As theaters have had to close down since March 24, 2020 due to the COVID pandemic, concerts and other performances have gone virtual. Today we look two events: The 2020 Goodspeed Opera House Gala and The Doo Wop Project "Live in Your Living Room" concert. Both events staged the fall of 2020.

As theaters have had to close down since March 24, 2020 due to the COVID pandemic, concerts and other performances have gone virtual. Today we look two events: The 2020 Goodspeed Opera House Gala and The Doo Wop Project "Live in Your Living Room" concert. Both events staged the fall of 2020.

Ken Burns' Country Music series on PBS is the inspiration for this look at the great American music blended from all people.

In September of 2019, "Country Music," by the acclaimed film director Ken Burns, aired 8 episodes over a two-week period on PBS TV stations throughout the USA. Inspired by that incredible documentary that traced country music from its origins in the 1930's through six more decades, this edition of American Jukebox brings 35 representative pieces, many used in the documentary, to this program.

From the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers in the '30s to Hank Williams and Bob Wills in the '40s, on to the '50s, '60s and beyond with Johnny Cash, Lefty Frezelle, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, George Jones, Charley Pride, Dolly Parton, Willie and Waylon, and many others, your listeners will respond to this cross section of the Country genre that is coming up to its 100th birthday.

Listener response to this program has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic.

Broadway Bound #200 -- A regular 2-hour edition of the greatest Broadway music from yesterday and today -- Originally aired on WMNR on Jan. 4, 2014.

Big names, hundreds of recordings, here are the not off-the-top-of-your head choices.

When you say the biggest names in classic pop, rock and soul, immediately their biggest hits come to mind. We can rattle those hits off like we're saying the Pledge of Allegiance. On this edition of American Jukebox we bypass the big ones and take a deeper dive to the more obscure charted hits, and in some cases recordings that never charted or were ever released as singles.

The talent lineup includes the big draws from the '60s and '70s. Big names like Sam Cooke, Brenda Lee, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Dusty Springfield, Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand, Cher, Bruce Springsteen and Helen Reddy to name some.

Your listeners will find surprises and surely a few tracks they don't know at all, like Springsteen's Shenandoah and Dionne Warwick's Once You Hit the Road.

Enjoy the not obvious choices from our favorites.

Broadway songs guaranteed to make you smile.

There are lots of songs from the musical theater that just make you smile. They're clever, funny, tongue-in-cheek, or just infectious - in a good way. These 27 always get me to smile. From the oldest one on the list, 76 Trombones with Robert Preston, to the newest production of My Fair Lady where Norbert Leo Butz steals the show with Get Me To The Church On Time. Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera, as mother and daughter, come to realize they very much the same in The Apple Doesn't Fall while Karen Ziemba has found the cure for what ails her, Arthur In The Afternoon.
Classics like Honey Bun, Anything Goes, A Spoonful of Sugar, Bosom Buddies, and His Love Makes Me Beautiful tickle your funny bone every time.
Listen to these gems and get ready to smile.

Baby Boomers have lost hundreds of their music personalities. We remember them and their music here.

A staggering, long list of dead music legends from the early years of rock, pop and soul ('50s, '60s, and '70s), is the basis of this edition of American Jukebox. Of the hundreds we've lost, this program looks at 35 of them. From Chuck Berry and Fats Domino, who lived to 90 and 89 respectively, to tragic losses of young artists like Tammi Terrell (24), Jim Croce (30), Karen Carpenter (32), Florence Ballard (32), Sam Cooke (33) and Cass Elliot (34), their music lives on to endlessly thrill us.

2020 has been a year like none we have experienced in our lifetime. The international COVID-19 pandemic has made us look at death in stark reality. This just isn't the year for Halloween fun with monsters, ghosts and horror. Too much of that faces us daily. Instead, this edition of American Jukebox honors and remembers the dead who musically and personally have made our lives richer.

With reverence to all those who have passed, I'm Garrett Stack.

New York City was a mess in the 1980's. Broadway attendance plummeted. Some predicted the end of the American Musical. In spite of all that, a few blockbuster musicals emerged during that decade and saved the Great White Way just in time to make its historic turnaround in the 1990's.

