AMERICAN GROOVES RADIO HOUR hosted by JOE LAURO

A mixture of rare and great pre-war Blues, Jazz, Gospel and Country 78s from Joe's collection!

Songs about Presidents and voting ( and voting TWICE!) from the golden era - Jack Kelly South Memphis Jug Band, Riley Puckett, Blind Blake and a slew of others will be in the house!

While most fans of early jazz know the names and legends of Louis Armstrong and King Oliver there were many other brilliant and important trumpet/cornet plays working in the Cresent City during the early decades of the last century - this episode, the first of two, explores the music of some of them! - "KING" FREDDIE KEPPARD, "KID" PUNCH MILLER, OSCAR CELESTIN and LOUIS DUMAINE and their various bands will be highlighted

A cross section of new additional to Joe's library of pre-war 78s! - Uncle Dave Macon, Clarence Williams with Bechet & Armstrong and so much more!

Tributes songs to falling politicians, movie stars and gangsters were common back in the 1900s-30s We will pay a surprising array of country and blues tributes to the likes of people like band leader Walter Barnes to President William McKinley

From the 1880's through the 1930s the Yiddish Theater flourished on New York's lower east side. By 1910 over a million new Jewish immigrants had settling on the lower east side with 1000s still arriving annually. From the Bowery and Houston Street all along 2nd Avenue to 14th Street many theaters exclusively presented new Yiddish plays; original musicals, comedies, melodramas Yiddish adaptations of classics including Shakespear to a mass culturally hungry new arivals. This episode will present rare recordings of some of the Yiddish Theaters' brightest musical stars. Molly Picon, Aaron Lebedeff, Jennie Goldstein, Ludwig Satz, Pesach'ke Burstein, Abe Schwartz's Klezmer band and others will be featured.

Each week American Grooves taps into a collection of 20,000 vintage 78 rpm recordings to select the 15 or so Joe chooses to present- this episode is the first of a series of "MIXED BAG" episodes- new things, old favorites and brave shellac experiments! - tune in for some pre-1940 Country, Jazz, Blues, Gospel, Ethnic and Pop musical surprises !

From Fletcher Henderson to Jelly Roll Morton, this lovely, sentimental ballad written by Paul Dreiser in 1905 was recorded by a scad of artists across the genres - from Charles Harrisons straight head 1905 version to Perry Bechtela swinging version in 1935 - this episode show how some great songs last and last!

When sound was added to movies in the late 1920s Hollywood clamored for virtually ANYTHING that could sing! - 1928-29 was a mecca of "All Talking" musicals and some amazing songs came out of them - this episode explores some of the best!

Masters of the ivories - Blues and Jazz piano recorded in the 20s and early 30s are explored in this episode