Yowza, Yowza, Yowza. This is Brian Marcus Decker, for the Jolson and Friends blog located on the web at www.JolsonBlog.com, which is the first tech-nostalgic blog dedicated to the musical influences of Al Jolson and Friends.

Well folks, we now start my new interview series with Rich Conaty from WFUV. He has been the host of the Big Broadcast radio program for over 30 years. This spectacular Sunday night radio show features only classic songs from the '20s and '30s. He will be sharing his thoughts on Al Jolson, Cab Calloway, Connee Boswell, tips on buying 78's, the upcoming DVD release of the Jazz Singer, the Ziegfeld Follies, Vince Giordano's Nighthawks and more.

Free Jolson and Friends Podcasts

After collecting audio assets for five Jolson related interviews, in the last few months I launched the First Jolson Podcast and you can listen to the entire series of interviews including my current seven-part interview with the Rich Conaty of the Big Broadcast radio show, Asa, the Magnificent Minstrel, the  Vaudeville series with author Trav S.D. and  Sybil Jason.

To listen to the free Jolson and Friends Blog Podcast published audio files

Use feed.jolsonblog.com and click on:

Jolson and Friends Blog Podcast: Jolson and The Big Broadcast Part I

To subscribe to the free Jolson and Friends Blog Podcast published audio files

Use www.apple.com/itunes/download/ or www.podcastalley.com or www.bloglines.com/ to set-up account and then search on Jolson and Friends Blog Podcast.

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"The Jazz Singer premiered at Warner's Strand in New York City on October (23), 1927, a date enshrined in film history, with all the dread decisiveness of Waterloo, Sarajevo, and Pearl Harbor. On this date the death knell of the silent movies was sounded, and the talkies were born. It had died one night in a theater when people were mesmerized by a Mammy singer. According to film historians, however, it was not Jolson the singer who shook the medium to its foundations, but Jolson the talker." - Andrew Sarris (Great quote, wrong date)

Sunday, October 7 - 7:30 PM

AL JOLSON double feature at 7:30 PM of two Jolson classics, "Hallelujah, I'm A Bum" (1933) and "Big Boy" (1930).

Tickets are $10.00 for general admission and can be purchased at www.Fandango.com or at the Egyptian Theatre Box Office.

Lloyd E. Rigler Theatre at the Egyptian,

6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, CA

For additional information, please call (323) 466-3456 or go to www.AmericanCinematheque.com

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You will be "Sitting on Top of the World" with these limited edition T-shirts. These are perfect holiday gifts for collectors of nostalgia and a must have for anyone interested in the legendary Al Jolson, Houdini, Baseball and Eddie Cantor. Each t-shirt comes with a FREE matching gift card.

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Al Jolson Limited Edition T-shirt The Singing Fool: This is a vintage color reproduction of a 1928 theatrical program.

Eddie Cantor Limited Edition T-shirt Tell it to the Judge: This is a vintage two-color reproduction of 1930s board game.

Moon Rocket Ride Limited Edition Carnival T-shirt: This is a vintage color reproduction of a hand painted tin carnival sign.

Jolie NEW Black & White Limited Edition T-shirt: This is a vintage B/W illustration of Jolie from the 1920s.

NEW History of Time Baseball Limited Edition T-shirt: This is real deal for real baseball fans, an authentic turn of the century History of Baseball T-shirt featuring Boston, New York, Chicago and Detroit.

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Pack of 5 gift cards: with envelopes is now $8.50 with FREE U.S Shipping (Regular price $10.00)

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For additional information, special orders, discounted shipping outside the U.S., payments through Pay Pal, please contact: brian@affinitee.com.

To order please specify style (Jolson, Cantor, Moon, Jolie, Houdini King of Cards, World's Greatest Mystery Man, History of Old Time Baseball, Asbury Park Clown, Sherlock Double Profile, Sherlock Improbable, Sudoku), quantity, size, t-shirt color (white/natural or black), type (t-shirts or matching gift cards) and your shipping address. Please send checks to:

AffiniTee LLC c/o:

Brian Marcus Decker

24 Arverne Road

West Orange, NJ

07052

Jolson Blog: The Big Broadcast Interview with Rich Conaty Part I



Copyright © 2007 Brian Marcus Decker

Brian Marcus Decker: Yowza, Yowza, Yowza. This is Brian Marcus Decker, for the Jolson and Friends blog located at the web at www.jolsonblog.com, which is the first tech-nostalgic blog dedicated to the musical influences of Al Jolson and Friends. As part of our ongoing series of interviews, it's my esteemed pleasure to be interviewing today one of the more infamous radio show hosts who transformed his listeners every Sunday evening from 8:00pm to midnight on WFUV in the New York City Metropolitan area. With classic songs from the '20s and '30s in his long running program, The Big Broadcast. He has been referred to as the 'Sultan of Surface Noise' and sometimes 'The Chancellor' of The Big Broadcast. I can only be referring to the one and only Rich Conaty.

