First Song - St. Louis Blues

This is jazz The only live talent presentation of authentic improvised New Orleans jazz The writer and narrator is Rudy Blanch famous jazz critics and author of the recent book shining trumpets the colorful history of this American music each week at this time He and his great jazz men bring you a solid half hour of superb improvised jazz and scenes from its history

So here is Rudy Blanch and here we are all set to go on the 14th session of this Yes, is jazz. The city of St. Louis on the Mississippi River was a one-time away station for the jazz that came north out of New Orleans.

The old side wheel riverboats with their jazz bands would tie up there, and the brassie-singipated strains of their wonderful music that beat the dancing from Chestnut Street right down to the levee. So it's fitting that one of the classic tunes of jazz should celebrate this city that helped to foster the folk art that is now an American fine art.

So please listen as our great jazz men play that old favorite, St. Louis Blues. We're here in the studio with us today, our men who have all of them participated in those historic formative days of jazz.

There's baby dogs over there as a drummer, and pops foster that bass player. Both of them came out of New Orleans 30 years ago on the old riverboat, St. Paul in Sydney. And there's Albert Nicklaus, the clarinetist who went north to New Orleans only just a little later.

Danny Barker the guitarist who followed him. Mr. George Bruni is that trombone man who left New Orleans for Chicago as a kid a quarter of a century ago. And completing our band today are two men who as boys in Chicago learned to play this exciting but difficult music that came out of the Delta City.