The new episode of A History Of Rock Music in 500 Songs is now up, on Louis Jordan and “Choo Choo Ch’Boogie”, with detours into the Marx Brothers, Billie Holiday, Chick Webb, and an eighty-year-old jazz controversy.
It should also be up on Spotify and iTunesshortly.
Also, as always, there’s a Mixcloud mix of all the music I excerpt in the show.
Like all my writing, this podcast wouldn’t exist without the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them?
Sci-Ence! Justice Leak! 
Another great episode, Andrew! This question may also be of interest to other readers and listeners of your work: Are you open to receiving direct contributions via Paypal and if you are what would be the best email address for that purpose?
Thank you! I am — in fact I used to have a Paypal donate button at the side of the blog, and didn’t realise I’d deleted it. I should fix that, but the email address is andrew@thenationalpep.co.uk
As far as I know, Patreon doesn’t accept contributions via Paypal accounts which aren’t also linked to a credit card…I think it’d be absolutely worth it to bring back the donate button!
Thank you for the donation — it’s *very* generous of you :)
These four episodes could stand listening to all in a row!
I’ll be doing that tomorrow.
Just finished listening to this episode – really loved everything about it – so much I didn’t know about this era, despite loving the music. It’s the detours I’m finding so enthralling. Just the idea that it was possible to see Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Louis Jordan all at one gig blows the mind away, never mind the back story to the recording of ‘Strange Fruit’.
That sort of thing happened a lot more with jazz than with rock, sadly. I’m currently listening to the Jazz at the Philharmonic shows from the forties, and you’d get lineups like Ella Fitzgerald, Roy Eldridge, Stan Getz, Coleman Hawkins, Oscar Peterson, Lester Young, and the rhythm section from the Modern Jazz Quartet *on stage at the same time*
There’s a great show from 1972, “All-Star Swing Festival”, which has Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie, and the Benny Goodman Quartet all playing the same show — although sadly the DVD release is poor quality and cuts out the Brubeck performances.
(That said, the best gig lineups ever were probably the NME Poll-Winners Concerts in 1965 and 66. 65 had the Beatles, the Searchers, the Kinks, the Rolling Stones, Them, Donovan, Georgie Fame, the Moody Blues and more, while 66 had the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, Dusty Springfield, the Yardbirds, the Walker Brothers, Roy Orbison, Spencer Davis, Cliff Richard, Herman’s Hermits and the Small Faces. They knew how to put a bill together in those days.)