June 18:  "Sinatra's melt-down recorded and released for the first time." Shortly after establishing his own recording company, Reprise Records, Frank Sinatra hired a young Johnny Mandel (admired today above all other living arranger-composers) to provide the orchestrations for the Chair's first release on his  own start-up label, a session entitled "Ring-A-Ding Ding."  The album has just been remastered and reissued in a form that's bound to be as controversial as it is essential to anyone interested in the music of Frank Sinatra. For a change, all of the post-production effects (called "wetness" in the trade) have been removed.  The result is a voice sounding as "dry" as ever, every hint of reverb wrung out in favor of the natural grit and grain of the Sinatra at his "natural" best.  But besides the sound, there's the matter of content. For the first time ever, the listener has the opportunity to hear two of the out-takes from the session, including Sinatra's 11-minute abortive attempt to record Rodgers and Hart's "Have You Met Miss Jones," during which we hear Frank both sing and talk throughout the ordeal.  And you can join in on the "fun" (?) by joining us this Saturday Night on WGTD-HD at 7 P.M.

June 25: "Bill Evans' Legendary Vanguard Session: The 50th Anniversary of the Most Seminal Piano Recording in the History of Jazz."  Ten years ago the New Yorker magazine devoted an article to the Sunday afternoon--June 21, 1961--when musical history was made--under adverse circumstances (and  the public's radar)--when Bill Evans took his new trio with brilliant bassist Scott LaFaro into New York's Village Vanguard, the oldest jazz club in America (and the world).  Despite minimal recording equipment, electrical power failures and an inexperienced, "substitute" engineer, the Bill Evans trio recorded an album that changed the course of jazz piano and the very nature of the jazz piano trios thereafter.  Many reissues and much repackaging of the "sacred" music of that holy day has ensued.  But in 2005 the complete proceedings were gathered together for a definitive, comprehensive release: "Bill Evans: The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961."  Join us this Saturday Night at 7 P.M. to discover what all the fuss was about--and to have a ring-side seat on the sublime yet extemporaneous music that provoked it.