Forward Into the Past is a three-hour radio show celebrating the music and comedy of the 1920s, '30s and '40s. It airs each Sunday in the Los Angeles area from 2 to 5 p.m. Pacific Time over KSPC, 88.7 FM, and is rebroadcast each Monday morning at 6 a.m. Pacific Time. If you live outside of the Los Angeles-Orange County-Inland Empire area, you may access the broadcast in real time through the website, http://www.kspc.org.
Here are some of my favorite websites devoted to vintage music of the 1920s, '30s and '40s, and the talented people who created it!
I have to acknowledge another long-running show devoted to vintage music. I've been on the air with "Forward Into the Past" on KSPC, and earlier on KBPK-FM 90.1, since 1979--but Rich Conaty has me beat by a few years! His program The Big Broadcast has been on for more than 30 years, mostly over WFUV in New York, and I tip my cap to him for keeping vintage music on the airwaves.
If your passion for 78rpm-era music means that you want it only on actual 78rpm records, a very good website for information on all things 78 is The 78rpm Record Home Page, which will tell you how to acquire, repair, play or sell 78s. There's also a lot of fascinating history about various labels, and links to clubs, conventions and museums.
If you're trying to find vintage music on CD from a retail seller, the single best source I know of for this type of music is Worlds Records, an excellent mail-order company based in Novato, California. Their website includes a very good database; you can search by song title, artist, album name or label.
If you live in the Los Angeles area, a wonderful "brick-and-mortar" store for vintage music on CD is Canterbury Records, a legendary venue in Pasadena, California. They even carry phonograph cartridges and styli for those of us who love real records! They do also have a website store, so even if you don't live near Pasadena, check 'em out.
If you're looking for used LPs and CDs, a good mail-order source is Musicstack.com, a clearing house for 3,500 independent record stores worldwide. Don't be put off by the emphasis on rock music on their home page; they have all sorts of records, including thousands of 78s!
You can also check out websites run by labels which specialize in vintage music on CD. Among them are three labels based in England, ASV/Living Era, JSP Records, and Proper Records (the last two being great sources for inexpensive multi-CD box sets in nicely restored sound). Another source from the UK is Past Perfect, an excellent label which may not feature the most unusual or obscure records, but which transfers vintage favorites from 78s to CD in uniformly spectacular sound quality. Their releases don't seem to be as easily available through dealers in the States as are those of other UK labels, but ordering from Past Perfect directly through their website is very easy, and the service is as wonderful as their CDs.
From Australia, there's Crystal Stream Audio; they have some wonderful CDs with material not available elsewhere, but you do have to jump through a few hoops to obtain the product.
From The Netherlands, there's Timeless Jazz, which has some terrific 1920s and '30s jazz in beautiful, clean transfers. Ditto for Retrieval Records, which has a wide-ranging catalogue of 1920s and '30s jazz. From Canada, there's Jazz Oracle, which numbers among its 50-odd releases complete series of the Ben Pollack and Dorsey Brothers orchestras, and lots of hot-dance rarities from the Edison and Paramount labels. Rare hot 1920s jazz from New Orleans, New York and the "Territory Bands" is available from Frog Records, which happily is continuing despite the sudden, unexpected death of its founder, David French.
If Western Swing is your thing, you can find a great source at Origin Jazz Library, which has a great box set of CDs devoted to Milton Brown, the father of the genre, and other discs by Ocie Stockard, the Light Crust Doughboys, and Leon Chappellear. They also have the great Bix Restored series, four sets of three CDs each, which has everything Bix Beiderbecke ever recorded in spectacular sound. (The booklet notes are by yours truly.) There's also a single disc fifth volume; it includes three recently unearthed alternate takes (which are wonderful!) and a number of fine jazz recordings showing Bix's influence.
Records from the acoustical (pre-microphone) era, 1895 to 1924, are the specialty of Archeophone Records, although lately they've broadened their offerings with two double-CD sets devoted to the "Hit of the Week" label, which was in business from 1930 to 1932.
Along those lines, if your favorite records aren't flat but, uh, tubular, then you simply have to check out The Cylinder Digitation and Preservation Project. This is a program of the Department of Special Collections at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The website provides an excellent history of cylinder records along with over 6,000 cylinders which you can listen to online or download (in most cases). While you're at it, check out UCSB's work on a pre-1950 complete Victor Discography.
Ever wonder who made the very first "compact discs"? Well, some records made between 1914 and 1923 were only five and one-half inches in diameter, and you can learn all about them thanks to Merle Sprinzen and her website Little Wonder Records, which provides a complete history and discography of this fascinating label.
Small group and big-band jazz of the '30s and '40s from rare, for-radio-use-only transcriptions, can be found at Jazzology Records, run by the amazing George H. Buck, Jr. Hard-to-find Big Band records can be obtained through Hep Records, which not only has rarities by Artie Shaw and Tommy Dorsey, but entire CDs devoted to lesser-remembered but wonderful bandleaders such as Jack Jenney and Johnny Bothwell.
Singers of the '40s and early '50s are the specialty of Sepia Records, with lots of rarities by the likes of The Andrews Sisters and Kitty Kallen, not to mention some hard-to-find original cast albums. More of the lesser-remembered but still wonderful singers and bands of the '40s can be found at Jasmine Records, which has a number of good, comprehensive double-CD sets available, as well as some nifty, economical 4-disc box sets devoted to American Dance Bands and Boogie-Woogie.