Rich, first of all I wanted to thank you for taking the time with the Jolson and Friends blog community. I've been a big fan of The Big Broadcast Radio Show for way over a decade, and you continue to surprise me with your boundless enthusiasm, your extensive knowledge and fantastic selection of music. I'm also impressed by your dedication to preserve one of our greatest legacies with your ongoing tribute to this Golden Age of music including vaudeville and some of the early 20th century forms of mass media, including radio, film, and even the recording mediums from Edison cylinders to early 78's.

Rich, you continue to have an interesting 35 year radio career and success with The Big Broadcast Show, which you started in January of 1973. For the Jolson and Friends blog community, who live in the New York Metropolitan area, you can certainly tune in to 90.7 FM; The Big Broadcast is on every Sunday night on WFUV from 8:00 pm to midnight.

Can you talk about the 30 year history of your show, The Big Broadcast, and how our blog community who lives outside the New York Metropolitan area can listen to your show live and the archive radio shows via the internet?

Rich Conaty: Thank you Brian, and greetings to blog-ites everywhere. It's an honor to be with you for this chat, Brian, The Big Broadcast just sort of grew out of my interest in the music. When I was a high school kid, I heard this music for the first time on a college radio station on Long Island. I heard Jolson, I heard the Rhythm Boys, I heard Bix, Louis Armstrong, and up until then I really didn't have much of an interest in music. I wasn't a record collector, I didn't listen to rock and roll, but there was something about this '20's and '30's stuff that just grabbed me. And I saw radio as a way to get that music out there.

Of course, when I was growing up in the '60's and '70's, a lot of the artists that I still play on the air Sunday night were still alive, still performing, and there was a lot more of this music on the radio, so that a teenager like me could pick up on it. It's a different landscape today. But fortunately, WFUV been inordinately generous in keeping The Big Broadcast on the air for almost 35 years, and, thanks to the Internet, which was something that we couldn't have imagined when the show started in 1973, the show has a global audience. It can be picked at www.WFUV.org, we also keep archive shows around for a couple of weeks after they air and, for anyone who's interested, we have years of playlists that are also posted at the WFUV website.

Brian Marcus Decker: The music of the '20's and '30's represents a real highpoint for American culture. With a melting pot of ethnic influences, it generated almost limitless pool of talented tin-pan alley song writers and musical comedic stage film and radio performers. The artists that created this Golden Era that changed not just American culture but redefined the 20th century on a global basis.

Rich, you clearly have a strong affinity with the '20's and '30's. Why do you think this time period is so important?

Rich Conaty: Well, I only know why it's important to me. And it was the music that I fell in love with. To these ears it's the most interesting, the most intelligent music to come out of the 20th century. It was, like I said, the music that I heard growing up, the same way that somebody growing up would have heard Elvis, or somebody growing up today might hear one of the Britney's. It just, it reached into me, I connected to this music, and it's a constant joy because there is such a depth of talent and quality. Every week I'm picking up new records, performances that are brand new to me, songs that are brand new to me, what I can never get over and I hope I never get used to is the fact that there is such an amazing depth of wonderful music that was produced in a relatively short chunk of time in the 20th century.

Brian Marcus Decker: Having grown up on Long Island during the same time period that you were growing up in Queens, I also became very, very interested in music and films of the '20's and '30's at a pretty early age. This was somewhat of a combination between watching the old WOR TV channel 9, watching the original Joe Franklin Show, watching the Jolson Story on Million Dollar Movie multiple times in a given week.

I was also fortunate enough to listen to my friend's parents classic 78's of Jolson tunes, Eddie Cantor songs, and some really unbelievable Jimmy Durante songs that still resonate in my head today. Can you share with us some of the nostalgic music that inspired you at an early age?

Rich Conaty: Well, like I say, it was in the air, it was on TV, Joe Franklin was on everyday, Joe Franklin was on the radio, Danny Stiles was doing his daily show, there were interesting niche shows on WRVR. And I think like a lot of kids, maybe not today as much as when I was growing up, I would stay up nights in bed with the radio fishing around trying to pull in stations from around the country. And there was so much local identity to radio back then but you could find dotted all across the dial interesting little shows, people playing records that I had never heard.

So I was just fortunate where I came up in a time where there were still people around performing this music and there were plenty of radio shows around still playing it, even a station like WNEW, where I had the good fortune to work in the early 1980's. I mean, you've got to figure, we're talking 35, 40 years ago, these records weren't nearly as old back then and there were still plenty of people who wanted to hear the Mills Brothers and Jolson and Glenn Miller and the Dorsey's.

