Episode Release Date: (EARLY RELEASE) August 29, 2026

Composed by: Hoagy Carmichael (1927) | Lyrics by: Mitchell Parish (1929)

Episode Performance: Eric Baker, Shawn O'Connor, Fred Withrow, Mike Kessler

Interview Guest: David Allee, Owner of The Jazz Kitchen

2-Minute Read: The Path to a Standard

The Genesis at Gennett

Before it became the quintessential late-night ballad, Hoagy Carmichael conceived Stardust right here in Indiana. Refined and "workshopped" among Hoagy's associates over a period of almost three years, the song had been played in various forms—uptempo, ballad, medium tempo—around Bloomington, and in small collaborative groups in Central Indiana. When Hoagy gathered his "Pals" on October 31, 1927 to first record Stardust at the legendary Gennett Studios in Richmond, Indiana, he decided to take it in a medium-tempo Ragtime direction, no doubt influenced Louis Armstrong's recordings and Carmichael's time jamming with Bix Beiderbecke. The label on the Gennett recording calls the dance tempo/feel "Stomp," and that's how early listeners were introduced to the tune.

The Transformation

The destiny of Stardust shifted when Mills Music's Mitchell Parish added "official" lyrics in 1929 (some of which had origins in Bloomington among Hoagy's friends), and bandleader Isham Jones recorded the song as a slower ballad in 1930, unlocking the lush, wandering romanticism woven into Hoagy’s unconventional melody. In 1931, Louis Armstrong's recording changed everything: his instrumental improvisation and scat singing recalibrated Stardust, making it the ultimate proving ground for every major bandleader, instrumentalist, and vocalist of the 20th century. Nat King Cole's Stardust recording in 1956 on the Capitol label ultimately became the modern anchor point for contemporary references, and the arrangement by Gordon Jenkins (famously featuring the evocative opening harp glissando and rich violins) paid homage to the earliest concept of the song and name: an other-worldly, almost haunting echo of a memory, evoked by a melody.

The Central Indiana Connection 

Born out of Carmichael's collegiate days at Indiana University and deeply rooted in the Hoosier jazz ecosystem, Stardust stands is the most recorded popular song in history (more than 1,500 official recordings)—bridging the gap between 1920s Midwestern syncopation and the timeless Great American Songbook.

Reading List & Links of Interest

• The Jazz Kitchen's Facebook Page

• The Jazz Kitchen's Monday Night Jam Session Facebook Page

• Indy Jazz Fest Website

• Rob Dixon's New Album: Naptown Soul Bandcamp Page

• Falco, Richard. "Stardust" Hoagy Carmichael (1927). Library of Congress National Recording Registry Essay, 2004. (Detailed harmonic analysis, iv to iv6 progression, "Potato Head Blues" quote, and Gennett Electrobeam session).

• Sudhalter, Richard M. Stardust Melody: The Life and Music of Hoagy Carmichael. Oxford University Press, 2002. (Multi-year Bloomington workshop history, Stuart Gorrell proto lyrics, and Bix Beiderbecke connection).

• Carmichael, Hoagy. The Stardust Road & Sometimes I Wonder. Da Capo Press, 1999.(Carmichael's memoirs detailing the Book Nook, early Indiana days, and Hollywood career).

• Kennedy, Rick. Jelly Roll, Bix, and Hoagy: Gennett Records and the Rise of America's Musical Grassroots. Indiana University Press, 2013. (Richmond Starr Piano/Gennett studio history).

• NPR Audio Feature on Stardust from 12/11/2000.

Episode Release Date: September 7, 2026

Composed by: Cole Porter (Music & Lyrics) 1930

Episode Performance: Sandy Lomax, Kevin Anker, Fred Withrow, Mike Kessler

Interview Guest: Vocalist Sandy Lomax

The 2-Minute Read: The Path to a Standard

A Scandalous Debut & The Radio Ban

Written by Cole Porter for the 1930 Broadway musical The New Yorkers, Love for Sale delivered a shock to the system. Penned entirely from the stark, matter-of-fact perspective of a streetwalker advertising her trade, the song was promptly banned by major radio networks. That censorship—steeped in the troubling racial double standards of the era's broadcast executives—only fueled its underground mystique, turning a forbidden Broadway tune into an enduring sensation.

The Jazz Musician's Proving Ground

To circumvent the vocal radio ban in the 1930s, dance orchestras began cutting instrumental versions, letting Porter’s dark, seductive melody speak for itself. Built upon a descending bassline, minor-tinged modal shifts, and an unusually modern harmonic palette, the song naturally evolved from a controversial theater piece into an after-hours instrumental staple. By the time Billie Holiday cut her definitive 1952 vocal session with Oscar Peterson and Miles Davis teamed with Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane for their masterclass 1958 recording, Love for Sale had earned its rightful place as one of the most structurally rewarding compositions in modern jazz. 

