GIANT STEPS EXPLORES THE BRILLIANT CORNERS OF FIFTIES JAZZ, BROADWAY, BLUES, POPULAR SONG, ROCK ‘n’ ROLL, RHYTHM & BLUES, COUNTRY, FOLK, FILM MUSIC, DOO-WOP, MAMBO, AND MORE.
WHY A SHOW ABOUT THE FIFTIES? SCROLL DOWN BELOW EPISODES AND FIND OUT.
EPISODES
Featuring Jeri Southern, Miles Davis, Carmen McRae, Bing Crosby & Louis Armstrong, Les Paul & Mary Ford, and more
Featuring Anita O’Day, Bo Diddley, Patsy Cline, Tito Puente, Duke Ellington, and more
Featuring Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee, Mel Tormé & The Mel-Tones, Big Bill Broonzy, Horace Silver, and more
Featuring Django Reinhardt, Abbey Lincoln, Muddy Waters, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and more
Featuring Sonny Rollins, Frank Sinatra, Oscar Peterson, Johnny Cash, Buddy Guy, and more
Featuring B.B. King, Julie London, Ray Charles, Dean Martin, Lous Armstrong, and more
By Andy Miles
Why a show about the FIFTIES?
Because the Fifties are a great and groundbreaking decade that saw, as the title of the show suggests, giant steps in the development of multiple genres of music. Both jazz and the Broadway musical enjoyed their greatest decade of artistic advancement and acclaim, while the genres of rhythm and blues, country, and folk not only attracted legions of devoted fans, but together birthed a new species: rock ‘n’ roll. The great names we associate with early rock ‘n’ roll—Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly—all made their names and most lasting impact in the second half of the Fifties.
It was also the most artistically fruitful decade in the long careers of vocalists Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, who each took advantage of advances in postwar technology—vast improvements in sound recording and the new 12-inch LP—to fashion a series of timeless theme albums, Sinatra grouping songs of similar narrative and tonal qualities, Fitzgerald launching her famous songbook series. As Hollywood and European films reflected the rapidly changing landscape of social norms and interpersonal relationships, the increasingly inventive music composed for their soundtracks was deemed worthy of separate release on "long-playing" soundtrack albums; Bernard Herrmann's "Vertigo" soundtrack and Miles Davis's "Elevator to the Gallows" are just two examples, both issued in 1958. And don’t forget the (mostly) innocent good fun of doo-wop, whose run of chart hits spanned the entire decade while bridging America’s racial divide. It’s all here on “Giant Steps.” — May 2023
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ABOUT the host
Andy Miles has written for various publications on the arts, history and culture; made audio documentaries; worked in public television and radio; owned and operated a company specializing in congressional hearing transcripts; and for nine years owned and managed the gallery, shop, performance and teaching space Transistor Chicago. For Transistor he also produced the Transistor Radio webcast, hosting a number of music shows, two of which—“Dead Flowers” (renamed “Keep On Pushing”) and “Emotional Rescue”—have now been revived to form, with “Giant Steps” and “Body and Soul,” a quartet of decade-exhuming programs.
Currently he operates Studio C and works at WCPT Radio with the title Production Director/Board Operator; he also produces the WCPT Heartland Signal News Minute and WCPT Progressive Calendar features. Working in collaboration with Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, he recently hosted the Resistance, Resilience & Hope: Holocaust Survivor Stories podcast; likewise, for MISSD (the Medication-Induced Suicide Prevention and Education Foundation in Memory of Stewart Dolin) he hosts the Akathisia Stories podcast and for the anti-human trafficking nonprofit Innocents at Risk the series Turning a Million Eyes to Save Lives. In 2021, Eckhartz Press published Perspectives in Black and White: A Concise History of Evanston’s Struggle to Rid Itself of Segregation and Racism, the book Andy co-authored with his father, Michael Frank Miles.
Born near Chicago and currently residing in Evanston, he has also called Madison, Washington, D.C., Berlin, and Chicago home. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has played drums and bass in a bunch of bands (and released a solo album under the name Rayograph), loves old movies, and is a tennis, biking, hiking, and ping-pong enthusiast. [Photo by Patty Wetli]