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The Music Of Johnny Hodges Away From Duke Ellington

Jazz Unlimited for July 16, 2017 will be “The Music of Johnny Hodges Away from Duke Ellington.”  Johnny Hodges was a major star in the Duke Ellington firmament as the alto saxophonist who played the lyrical compositions of his bandleader.  Ellington said his tone was so beautiful it brought tears to his eyes.  We will spotlight his music away from the Ellington orbit.  We will hear Hodges with his own groups and as a sideman with Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Joe Thomas, Coleman Hawkins, Billie Holiday, Billy Strayhorn, Jazz At the Philharmonic, Billy Taylor, Sr. and Earl Hines.  Clark Terry, Ahmad Jamal, Don Byron, Sarah Vaughan, Don Byas, Oliver Nelson, Joe Castro, Phineas Newborn, Jr., Shorty Baker with Doc Cheatham, Mary Lou Williams and Abdullah Ibrahim will play his compositions.

The Slide Show contains my photographs of some of he musicians heard on this show.

The Archive of this show will be available until the morning of July 24, 2017.

Here is Johnny Hodges playing Billy Strayhorn's "Passion Flower" at a concert with Duke Ellington in Copenhagen in 1967.

Dennis Owsley has broadcast a weekly jazz show for St. Louis Public Radio since April 1983. He holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and is a retired Monsanto Senior Science Fellow and college teacher. His show, Jazz Unlimited, airs every Sunday from 9:00 p.m. to midnight. The show has the largest jazz audience in St. Louis and was named Best Jazz Radio Show in St. Louis for the years 2005-2007 and 2009 by the Riverfront Times. In celebration of his 25 years on the air, January 24, 2008 was proclaimed Dennis Owsley Day" in the City of St. Louis. He is the 2010 winner of the St. Louis Public Radio Millard S. Cohen Lifetime Achievement Award. Dennis is also a noted photographer, and his exhibit, In the Moment: Photographs of Jazz Musicians, ran from September 23, 2005 to January 21, 2006 at the Sheldon Art Gallery. He is a lifetime student of jazz history and teaches short courses on the subject. Dennis is the author of the award-winning book City of Gabriels: The History of Jazz in St. Louis 1985-1973, published in 2006.