Broadway Bound #264 -- Survivor: Broadway in the '80s

With Broadway attendance figures and revenues constantly setting records in the 21st century, it's hard to imagine that just 30 years ago we almost witnessed the end of this American art form. New York City's most important tourist destination is the Broadway Theater District, the blocks surrounding Times Square that house 40 Broadway Theaters and many more smaller venues. But in the 1980's parts of the city were riddled by crime, filth, and decadence. The Times Square area was among the worst.

42nd Street was home to pimps, prostitutes, panhandlers, peep shows and hustlers. Garbage tossed on the street, urine puddles on sidewalks, derelicts living in boxes and street crime was part of the vibe. Tourism to Broadway dropped. Families would not come. It seemed only the stalwart theater aficionados ventured to shows. Get in, see a show, get out. As a result producers were not funding new works to the degree they had. New shows, especially the more expensive musicals, were disappearing. Some predicted that the American Musical Theater had taken its last gasp.

Fortunately, that was not the case. In spite of all the obstacles many of Broadway's most enduring new musicals opened during the '80s. There were also the revivals. However, there were many musicals most people have never heard of that were nominated for Tony Awards. There simply were so few to choose from that the Tony Committee had to find something to fill the slots. Musicals with titles like Tintypes, Grind, Merlin, Quilters, Starmites, Romance/Romance and Big Deal were all Best Musical nominations during the decade.

But there were also brand new musicals that proved creativity in musical theater was alive and well. Here's a sampling of the best: 42nd Street, Nine, Cats, La Cage aux Folles, Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera, Sunday in the Park With George, Into the Woods, My One and Only, Big River and Dreamgirls. Audiences supported these shows and kept the lights burning.

On this edition of Broadwaty Bound we salute the '80s musicals that held down the fort for more than a decade providing reason for the Broadway Renaissance of the 1990's that continues to this day.

American Jukebox 316

Hold on before you think you know what I mean. In the biz, "classics" are designated well-known songs that never charted on Billboard's Hot-100. Big songs by big artists mostly off albums.

When considering performance on Billboard's Hot-100, the "BIG" chart, we recognize that thousands of songs we know and love, or don't, have "charted" through the decades. Billboard even has "Bubbling Under the Hot-100" with positions 101-130.

Joel Whitburn's Record Research, Inc. analyzes the charts and has been the international authority on American pop, rock, soul and country. In his books that include every title to ever chart on the Hot-100 or its variations since 1955, he also includes "Classic" recordings. That is, songs by major artists that never charted on the Hot-100 but are extremely popular and very well known. On this edition of American Jukebox we look at 33 such "classics."

The list includes recordings by The Beach Boys and The Beatles, Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline, Judy Collins and Linda Ronstadt, Bobby Dartin and Nat "King" Cole, Elvis Presley, Neil Sedaka, Cat Stevens, John Denver, Madonna, Tina Turner, Aretha Franklin and many more.

Incidentally, most of these songs were never pressed on 45's so they were not heard on jukeboxes decades ago. But word-of-mouth and savvy DJ's picked them off albums for us to appreciate and love. Appreciate and enjoy.

Imagine a life without Broadway Music. Now imagine being stranded on desert island . If you could have your Broadway music in a very limited amount, what would you choose? These are mine.

It was not always the case, but in the 1960's men and women started to share the lineups for pop, rock and soul vocal groups. The Mamas & Papas took the world by storm with their look and their music. This edition of American Jukebox® features many examples from '60s, '70s and '80s.

Broadway musicals have no shortage of hope and happiness expressed in song.

Hope and happiness are two human feelings that find their way to the Broadway stage over and over - of course. From Get Happy and Happy Time, Seize the Day, and Open a New Window, 29 songs capture hope and happiness in very upbeat ways. Classics like You'll Never Walk Alone and Climb Every Mountain, join self-esteem affirmations like Beautiful.

Get a boost to the drearies on this edition of Broadway Bound.

If you love lists, you'll love this. Scientific, unbiased data used to determine the top 20 # hits of the 1960s and those of the 1970s. It's a countdown. What do you think makes the list? Probably have some guesses that are right. But what you will also find are the surprises that make you go, "huh, can't be true."

The top #1 chart perfromers on Billboard's Hot-100 of these two decades are gathered here for your enjoyment. Agree? Disagree? Wonder why? Don't argue with the data. Have fun.

Pretty much, these songs, selected from Broadway and off-Broadway musicals, are easy to listen to. They won't put you to sleep, but you won't run to turn them off either. Old and new.

