A little something we would like to share.

LKM presents JAZZ MIX 2

So, the 1930’s started on a bad note. After the Wall Street crash in 1929, most of the decade was consumed by an economic downfall called The Great Depression. This had a traumatic effect worldwide. 
All is not gloomy however, because when you actually look back on the decade, they saw a proliferation in new technologies, including intercontinental aviation, radio, and film.

Some of the technological advances that occurred in the 1930s, included: 
•	In 1930, Warner Brothers released the first All-Talking All-Color wide-screen movie, Song of Flame, in 1930 alone, Warner Brothers released, ten All-Color All-Talking feature movies in Technicolor and scores of shorts and features with color sequences. 
•	Air Mail service across the Atlantic Ocean began. 
•	Radar was invented, known as RDF (Radio Direction Finding) 
•	In 1931, RCA Victor introduced the first long-playing phonograph record. 
•	In 1936, The first regular high definition (then defined as at least 200 lines) television service from the BBC officially begins broadcasting. 
•	The Bass Guitar was invented by Paul Tutmarc of Seattle, Washington in 1936.

In music there was a lot happening too. Genres such as Delta Blues & Gypsy Jazz were becoming popular, as were dance competitions. Notably swing competitions. Cab Calloway was credited for inventing the popular term, Jitterbug. The term became associated with swing dancers who danced without any control or knowledge of the dance. In popular culture, it became generalized to mean swing dancers themselves, or a type of swing dance. In its actual origins, it was used to describe a drunk with, “the jitters”.

The place to be in the 1930’s to witness it all was, The Cotton Club in Harlem. With a list of residents like Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Lena Horne, Lionel Hampton, Django Reinhardt, and Count Bassie, this was the modern day equivalent of Sundays at Space in Ibiza. 
Jazz music had been extremely popular in the 20’s and I had Louis Armstrong on the 1920’s mix, so for this mix I had to choose from the two legends of Delta Blues Jazz, which were Skip James & Muddy Waters. I went with Muddy Waters, the man has such talent and skill, it is still incredible listening to his tracks today. 
Another legend I came across was, Ina Ray & her orchestra. She was smoking hot, as was her all female orchestra, and I can only imagine what it was like going to see her live every week.

I have tried in these mixes to play the “dance music” of the time. I have researched a lot into what people were dancing to, and I have gone out of my way to make sure I used the original recordings, so you can get the feel for the musicians and singers. This is like any dj mix I have made, I have picked the tracks I liked the most, out of the vast collection that there was, so if I left a few out, feel free to name them so we can all share them.

As always, comments and discussions welcome!

EL

My musical hero Quincy Jones was also born in this era.


EL Decades of Dance - 1930's

So I must admit, I thought this was going to be the weakest decade of them all. 
The 40's began as World War 2 was getting into full swing and it would consume the first half of the decade.

Swing music was still the most popular form of dance music and it dominated most of the decade, although "crooners", and slow romantic songs were becoming ever more popular as loved one's went away to fight in the war. 
Some of the most notable crooners would be Bing Crosby, Glen Miller, The Mills Brothers, and even a young Frank Sinatra would make his entrance to the musical world, although in my opinion, Frank didn't become Frank until the mid 50's, so I will leave him until then.

Latin music started to make its way into main stream dance, mainly due to the fact that with television and transatlantic radio, people now had access to music they would only have been able to hear in the respective countries, such as The amazing Xavier Cugat from Cuba or Perez Prado who fuzed rumba rhythms with big-band jazz, which was epitomized by Damazo Perez Prado's Mambo Jumbo, a track I have included.

In the early and mid-1940s the bebop style of jazz was developed, led by such distinctive stylists as the saxophonist Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. 
This marked a major shift of jazz as pop music for dancing to a high-art, less-accessible, cerebral "musician's music." Bebop valued complex improvizations based on chord progressions rather than melody.

The term country & western music as we know it was also coined in this decade. 
Western music, became widely popular through the romanticization of the cowboy and idealized depictions of the west in Hollywood films. 
In the post-war period, country music was called "folk" in the trades, and "hillbilly" within the industry. In 1944, The Billboard replaced the term "hillbilly" with "folk songs and blues," and switched to "country" or "country and Western" in 1949. 
Vaughn Monroe's classic "ghost riders in the west" and Al Dexters "pistol packin moma" are the two I went for to represent the country & western side.

Best City: Chicago 
Best Club: The Aragon Ballroom

A couple of interesting things that happened in this decade were:

In 1948 Columbia Records introduces the 33⅓ rpm LP (“long playing”) record at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, featuring 25 minutes of music per side

In 1949 RCA Victor introduces the 45 rpm record, featuring 8 minutes of music.

Hope you all enjoyed this decade, the 50's are next and it's rock n roll time!!

EL Decades of Dance - 1940's

 A little classical mix from our MD here at LKM music & media, Mr Eoin Long.

LKM presents CLASSICAL MIX

LKM presents CLASSICAL MIX 2

LKM music&media are highly proficient at supplying in-store digital music systems for the retail, hospitality and finacial sectors, creating music strategies for global brands, plus advising on the correct sound to a media campaign.

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