This Is Jazz

January 18, 1947 – October 4, 1947 · 35 broadcasts

In January 1947 WOR New York gave a try-out to Rudi Blesh, a jazz critic with a thesis to prove -- and the response was strong enough that the station brought it back as a weekly half-hour, Saturdays at 2:30, from 8 February, with the Mutual network picking it up the week after. Blesh believed the real thing was New Orleans jazz, still played by the men who invented it, and "This Is Jazz" was that argument made in sound: a live band playing off the cuff, and Blesh at the microphone explaining what you were about to hear. Variety's reviewer liked the band and thought the host could use a better script. The house band, the All Star Stompers, kept a nearly fixed rhythm section -- Danny Barker, Pops Foster and Baby Dodds -- behind a front line that changed all year, with Muggsy Spanier in the cornet chair through the spring and Wild Bill Davison after him. The guests are the reason the series still matters. Sidney Bechet came back seven times. Louis Armstrong played in April, Leadbelly in June, Chippie Hill four times across July and August. And for two weeks in August the programme left New York entirely, coming from Hollywood with Kid Ory's Creole Jazz Band and from San Francisco with Lu Watters' Yerba Buena Jazz Band. Thirty-five broadcasts, January to October 1947, and every one of them survives.