Concert Themes for 2025

Every song tells a story

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

VintageMusicConcerts trace musical, historic and romantic ideas with clever lyrics, memorable tunes and amusing anecdotes. Folks say their favorite tunes are graced with wit and warmth, while hosts say themes are easy to promote. We've developed these Concert Themes for 2025.

                                                                                    **********************

Louis Armstrong's  Hot Five
Exclusive on Okeh Records
Chicago — 1925

The Roots of American Jazz — With story and song, this concert offers some of the great tunes first heard in the late 1920s and early 1930s in saloons, clubs, juke joints and speakeasies, in live, on-the-air radio broadcasts, and in the 78 rpm discs produced by a nascent record industry for the era's sweetest, hottest jazz cats.

Crooners, Swingers, Idols — Concert of hit tunes popularized by heart-throb crooners, Rat Pack swingers and TV-dinner idols in the 1950s and 1960s  —  all memorable songs to folks who loved their music played on transistor radios, 45 rpm records, drugstore juke boxes, Friday night sock hops or Saturday movies.

Canadian folksingers Sylvia Flicker & Ian Tyson on
cover of their 1963 LP album "Four Strong Winds."

Poets of the Prairie — Concert explores the words, music and cultural impact of the most talented and most successful recording artists   of the 1960s and 1970s — the generation of folkies and singer-songwriters from the North American Prairie, such noted Midwesterners as Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Jimmy Webb, Phil Ochs, Michael Merchant as well as the Canadians Ian Tyson, Sylvia Flicker and Gordon Lightfoot.

 

Vintage Guitar Roadshow — Concert offers syncopated ragtime, early jazz, hokum & swing tunes of the 1920s, 1930s & 1940s played on vintage acoustic guitars from the same era — tunes first heard when musicians sang the tunes when new and played the guitars when new.

Moon, Stars and You — This concert summons the moon, the stars, moonlit trysts & the heavens above for romantic insights from such memorable tunes as Blue Moon, Fly Me To The Moon, Moonglow, It's Only A Paper Moon, Stars Fell On Alabama, Pennies From Heaven, Moon River, Carolina Moon, Allegheny Moon, As Time Goes By, Stardust, Dream A Little Dream Of Me, How High The Moon, Moonlight in Vermont, and I'll See You In My Dreams.

MidCentury Melodies — Concert of pop music from heart of the 20th Century — hit tunes by Rosemary Clooney, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Jo Stafford, Eydie Gormé, Patti Page, Vaughn Monroe, Eddy Arnold and others.

The Kingston Trio's 1958 debut album

Kingston Trio Redux — This concert will offer some well-known, well-loved and well-played tunes by one of the most successful musical combos of the 1950s and 1960s. They were a group of musicians and vocalists who kept defining, stretching and popping the pop-music industry's balloon with their special brand of folk tunes, folk-rock, singer-songwriter, calypso, Broadway show tunes and comedic banter even as they performed across the country in bistros, coffee houses, night clubs, on college campuses and with 21 live and studio LPs — all were hit records.

Broadway Mementos — The tunes producers on the Great White Way used to push dramatic and comedic storylines, tout ingénues, spur media publicity or to hustle extra income from sheet music sales, radio airplay, jukebox cuts, feature movies and cast recordings.

Nashville songwriter, singer
& guitarist Penny Jay in 1940.

   Sea Of Heartache — This

   concert offers some great

   teared-up ballads, lovers'

   laments and steamy pop

   standards from the 1940s,

   1950s and 1960s that were

   composed by N.Y. City, Los

   Angeles and Nashville song

   writers & record producers

   for fans of folk, Hollywood,

   Broadway & country tunes

   This concert illustrates the

   point that sooner or later

   everyone wants emotional

   refreshment from an hour

   of musical heartburn.

Great American Songsters — Concert of stories and songs about the musical scamps & wannabes, vocalists and songwriters who developed original musical formats in the early years of the 20th Century. These genre-makers included Bob Wills, Carson J Robison, Big Bill Bronzy, Bessie Smith, Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmie Davis, Huddie Ledbetter (aka Leadbelly), Goebel Reeves, the Carter Family (A.P., Sara and Maybelle Carter), Lonnie Johnson, Eddie Lang and others.

Carter Family - 1929

   American originals, they all worked far

   from the humid limelight of Tin Pan Alley

   or vaudeville to spawn the music genres

   and music-market labels known today as

   the blues, bluegrass, ragtime, R&B, folk,

   country n western, swing, western swing

   and boogie-woogie. Please note: these

   genres don't include disco, glam or rock.

   Some songsters were renown in their

   day. Many were not. A few made a living

   making music. But their art spread out

   across the cultural landscape in exciting

   formats such as 78s, 45s or LP records, 

   music in films, radio broadcasts, musical

   theaters, ubiquitous juke boxes, popular

   dance bands, bistro & juke joint combos,

   jazz clubs and live concerts.

 

Vocalist, songwriter & recording
artist Miss Peggy Lee in 1950

She Did It Her Way — With story & song, concert honors the lives, careers & hits of female vocalists, composers and recording artists active from 1925 to 1965. Program touts songs and talents of previously unheralded songwriters such as Cindy Walker, Dorothy Fields, Claire Rothrock, Peggy Lee and Sadie Vimmerstedt.

Hollywood Souvenirs — Concert of hit tunes that enabled Hollywood moguls to monetize the theme songs and background music of their celluloid dramas, torrid romances, show tunes and screwball comedies.

Band leader Cab Calloway, vocalist Ivie Anderson
and friends at an after-hours party in August, 1939.

Great American Cabaret — From the 1930s through the 1960s people dated, dined and danced to live music played in hotel ball rooms, restaurants, rent parties, cabarets, roadside juke joints and nightclubs. We offer some of the pop standards, ballads, hit tunes and favorite dance numbers played by the era's dance bands, jazz combos, saloon singers and pick-up musicians.

Folk Song Boomers — Concert of the folk, protest and traditional songs that were sing-along anthems, radio favorites and hit recordings for the post-WW II teenagers known as Baby Boomers.

Duke Ellington — Jazz Pianist + Composer + Band Leader
Exclusive on Victor and Bluebird Records
Ranked "Tops" as Swing Band Leader in 1944 Down Beat poll

He Did It His Way - Concert will honor the lives, hits, romances and careers of some of the greatest male singers, recording artists and composers active from the 1920s through the early 1960s. The show will tout several well-known and familiar names, but we plan to season the program with some of the lesser known male record makers, top vocalists and composers, such as Bart Howard, Ned Washington, Johnny Black, J. D. Loudermilk, Neil Moret, Joe Kosma and Richard Whiting. 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

© 2024 - Kenneth Lelen - All Rights Reserved