DJ Ryan Swift

Five great tracks about taboo booze from A Blog Supreme:

It’s easy to romanticize or oversimplify the relationship between jazz and Prohibition, but the banning of alcohol and the subsequent rise of speakeasies clearly played a role in the music’s evolution during its early days. Jazz musicians found ample employment opportunities in the numerous new nightclubs, formed friendships with gangsters (who were sometimes their biggest fans and occasionally their foes or protectors), and benefited from vital scenes that flourished in cities rife with corruption. For better or worse, the Prohibition years also stigmatized jazz with a mark of transgression, which for many only enhanced the music’s sense of authenticity and excitement.

It wasn’t just Prohibition that helped spur jazz’s popularity; the 1920s were a period of profound transformation in American life. The nation’s population continued to shift from rural areas to cities, and more and more people embraced the automobile as a new and independent mode of transportation. At the same time, the template for our modern media culture began to form, with phonographs, radio and talking pictures connecting Americans through an increasingly electronic network of sound. Jazz caught the buzz, in more ways than one. With filmmaker Ken Burns’ three-part Prohibition documentary on tap for PBS starting Oct. 2, here are five sides for imbibing the high-and-not-so-dry spirits of the age.

NPR Song of the Day:

The cool chime of a vibraphone ushers in a slinky, minor-key, chromatic vocal run. High-pitched female vocals, including those of Nikka Costa, chime in: “L.A., giving me the blues again / I ain’t leavin’, I ain’t never comin’ back again.” Then the lead singer enters the scene, his voice lazy and languid. Toggling between tenor and falsetto, he confesses to drinking sake, “rolling black chicks and blondes,” and seeing a sky white with snow in the summer. This is not a straitlaced guy.

The song, with John Bigham on vocals, is “New York to L.A.,” featured on the The Soul of John Black’s new album Good Thang. But the roots of this particular number extend all the way back to the jazz age. You’ll hear a trio of clarinets and a muted trumpet play the same seductive opening riff in Duke Ellington’s classic instrumental, “The Mooche.”

Co-writers Bigham and Christopher Thomas aimed to capture the sass and class of Ellington’s 1920s composition. They also time-travel to a mid-’70s funk club, courtesy of Bigham’s bluesy guitar and a fuzzy Fender Rhodes.