Brian Marcus Decker: It's impossible to ignore the importance of Jolson's contribution and his influence to this Golden Age. And even today, Jolson you can recognize as being a very successful recording artist, he was certainly one of the first feature film talking stars of the silver screen, and it's hard to deny his success as a radio performer. In fact, it's interesting because even before the '20's or '30's, Jolson was already starting to make his career, starting with the Lew Dockstader Minstrels in 1909 or even his premier engagement that redefined Broadway at the Winter Garden Theater in "La Belle Paree" in 1911.

His performances were considered pulsed with raw energy, exuberance and hope, even through the Great Depression, two World Wars and beyond. What do you think were some of Jolson's greatest accomplishments?

Rich Conaty: Well first thing that occurs to me, you mentioned Jolson in 1911, I'm not sure if it was his first record but one of his first records in 1911 was "Asleep in the Deep", and it was a parody. And I just find Jolson amazingly hip and very conversational and very witty. And he set the standard. People don't appreciate, I think, Jolson as much as they should and all it takes is sitting down and spending some time with the records. I mean, the records that he did in the teens and the early '20's, he had tremendous phrasing, tremendous drive, and I think you get a sense in listening to the records what audiences must have seen on the stage. There was just magnetism to the guy that is unmatched.

Jolson Blog: The Big Broadcast Interview with Rich Conaty Part II: October 28, 2007

Brian Marcus Decker: Many of Jolson contemporaries have sighted Jolson as their major influence and inspiration, certainly including artists like Eddie Cantor and even one of your famous favorite performers, Bing Crosby. Who were some of the other performers that you believe were strongly influenced by Jolson?

Brian Marcus Decker: Bud DeSylva, Gus Kahn, Louis Hirsch, Gene Schwartz, Con Conrad, Harry Akst, Joseph Myers, Dave Dreyer, Billy Rose, Brown, Henderson, Benny Davis, Grant Clark, Cliff Friend, Harold Atteridge, Alfred Bryan, Vincent Rose, Louis Silvers, and Louis Hirsch all have strong connections to Jolson. They've all shared songwriting credits in fact with Jolson. However many of my most trusted resources are trusted resources are truly convinced that Jolson really had limited if any contributions to this catalog of 39 songs that Jolson did take songwriting credits for.

Rich, while song writing can be a collaborative process, and often is, what do you think was the extent of Jolson's contribution to this catalog of songs?

This is Brian Marcus Decker and thank you for joining us on the Jolson and Friends blog. This is the first and most important blog dedicated to the life and musical influences of the legendary Al Jolson, the World's Greatest Entertainer and friends. And please come visit us again at www.jolsonblog.com, and certainly feel free to listen to the audio podcasts.

Jolson and Friends Blog Required Reading List

No Applause--Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous (Paperback) by Trav S.D.

Click here to shop and buy this book from Amazon

My Fifteen Minutes: An Autobiography of a Child Star of the Golden Era of Hollywood (Paperback) by Sybil Jason.

Click here to shop and buy this book from Amazon

When Jolson Was King: (Paperback) by Richard Grudens.

Richard Grudens has written an entertaining and informative (must read) book for anyone interested in the legendary, Al Jolson "The World's Greatest Entertainer".

"The book contains many facets of Jolson' career including those around him, his competition, employers, and comments from those he inspired enough to form their own careers, the issue of minstrel, blackface performers, fabled stories of the famed Friar's Club, a chapter of the infamous Shubert Brothers, and chapters covering Jolson's experiences in film, radio and his extensive USO travels. Covered too are vignettes of the theatres in which Jolson performed, and of those great theatrical competitors like the Barrymore's and where they were voicing their talents while Jolson was pulling them in at the Winter Garden, and a full feature on Jolson's films from the first talkie, The Jazz Singer to his famed bio-pics The Jolson Story and Jolson Sings Again." - Richard Grudens

Click here to shop and buy this book from Amazon

Changes to Jolson and Friends Blog

In the upcoming months I am looking to continue to evolve the Jolson and Friends Blog and wanted preview some upcoming changes. As of this post, I am promoting the sale of Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Houdini, History of Baseball and several other unique Limited Edition T-shirt designs (featured above) and matching gift cards (all with free U.S. shipping). The sales from these items help offset the cost of maintaining this blog.

Due to the time intensive nature of ongoing research, content development, production and maintaining and the Blog, the next blog update will happen on October 28, 2007.

I am starting to work on several future Jolson and Friends projects including:

• Jolson and Friends Recommended Reading and Viewer Lists including cost-saving shopping links to find out-of-print books, videos and more.
• Expanded global coverage of local events.
• Future podcasts of upcoming interviews and special performance-based content.

To ensure that you are automatically informed about new postings, please enter your email address at the sidebar on the left of this blog page or send an email to my attention, with the subject line "Subscribe", to: brian@JolsonBlog.com .

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