The Department of Music celebrated the golden age of radio with a special concert called “Your Hit Parade 1936″ Thursday night in Shamblin Theater.
The Great American Songbook concert series is devoted to showcasing classic American tunes from specific eras. For this concert, the music department put together a recreation of a popular radio show from the 1930s that played the weekly top 15 songs. This show was the precursor to today’s American Top 40 music charts.
Patricia Roberts, a music department adjunct professor, created this Great American Songbook show.
“I always try to come up with a new way to present it each year that’s kind of exciting and different,” Roberts said. “I got the idea to do the ‘Your Hit Parade,’ which was an old-time radio show, and I just started looking at all different kinds of music, and I began to see that I really loved the music from 1936, so then I picked out enough music to do a whole program with it.”
A small jazz trio — composed of pianist Jeff Burnham, bassist Ike Harris and drummer Chris Nelson — provided the music for the evening. Music students came up to the front microphone to serenade the audience with the classic songs.
Blake Farmer, news director and reporter for WPLN Nashville Public Radio, served as the evening’s MC. Farmer noted that as a radio personality, getting to host a 1930’s radio show was a huge joy.
“When you’re in radio, this is sort of the era that everyone looks back to,” Farmer said. “This was literally when people crowded around the radio to listen just to the radio. For a radio guy, this is the era you look back and think ‘wouldn’t it be cool to go back there and sort of relive when people on the radio were the stars?’”
Songs in the set list included “It’s De-Lovely” by Cole Porter, “Glory of Love” by Billy Hill, “Cheek to Cheek” by Irving Berlin and “The Way You Look Tonight” by Dorothy Fields and Jerome Kern.
Dr. Gary Wilson, music professor and director of choral activities, noted that the Great American Songbook series came from a simple idea.
“We started this several years ago to give our students in the private voice studios another kind of performance experience,” Wilson said. “We thought it would be kind of nice to do a show that focused on pop, jazz and Broadway music, and that a lot of people would be more interested in coming to hear our students perform that style.”
The Department of Music will host a jazz concert Feb. 17 at 6:30 p.m. in Shamblin Theater. The concert will feature the University Jazz Band and the Vocal Jazz Ensemble.