Fans of British dance bands such as Jack Hylton and Ray Noble will find a bonanza at Vocalion Records. And if you want to read about British bands and singers of the '20s, '30s and '40s, check out the two excellent hardcover books available from This England, a British magazine for Anglophiles all over the globe.
Where can you find biographies and discographies devoted to Cliff (Ukulele Ike) Edwards, Ruth Etting, Annette Hanshaw, Marion Harris, Scrappy Lambert and even The Keller Sisters and Lynch? All of these 1920s recording personalities, and many more, are profiled at David Garrick's Jazz Age, which includes rare photos and sheet music artwork in addition to information about currently available CDs by these artists.
A thorough education in 1920s jazz is provided by The Red Hot Jazz Archive, which has biographies and discographies related to hundreds of jazz musicians of the era, as well as more than 2,000 songs which can be downloaded in Real Audio 3 format.
The life and work of our favorite 1920s jazz performer is extensively documented, and debated, on Bix Beiderbecke Resources: A Bixography, which has great photographs, a downloadable Bix radio show, and a forum where members share all manner of details about the legendary cornetist-pianist-composer. For over 30 years, Bix's hometown of Davenport, Iowa has been home to an annual jazz festival, held in late July or early August, by the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Society. Their website tells all about the group which also perpetuates Bix's memory through jazz education programs.
Well, looka here, looka here! Our favorite stride-style pianist has a wonderful website at Fats Waller's Jam and Jive, where you can see rare photos, access a discography, and hear Fats on MP3 files. One never knows, do one? Mercy me! Want to play piano just like Fats, or his mentor, the father of "stride-style" piano, James P. Johnson? Check out the instruction books by a terrific stride pianist, Judy Carmichael, who plays wonderful hot-jazz piano in the style of the masters.
I should mention that you can still see vintage music performed live, thanks to a number of performers who keep "The Spirit of 78" alive. Janet Klein and her Parlor Boys play sweet and saucy songs from the 1910s, '20s and '30s, and you can see her at many Los Angeles area venues. Her CDs are fun, too, and have some amazing vintage-style artwork created by the young lady herself.
The singing styles of Al Jolson, Harry Richman and other gents who really sell you a song are alive and well, thanks to Richard Halpern, Mister Tin Pan Alley himself, a very lively, funny gent who can really sing vintage songs both hot and sentimental.
America's most entertaining Englishman, a ukulele virtuoso, a historian of vintage music, a biographer of Irving Berlin, and a guy with a hit rock 'n' roll record in 1965? Sounds like the guests at a crowded dinner party, but they're really all one man, the irrepressible and wonderful singer-bandleader Ian Whitcomb, whose website tells about his many projects, lists his CDs, and tells you how you can book his many different vintage bands for your party.
A wonderful band that plays in a truly authentic 1920s and early '30s style is Mora's Modern Rhythmists, led by pianist Dean Mora. The band ranges from a small combo to a full-size big band, but always has that genuine early sound. Their drummer has an honest-to-goodness '20s style kit, replete with cocoanut shells and clop-cymbals! Check out their website for information on bookings, appearances and CDs.
Remember Johnny Crawford, who was on the TV show The Rifleman with Chuck Connors, and who had early '60s pop hits like "Your Nose Is Gonna Grow"? Well, Johnny has always been interested in the movies and music of the 1920s (even as a child actor in the '60s, he was seeking out silent-film veterans!). He's the frontman for both a Hot Club Quintet and a 1920s-style Vintage Dance Orchestra; find out about them at Johnny's website, Crawford Music Services.
There are dozens of bands playing traditional jazz, hot dance music, ragtime and swing, and the best source for information on these performers and where you can see them is The Mississippi Rag, a monthly magazine which has been documenting the entire history of Traditional Jazz and Ragtime, both historical and contemporary, since 1973. Each issue contains profiles of currently performing musicians, usually a biography of a performer from the '20s or '30s, and a full listing of conventions, festivals and club appearances where you can hear vintage jazz and ragtime performed live.
The middle hour of three that I broadcast each Sunday is devoted to old-time radio shows, usually one comedy show and one dramatic show. One very good and economical way to purchase old-time radio is to get it on MP3 files; at OTRCAT.COM, you can find thousands of shows as MP3 files--practically the whole run of Dragnet, for example, fits on four CDs, with about 100 half-hour shows per disc, at five bucks per CD! The quality does vary, however. If you want excellent-condition programs on standard CDs (two half-hour shows per disc), you might check Radio Spirits, which has a huge catalog and consistently fine audio quality.
Radio's all-time great funnyman, Jack Benny, is handsomely saluted at The Jack Benny Radio Archives, where you can download shows and learn about the world's favorite 39-year-old skinflint violinist. Links on that website will take you to other Benny-related sources.
One of our devoted listeners is a broadcasting legend who's been on the air since July 14, 1934, his 20th birthday. It's George Putnam, who's still on the air every weekday from 12 to 2 over Cable Radio Networks. You can read about his fascinating career here, and read about his long tenure as Los Angeles' top TV anchorman here. Thanks for listening, George!