The Central Indiana Connection

Long before conquering Broadway and Paris, Cole Porter was born and raised in Peru, Indiana, just 75 miles north of Indianapolis. Despite composing timeless standards like Night and Day and I’ve Got You Under My Skin, Porter reportedly considered Love for Sale the work he was most proud of. Rooted in the soil of Miami County, Indiana, it remains a daring, unapologetic Hoosier masterpiece. 

Links of Interest

• Sandy Lomax's Facebook Page

• The Jazz Kitchen's Facebook Page

• The Jazz Kitchen's Monday Night Jam Session Facebook Page

• Indy Jazz Fest Website

• Rob Dixon's New Album: Naptown Soul Bandcamp Page

• On October 1, 2021, NPR's Morning Edition featured the Tony Bennett, Lady Gaga album project "Love for Sale," and we've linked that page here.

• In our chat with Sandy Lomax, we asked her about pointers she might give to singers who are considering sitting in at a Jazz jam session (her comments are about half way through our interview). Sandy offers sage advice about ways to navigate the sometimes-intimidating, sometimes confusing construct. Sandy's comments put us in mind of a "Jazz Jam for singers" how-to document we came across back in 2019, from Ottawa-based JazzWorks Canada, and we've linked it below. It's intended to benevolently guide an interested singer on how to prepare for and participate in a vocalist-friendly Jazz jam session. If you're interested or you know someone who might be, there's GOOD STUFF in the document, which is titled: "So you want to sing at a JazzWorks jam session?"

Episode Release Date: September 14, 2026

Composed by: Turner Layton | Lyrics by: Henry Creamer (1918)

Performance: Oliver Nelson, Kevin Anker, Thomas Brinkley, Mike Kessler

Interview Guest: Educator-Musician Oliver Nelson

2-Minute Read: The Path to a Standard

The Vaudeville Breakthrough

Written in 1918 by the pioneering Black songwriting team of Turner Layton and Henry Creamer, After You've Gone broke early commercial ground on Broadway and the vaudeville circuit. Premiered and popularized by singers Marion Harris and Sophie Tucker, its syncopated rhythm and straightforward lyric helped make it one of the earliest widespread popular hits written by African American composers.

The Up-Tempo Transformation

While originally composed as a dramatic, medium-tempo popular song, jazz musicians quickly recognized the engine inside its unusual 20-bar chord progression. Louis Armstrong’s 1929 Okeh recording doubled the tempo and altered the tune's trajectory forever, transforming it into a fiery proving ground for soloists. Subsequent landmark recordings by the Benny Goodman Trio in 1935 and Django Reinhardt with the Quintette du Hot Club de France in 1936 established the song as a worldwide benchmark for instrumental speed, swing, and improvisational agility.

A Universal Jam Session Anthem

Because the underlying harmony resolves with relentless momentum, After You've Gone evolved from an early 20th-century stage tune into one of the most frequently played jam session vehicles in jazz history. More than a century after its publication, its cyclical structure remains a foundational teaching piece and standard test of musicianship across every major jazz era.

Links of Interest

• Oliver Nelson's Facebook Page

• The Jazz Kitchen's Facebook Page

• The Jazz Kitchen's Monday Night Jam Session Facebook Page

• Indy Jazz Fest Website

• Rob Dixon's New Album: Naptown Soul Bandcamp Page

• Sophie Tucker's 1927 recording of "After You've Gone" is linked here. The extraordinary guitar solo in that recording was performed by the legendary Eddie Lang, often credited as "The Father of Jazz Guitar." Lang, classically trained as a violinist, was THE guitar call for many early Jazz recordings and for iconic early Jazz era bandleaders and entertainers. Credited under his own name and sometimes under imaginative pseudonyms, Lang appeared with and/or played on recordings for Paul Whiteman, Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, Bix Biederbecke, Lonnie Johnson, Sophie Tucker, Ruth Etting, The Boswell Sisters, The Dorsey Brothers, King Oliver, Red Nichols and Joe Venturi. He played with Hoagy Carmichael in the 1930 recording session for "Georgia On My Mind," the first-ever recording of what would become Carmichael's second-most recorded composition.

Episode Release Date: September 21, 2026

Composed by: Irving Berlin (1926)

Performance: Eric Baker, Shawn O'Connor, Kevin Anker, Fred Withrow, Mike Kessler

Interview Guest: Musician-Composer, Co-Host Eric Baker

2-Minute Read: The Path to a Standard

A Broadway Addition and Film History

Irving Berlin wrote Blue Skies as a last-minute interpolation into the 1926 Rodgers and Hart musical Betsy. On opening night, star Belle Baker famously performed 24 encores of the tune. It quickly became the only song from the show to outlive the production, achieving historic permanence just one year later when Al Jolson sang it in The Jazz Singer (1927) as one of the very first songs heard in a commercial talking picture.

Minor to Major Architecture

Berlin’s composition stands out for its structural design: it opens on a moody, descending minor-key progression before pivoting into a bright, major-key resolution. This harmonic contrast made it a favorite of the Swing Era, yielding iconic big-band recordings like Tommy Dorsey's 1941 chart (arranged by Sy Oliver, featuring vocals by Frank Sinatra). In 1958, Ella Fitzgerald’s recording for the Irving Berlin Songbook solidified the tune as a masterclass in vocal jazz and scat improvisation.

