From his first traveling gig wi the territory band THE BUFFALODIANS to his earliest Harlem and Hollywood years - at the cotton Club and MGM! The songs and singing of HAROLD ARLEN

From Joe Venuti and Stuff Smith to the Mississippi Sheiks - a journey through the early records of jazz via fiddle!

Originally broadcast as a Bix Birthday Bash -we will just call this episode a celebration of the short life of one of Jazz's true early legends

Salvadore Massaro was born in Philadelphia in 1902 -picking up the banjo in the early 1920s by the early 1930s' he became the most sought after recording guitarist - both for jazz and offering accompaniments to a slew of pop and blues singers alike - it all ended to fast- by 1933 he was gone, the victim of a botched tonsillectomy! But he left behind hundreds of fine recordings - we will play some highlights!

Many American Jazz musicians travelled across the ocean to Europe and beyond from the earliest years of recording into through the 1930s ( the era we cover here on American Grooves) This episode explores some fine Jazz recorded on the continent!

Victor labels budget BLUEBIRD imprint recorded quite extensively in Charlotte North Carolina in the mid-1930s - Iconic "firsts" happened there ( Bill Monroe for one!) and 100s of Hillbilly and some dance and jazz sides by local bands were preserved. We will re-discover some of Charlotte's finest!

time for the kids to head back to school - time to take a deep dive listening to some of the remarkably HOT recorded College bands of the 1920s - Yale Collegians, Texas Troubadours, Princeton Triangle Club babd and more!

Beat the heat with some cool pre-war blues, jazz, country and vaudeville from the 1920s-30s -

From 1930 into the ealry 1940s MAX FLEISCHER and brother DAVE produced a series of ground breaking animated cartoons that have endured for near a century - popular icons in their day the artists who provided the voices for Betty Boop and Popeye had recording careers on their own and themes from the cartoons were recorded by dance bands of the era - lets go down Max Fleischer row!

From 1928 to 1932 RCA Victor records had specific series desiganted to the African American recird buying public- The Blues of Tommy Johnson & Frank Stokes, The Jug Band recordings of Gus Cannon and Memphis Jug Band, the sanctified and gospel recordin=gs of Pace JUbilee Singer snd Reverend Gate and the Jazz of the likes of Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellingtom and so much more- we will play a selection of the 100s of sides recorded