Some musicals have songs that you have to be in the mood for. They may be very intense, layered and loud. That's all good, when you want it. These songs, culled from a couple dozen shows, tend not be intense but rather melodic and easy to listen to. The show starts with Daddy Warbucks, Reid Shelton, singing Something Was Missing from Annie, and ends up with three tunes from Summer: The Donna Summer Musical - easy ones.

A look at The Drowsy Chaperone, Pretty Woman - The Musical, and classics like Funny Girl, 42nd Street, Sweet Charity and Promises Promises are samples of what's in store. A surprise comes from Parade, the 1960 off-Broadway revue, Jerry Herman's first foray into show music.

Yacht Rock is a sub-genre of pop-rock very popular in the mid '70s to mid '80s. But nobody called it Yacht Rock. Now they do.

In the 1970's we had a type of pop some called, "soft rock." It had no hard edges. There were high production values, excellent musicians, some jazz and R&B influences, and very melodic. In 2005 an online video series called Yacht Rock used these smooth sounding songs from the '70s and early '80s, mostly by white artists, as the soundtrack to their episodes. Soon that style of music took on the name of the series, Yacht Rock.

The term was a putdown to this music when it was coined in 2005. But, by 2015 people began reevaluating the sound and today it's a defined genre that draws on the music of the specific time period: 1975ish - 1985ish. And record companies have cashed in on its popularity by reissuing songs in compilations called, yes, Yacht Rock.

Many of the songs and artists had big Billboard Hot-100, and Adult Contemporary hits with these songs. Many of them were one-hit wonders. On this edition, 23 of the 30 selections were in the Top-10 on Billboard's Hot-100, several at #1.

So who are we talking about? Here's a short list: Christopher Cross, The Doobies, Stephen Bishop, Jimmy Buffet, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Air Supply, Dr. Hook, Lionel Richie, 10cc, Harry Nilsson, and many others.

What do the songs have in common? Smooth sound, a gentle bounce now called the Doobie bounce, lighthearted lyrics, jazz and R&B influences, good production values, vulnerable males singing about their feelings of being hurt and especially using the word "fool."

Lots of rain, storms, and sun, but how about Noah in the flood or Dorothy in a tornado? Broadway musicals got 'em.

There is practically nothing you can't find in song. The weather is not exempt. Since Stormy Weather and Heat Wave were introduced in 1933 we've had many more weather songs. The '40s gave us I Got the Sun In the Mornin' and the Moon at Night and It's Too Darn Hot. Irving Berlin gave us It's A Lovely Day Today in Call Me Madam and Andrea McArdle forever charmed us saying the sun'll come out Tomorrow. That whorehouse in Texas was some hot place with 20 Fans a-turnin' in every room but nothing compares to Viet Nam's scorchers when The Heat Is On In Saigon.
From Oh, What a Beautiful Morning to A Grand Night For Singing this edition of Broadway Bound illustrates the breadth of lyrics and music that once again keeps the musical theater interesting and fresh.

It's a cruel world, a wild world, a young world, my world, and I'm on top of the world. It's all about worlds and how we see them. Each of us sees our worlds differently every day. Sometimes a "10" and other times a "1."

Anecdotal evidence shows the noun "world" is a huge part of song titles, and even more in song lyrics. Perhaps "love" beats it out in sheer numbers. But "world" is what we humans see when we open our eyes every day. Sometimes it's a wonderful world. Other times it's empty. When I'm happy, glad, worried or sad, it's all about "my world."

With this simple word, songwriters have crafted thousands of songs reflecting on "worlds." Three dozen of those make the point on this edition of American Jukebox®.

Where's off- Broadway? It's in New York right in the heart of the Broadway theater district. Off-Broadway refers to the number seats in a theater (100-499), not the location of the theater. Because off-Broadway theaters cost less to operate, producers often mount shows there. Some shows really take hold and move to the larger more expensive theaters on “Broadway" with seats 500+. Other shows are not meant for the much larger Broadway houses. They're intended for smaller venues and stay there.

Everything heard on this edition of Broadway Bound is from off-Broadway cast recordings.

This is a look at some musicals that use use rock 'n' roll in the musical or write the music in the style of rock. From 1968, Hair is considered the first successful Broadway Musical to have a rock score. Some like to say Bye Bye Birdie (1960) was the first rock 'n' roll musical. One listen to it, and you know it's not.
Other tracks from non-rock musicals are included on this edition of Broadway Bound.