinet. Yet the big event of 1939 for Goodman was the moment he invited a shy, Oklahoma-born guitarist named Charlie Christian to join his band. Although his tenure with Goodman was brief, Christian made a significant contribution to Goodman's small ensembles.

In 1939, while on tour with the Goodman band, vibraphonist Lionel Hampton had the jitters about his first airplane ride. When Goodman assured him there was no other way to get from Los Angeles to Atlantic City for their next gig, Hampton used his nervous energy to compose his signature song, “Flyin' Home," during the flight.

1939 was also the year that the enormously popular Glenn Miller Orchestra recorded “In the Mood," to this day one of the most-played tunes from the Swing Era

In 1939, Jerome Kern was in his third decade of composing enduring hit songs for Broadway musicals. The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra's arrangement of Kern's “All the Things You Are" climbed the charts for 13 weeks in 1939. Kern strongly believed that his songs should be performed exactly as he composed them. He would therefore be horrified to know that “All the Things You Are" is today one of the staples of the jam session, subject to endless de-construction and improvised variation by generations of jazz musicians

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In the Third-Reich Germany of 1939, Adolph Hitler banned jazz and swing as “degenerate music." But on New York's fabled 52nd Street, half a dozen high-octane jazz clubs lined the pavement in one block alone. The Onyx where John Kirby held forth with Charlie Shavers and Maxine Sullivan, the Famous Door where the Count Basie Orchestra wedged itself onto a tiny stage, the Three Deuces and Jimmy Ryan's were open from dusk to dawn.

Working his gig at Kelley's Stables, Coleman Hawkins had been playing the same pop standard just about every night. At the end of a recording session in October 1939, Hawkins tossed it off as an after-thought and almost forgot he'd recorded it. Today, Hawkins' 1939 version of “Body and Soul" is “required listening" for jazz saxophonists of all stripes.

Bandleader Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong and tap dance star Bill “Bojangles" Robinson starred in the “World's Fair Edition" of the year's popular revue—The Cotton Club Parade. Two songs in the show made a splash—Sammy Cahn's “You're a Lucky Guy" performed by Armstrong and “Don't Worry 'Bout Me" introduced by Calloway.

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