Although summer is starting to wind down, celebrations are just beginning at Jazz 93.5. As we gear up for the station’s upcoming fifth birthday (happening in October!), this month we are celebrating National Radio Day on August 20, 2022. Jazz and radio have a unique relationship as both jazz music and radio technology were conceived and developed more or less concurrently (though not in tandem), with the first stirrings and discoveries coming along in the late 19th century and mainstream developments in the 1910s and ‘20s.

In the early years of radio, it was jazz music that helped sustain the format, bringing live music to thousands and then millions of American homes in the 1920s. With nightly performances throughout major metropolitan areas, jazz ensembles offered a wealth of broadcasting content, a major opportunity for early radio broadcasting companies. Known as “remotes,” the first live broadcast of a big band performance was held on March 29, 1924 by the Oriole Orchestra of Detroit, broadcasting from its new home at Chicago’s Edgewater Beach Hotel. Radio also played a big role elevating the reputation of bandleaders like Duke Ellington. Ellington had already been a major bandleader on the East coast for nearly ten years when he landed at Harlem’s famed Cotton Club in 1927, but with weekly remotes from the club’s ballroom, Ellington quickly garnered national fame and acclaim with the so-called “jungle music” his band was playing at the time. Big band remotes quickly gained traction, with bands from all over the east coast and Midwest making their way to the airwaves.

Similarly, the Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle, NY – known as “the mecca for music moderns” – became a hotspot for big bands and radio broadcasting in the 1930s. Just as radio remotes turned Duke Ellington into a household name, broadcasts from the Glen Island Casino launched the careers of legendary bandleaders like Charlie Barnet, Les Brown, Claude Thornhill, and the Dorsey Brothers. Without radio remotes, the fabled Glenn Miller Orchestra would have fallen into obscurity, having formed and disbanded in 1938, a failed endeavor. When the band was reassembled in 1939 for just a couple performances at Glen Island, their tenure was extended for the entire summer with the whole season being broadcast on the radio, rocketing Miller’s band to stardom with hits like “Moonlight Serenade” and “Stairway to the Stars.”

While the Swing era was in full swing (pardon the pun) by the 1930s, many historians mark the beginning of the era with Benny Goodman’s famous performance from the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, also broadcast live on the radio. While Goodman had already garnered enough name recognition to appear regularly on the weekly radio program Let’s Dance, his band often performed well after midnight, limiting his exposure on the East Coast. However, the timing placed him in prime time on the West coast. At the tail end of a national tour that could be described as a “failure,” the Benny Goodman Orchestra landed in Los Angeles, playing to what was perhaps their most adoring crowd yet at the Palomar Ballroom. Heard by countless listeners via radio broadcast, that inspired performance cemented swing music as America’s popular music and heralded the dawn of the Swing era.

Throughout history, jazz and radio have shared a colorful history, at times at odds with each other, at times simpatico. This month, we celebrate radio’s capacity to continue to showcase and grow America’s original art form on one of only a handful of stations that offer jazz programming exclusively around the clock, Jazz 93.5. Celebrate National Radio Day with a contribution to your favorite radio station, and tune in to hear all the hits from the Swing era and beyond, only on Jazz 93.5!