Simply one of the best Big Bands of all time...Glenn Miller has always been my favorite artist, however if I were to be honest with myself, Musically speaking, Shaws Band was far superior to any of the others, it was tighter and just swung harder! With kudos not just to Shaw and his sidemen but to arrangers like the late great Jerry Gray!
@@charlesmiller7283 I'm very envious!!! I did the next best thing, I met his son at the Glenn Miller Festival in Iowa a couple of years ago...Your right, Jerry was the soul of that band...
@@albertwgray wow, I bet your father could tell some stories about Artie and the Big Band business in general.I have read a couple of books by Shaw and to be honest ,they were a hard read. Shaw himself ,was a fascinating man ,or seems to have been !! (Lol).
I absolutely adore Helen Forrest. She did amazing work with Benny, but I really do believe her live singing with Artie is more relaxed. It really just reaches right out and grabs you. I would love to find this record.
Agreed. I still resent the decision of Mosaic Records' compilers to leave her out of their box of Shaw's RCA Victor recordings. They said they edited the box to eliminate songs they considered "trivial," but unfortunately their definition of "trivial" was "anything with a white woman's voice on it." Forrest's career trajectory was Shaw, Goodman and Harry James, whom she dated as well as working for, and she never recovered psychologically from James' marriage to Betty Grable - which Forrest found out about the way the rest of the world did, from the media.
Helen has always been my favourite female vocalist of the swing era and I agree Robert, her vocals with Artie Shaw on the live broadcasts (of which I have several recordings) were superb. I preferred her with Artie's orchestra.
Helen's style was best-suited with James & Shaw. With Goodman's sound it was a rather uneasy mix + Helen was not happy during the B.G. years, so she wrote in her autobio "I Had the Craziest Dream"
@@scotnick59 I have Benny Goodman’s, I will definitely be looking for Helen’s. I watched her in an interview on the Mike Douglas Show… what a lovely woman. If I’m not mistaken, that same show had Harry James on it. I tell ya… they don’t make ‘em like a single one of them anymore.
"Hindsight" Records had a series of airchecks by the 1938-'39 Shaw band at Hotel Lincoln Blue Room & Hotel Pennsylvania Cafe Rouge-this sounds very similar to those including the NBC announcer.
Actually Black musicians like Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington invented swing. though Shaw was one of the most innovative white swing bandleaders and pushed the boundaries quite a lot more than Benny Goodman did. Shaw introduced string sections into his bands and did a lot of operetta songs in swing style.
During the current pandemic, I've taken more interest in old radio plays and big band broadcasts. They're a comfort amidst the madness of everything. Thanks for posting!
Discovering Artie Shaw and big band music in general. Who could not be moved by this music?! Grew up in the 60s and 70s, fantastic music then, but this is wonderful to hear natural sound without electronic enhancement. I can only imagine how this swept people off their feet. (Surprising is the listless crowd)
I've stayed at the Hotel Pennsylvania where the Cafe Rouge was. The space is still there but is no longer a dance venue. Too bad, that. I see that the building is in the process of demolition.
This is so WONDERFUL! Never listened to Big Band or Swing Music when I was growing up ( enjoyed mostly classical music) even though I watched a lot of Fred Astaire movies. Now at 64 I am ENTRALLED with the talents of these musicians and the vocalists. Just wonderful! Oh yeah, my whole body is responding with a constant tapping of my feet and bobbing of my head. Oh am I glad for being able to hear this and for this RU-vid find. Thank you channel creator for making this available! LOVE IT!! 😁😍🎶👍 Happy and blessed New Year 2021!
This really SWINGS as Shaw does so well and your sound equipment used made it sound like it did LIVE in concert as at the Cafe Rouge in Hotel Pennsylvania NYC here recorded live in the Great Age of Swing & Network Radio in 1939. As a sound engineer myself, I salute you for your efforts at Realism.
Dear Ralf I want to thank you a lot for your great channel I live in Los Angeles and I am crazy about Swing I saw Artie Shaw Three times in concert in LA But like you I Am a great fan of the MGM musical and love your great MGM videos. Fantastic I have been to the old MGM studios in Culver City many times when it was still MGM It is now Sony Studios I have Also met some of the famous stars of that era Would be interested in hearing from people in the LA area Many thanks again Ralf You are the best
@@ralfsiebert-ffm J' ai rajouté un commentaire , je sais que les allemands adorent la musique , la France moindre , cela n'a pas toujours été comme cela , avant dans le temps , on étudiait la musique en primaire maintenant c'est au collège qu'elle commence à etre étudiée , c'est dommage .
