The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street is a musical variety radio program which began on the Blue Network on February 11, 1940.[1][2]
The program was created and hosted by NBC staff announcer Gene Hamilton, as a tongue-in-cheek satire of highbrow symphonic broadcasts hosted by Milton Cross. Instead of Cross's dignified commentary introducing each orchestral selection, "Dr. Gino Hamilton" would introduce a traditional hot jazz (Dixieland) melody, peppering his remarks with slang.
The music was performed by two house bands. Henry Levine, a former member of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, led an eight-member dixieland combo; Paul Laval led a 10-piece woodwind ensemble, with arrangements employing oboe, bassoon, and French horn. Each broadcast featured a vocalist: Dinah Shore was discovered on the Basin Street program; she was succeeded in turn by New York-based vocalists Diane Courtney, Dodie O'Neill, Dixie Mason, Linda Keene, Loulie Jean Norman, and Lena Horne.
Gene Hamilton invited guest artists to appear on Basin Street, including Benny Goodman, Count Basie, W. C. Handy, Bobby Hackett, Lead Belly, Lionel Hampton, Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, and Alec Templeton, among many other famous names in the jazz world.
The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street began as a sustaining (unsponsored) half-hour feature on NBC's Sunday-afternoon schedule (4:30 p.m. Eastern time). So many listeners wrote to the network expressing approval -- and asking to see the show in person -- that in October 1940 NBC gave Basin Street a Monday-evening slot in its primetime schedule. Hamilton was forced to leave the program in late 1941, when NBC reassigned him to its production department. He was replaced as host by announcer Jack McCarthy and then by the very man the series was burlesquing, Milton Cross. The show was canceled in 1944.
NBC returned Basin Street to its schedule on June 8, 1950, with Hamilton returning to the microphone, as a summer replacement for Judy Canova's program.[3] Basin Street was revived as a Saturday-night series during the summer of 1952, with Henry Levine's band and a new host, 23-year-old nightclub comedian Orson Bean. Bean caught the spirit of the series immediately, and read the scripted remarks in the bemused tones of a stuffy college professor. NBC staff announcer Wayne Howell, in the same spirit, introduced the host as "Boston's half-baked Bean."
Recordings and films
Beginning in November 1940, RCA Victor recorded albums featuring The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street. The liner notes were written by Welbourne (Web) Kelley, who wrote the radio series. Each disc in the album would begin with "Dr. Gino" Hamilton introducing the selection, played by one of the two Basin Street bands. The other side of the disc featured the other band. RCA re-released these records as late as the 1960s, emphasizing vocalists Dinah Shore or Lena Horne and deleting the commentaries.
The only surviving visual records of The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street are four three-minute films produced for the Soundies film jukeboxes in 1941. All feature the Henry Levine "Dixieland Jazz Band," with vocals by Linda Keene in three of them.[4]
References
- ^ Dunning, John (1998). On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio (Revised ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 146–148. ISBN 978-0-19-507678-3. Retrieved 15 August 2019.
- ^ "RadioEchoes.com". www.radioechoes.com.
- ^ "Basin Street Back after Six Years". Mt. Vernon Register-News. Illinois, Mt. Vernon. Associated Press. June 22, 1950. p. 22.
- ^ Scott MacGillivray and Ted Okuda, The Soundies Book: A Revised and Expanded Guide, iUniverse, 2007. ISBN 978-0595679690.