I’m not a huge Jazz fan. Somewhere along the line, for my taste Jazz became so much about improvisation there wasn’t enough structure left to hang onto. Sunday evenings there’s a radio show on WGBH in Boston I enjoy, called The Jazz Decades, hosted by Ray Smith, who by now must be in his 80’s. He specializes in music from the 20’s and 30’s, playing both original recordings from then, as well as more recent renditions of old songs. When necessary, Smith resorts to vinyl, as he did tonight.
The audio player below has 35 minutes of The Jazz Decades show. I was going to offer only 10 minutes of it, but tonight’s selections were interesting, so I let it roll. I was surprised to hear my town, Hopkinton, MA, mentioned. Apparently, there was a legendary place here called The Sticky Wicket, that featured live Jazz until about 15 years ago, which is news to me.
There are some splices in this recording. The first 24 minutes were taken from the FM tuner in my PC. Then, for contrast, right after he says, “This is Ray Smith,” I switched over to WGBH’s live streaming Net audio. For the 1930’s recordings, the loss in sound quality isn’t all that apparent. But I still look forward to the time when all live Net radio is at least 128 Kbps.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Sounds/Wordpress/DEC06/JazzDecades.mp3]
I’m not sure where The Sticky Wicket was located. If it was at the intersection of West Main Street and South Street, that property is about to be completely redeveloped into a small shopping center.
In a more recent program Ray Smith referred again The Sticky Wicket, but I wasn’t set up to record it. In fact, I was listening to it while running!
The Sticky Wicket! How well I remember that place! I went there many times in the mid-1980s with a friend who has since passed away. I loved Craig Ball and his White Heat Orchestra. He was amazing on the clarinet. Long time ago, but great memories of that place!
After the audio player buffer has finished filling, drag the bar up to 25 minutes and play the last 10 minutes. Those three songs, from England, are just divine and sublime. Great stuff.