The enhancing makes it sound like a live performance. Its kind of like colorizing a black and white movie. We always have the originals if we prefer them.
I don't disagree with you but it's not Artie Shaw's or Jerry Gray's fault that the strings with big band style they pioneered was copied to death by others later. Besides, is Gray hadn't joined Shaw's first band as their lead violinist, he would probably never had been involved in big bands at all and then we would never have had any of those great arrangements he wrote wor Shaw and Glenn Miller.
Glad to be able to hear this example of Shaw's band on-air, but why on earth did Mr. Siebert have to "enhance" the sound? It was what it was, and here, it isn't. Oh well, two arms around my best girl's waist and what do I care?
J'ai vu sur internet , il existe ces morceaux sur disques vinyles , aux USA , le prix pour acheter là-bas est cher , avec tous les frais qui se rajoutent à l'achat .
Damn it,the picture says 1939 but I need more specific timing info before me and the doc fire up the Delorean! WHEN will the Cafe Rouge receive the lightning strike? WHEN will Helen Forrest cross over and marry me? :)
You're best bet is probably to aim for a date a little bit earlier so you get Billie Holiday too. Helen Forrest, Buddy Rich and Georgie Auld joined Shaw's band in the summer of 1938 and Holiday left November that year. So I suggest autumn 1938.
I still find it odd that the last CD set Artie was involved with - 'Personal Best' featured not one Helen Forrest vocal. I considered it an insult but fortunately she had already passed on, by then.
+Paolo Piccardo: Yes, you are right. The picture behind shows us the Big Band of Glenn Miller. It was photographed at the ballroom of the "Café Rouge". That is the reason why I was take it for the thumbnail. I do not found a picture with the complete Artie Shaw Orchestra at the Cafe Rouge between 1938 and 1940.
HOW DO I GET RID OF THE SONIC CORRUPTION OF THE "ECHO" AND "STEREO" ??? YOU'VE GOT THE SAME MINDSET OF SOMEONE WHO'D 'IMPROVE' THE MONA LISA WITH A MUSTACHE...
just want to say somethings : a) Glenn Miller-Artie Shaw-Tommy Dorsey and all the other white bands are not really jazz bands. They were dance bands. many of them added violins (which I hate) I mean I like Jazz violins (Grapelly-Stuff Smith-Ventura- Ray Nance) but NOT these big bands. b) SWING was invented by the BLACK bands . Of course, at that time being black was not a good commercial idea !!. but let us face the reality : Duke Ellington - Count Basie - Jimmy Lunceford - Benny Carter - Fletcher Henderson etc. THESE are the real swing bands. without them NO white bands who copied them. For me the best white Swing Band was Benny Goodman's. He was playing jazz, not smooth dance music. But I can understand people who like the other white bands. I don't dislike them, if I did I would not be listening to this one ! But I am a real and hard JAZZ FAN since 1955 when I was 16. you can calculate my age now ! And, by the way I am white, from the french-speaking part of Switzerland but I live in South America since 1992 in a very multi-colored land ( my second wife is a mixed-blood) what I prefer from Artie Shaw is his small band, the Gramercy Five with Roy Eldridge on trumpet.Have a nice day. que tengan un lindo dia and I hope we shall escape from the corona-virus !!
Hey man, music does not have a color. How about Bunny Berigan, Stan Getz, Al Cohn, Alan Eager, Paul Gonsalves, Sonny Dunham? And even Prez (Lester Young) was into Jimmy Dorsey, you can hear it in how clean he played. And THAT was passed to Bird. You don't like strings?? Ok cool bro, but Bird and Lady Day (who ASKED FOR THEM SPECIFICALLY) would disagree. By the way, Prez and Artie were good friends and sometimes jammed along with each other duet style in their homes, bouncing ideas off each other. Some food for thought.
@@rkomada88 for sure.i never said that. Whatvi say is that thecwhite big bands were dance bands playing the then pop music with a jazz flsvor. That Billie etc liked to plauy with bid vioñoins band is one thing Personnally i don't like them. Clifford Brown also made am LP with strings. I don't like it. I alwaus was and still am a big fan of cool and west coast jazz which is mainly white .it is not a question of color. Only that the REAL JAZZ BIG BANDS where the black ones. And they reveived much more public attention becsuse they were white.this can't be denied. But, as i said, i am listening to them as well.only i don't put them in the same category. The INDIVIDUAL musicians are another matter.
German Surdey .... ok, fine, but how do you explain Woody Herman and his "Herds" or The Casa Loma Orchestra.? Miles Davis was deeply affected by the Four Brothers sound.
