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You’re listening to Pearl Bailey from 1946 and you’re on the Sound Beat. Pearl made her Broadway debut that year, performing “It’s a Woman’s Prerogative” in St. Louis Woman. Though audiences weren’t enamored of the play, her performance marked the beginning of a decades-long love affair between Bailey and the American public. That “special time together” ...
February 14, 2024Billie Holiday was known to record with ease, often needing only one take for her best studio recordings. This tune, however, was a whole different story.
January 31, 2024What happens when the high-gloss worlds of archived sound and auto insurance collide? Hope you’ve got a policy for excitement.
January 30, 2024How a little radio show from a little south pacific island chain became the largest in the world.
January 22, 2024Alan Freed may have been the first to attribute “Rock and Roll” to a musical form, but he wasn’t the first to use the words together.
January 21, 2024Censorship has been a big issue in the U.S. since, well, before there was a U.S.
January 13, 2024You’re listening to Bransby Williams with Charles Dickens’ redeemed cheapskate.
December 25, 2023As a musician, Art Tatum was a true original – if a recording sounds like Tatum’s…it almost certainly IS Tatum’s.
December 12, 2023Dave Alexander billed himself as Black Ivory King. You could say he was “better-known as”, but barely anything is known of the man at all.
December 8, 2023