The Bebop Contrafact Foundation

Beyond vocal treatments, the underlying harmony of Blue Skies became integral to the development of modern jazz harmony. Bebop pianist and composer Thelonious Monk used the chord changes of Berlin's piece as the harmonic foundation to write his 1947 standard, In Walked Bud, proving the structural adaptability of Berlin's 1926 framework for the modern era.

Links of Interest

• Eric Baker's Facebook Page

• The Jazz Kitchen's Facebook Page

• The Jazz Kitchen's Monday Night Jam Session Facebook Page

• Indy Jazz Fest Website

• Rob Dixon's New Album: Naptown Soul Bandcamp Page

• Django Reinhardt's June 6, 1940 Paris recording with Philippe Brun et son Orchestre (just a week before German troops entered Paris).

Episode Release Date: September 28, 2026

Composed by: Sigmund Romberg | Lyrics by: Oscar Hammerstein II (1928)

Performance: Rich Cohen, Kevin Anker, Thomas Brinkley, Mike Kessler

Interview Guest: Musician Rich Cohen

2-Minute Read: The Path to a Standard

From Operetta Romance to Modern Jazz

Introduced in Romberg and Hammerstein’s 1928 Broadway operetta The New Moon, Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise began as a classical-style minor-key romantic piece written in a Tango style. Despite its theatrical origins, post-war jazz musicians recognized that its clean harmonic framework provided an exceptional palette for modern chord substitution and modal exploration.

The Cool Jazz and Hard Bop Revival

The tune became a staple of modern jazz in the 1950s. The Modern Jazz Quartet adopted it in 1955 as a showcase for their counterpoint-heavy chamber swing, while Sonny Rollins demonstrated its muscular rhythmic potential during his legendary 1957 live trio recordings at the Village Vanguard. The tune's dynamic tension—moving between a somber C-minor opening and a soaring E-flat major bridge—gave modern improvisers ideal dynamic range.

A Modal Masterpiece

In 1960 and 1961, John Coltrane adopted the tune on soprano saxophone (captured both on Coltrane's Sound and live at the Village Vanguard), stripping away its operetta past and turning it into an open, relentless modal workout. By the mid-1960s, recordings by artists like organist Larry Young firmly placed Romberg’s composition alongside the most respected instrumental platforms in hard bop and modal jazz.

Links of Interest

• Rich Cohen's Facebook Page

• The Jazz Kitchen's Facebook Page

• The Jazz Kitchen's Monday Night Jam Session Facebook Page

• Indy Jazz Fest Website

• Rob Dixon's New Album: Naptown Soul Bandcamp Page

• Bing Crosby's late-career recording with the Buddy Cole Trio, a performance that leaned into the composer's original intent: a "Tango Habanaera" arrangement, instrumentation and vocal.

Episode Release Date: October 5, 2026

Composed by: James F. Hanley | Lyrics by: Ballard MacDonald (1917)

Episode Performance: Shawn O'Connor, Eric Baker, Kevin Anker, Fred Withrow, Mike Kessler

Interview Guest: Educator-Musician Shawn O'Connor

2-Minute Read: The Path to a Standard

A Tin Pan Alley Classic and Racing Tradition

Published in 1917 by James F. Hanley and Ballard MacDonald, (Back Home Again in) Indiana was an immediate sheet-music and phonograph hit, recorded that same year by the Original Dixieland Jass Band. Borrowing melodic motifs from Paul Dresser's 1897 state song On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away, the song entered American civic lore in 1946 when it became the permanent ceremonial anthem of the Indianapolis 500.

The Harmonic Engine of Modern Jazz

Behind its sentimental lyric lies one of the most functional, driving 32-bar chord progressions in American music. Louis Armstrong adopted the tune in the 1930s and kept it as a signature, high-energy set opener for his All Stars throughout his career, while Lester Young's relaxed 1930s and 40s recordings showcased how easily the progression accommodated linear, melodic swing.

The Birth of "Donna Lee" and Bebop

The song’s greatest impact on modern music occurred in 1947, when Charlie Parker and Miles Davis composed Donna Lee directly over the underlying chord changes of (Back Home Again in) Indiana. By superimposing complex, chromatic lines over Hanley’s 1917 harmonic framework, the tune became one of the most famous "contrafacts" in music history and a cornerstone of the bebop revolution. 

Links of Interest

• Shawn O'Connor's Facebook Page

• The Jazz Kitchen's Facebook Page

• The Jazz Kitchen's Monday Night Jam Session Facebook Page

• Indy Jazz Fest Website

• Rob Dixon's New Album: Naptown Soul Bandcamp Page

• The Original Dixieland Jazz Band recording of (Back Home Again in) Indiana. If you listen to this AFTER listening to the Billy Murray/Haydn Quartet version (first one below in the block of YouTube links), you're sort of RIGHT IN THE MOMENT of early popular music's energetic rush away from parlor-appropriate music toward raucous, gin joint syncopation.