Friday nights at 8 & Saturday nights at 11 on WILL-FM
The show, simply put, is a celebration of the golden age of the hi-fi and beyond! It's American popular music from the 1950s and 1960s with a few modern numbers thrown in for good measure.
Coming up, on The Atomic Age Cocktail Party, it’s the music of Tin Pan Alley and a look at how hi-fi artists approached and often made new again these standards from the early part of the 20th century. We’ll hear from The Mills Brothers, Louis Prima, Dave Pell, Eartha Kitt, and more.
This week, on The Atomic Age Cocktail Party, it’s A Man and a Woman. Hi-fi songs about men and songs about women. We’ll hear from Blossom Dearie, Sarah Vaughan, Bobby Darin, Ann-Margret, and many more.
On this episode of The Atomic Age Cocktail Party, it’s time to Meet the Beatles…Again! Another look at how hi-fi artists approached the music of the mop-top lads from Liverpool. We’ll hear from The Four Freshman, Enoch Light, The Sammy Kaye Orchestra, Bing Crosby, and many more.
On this edition of The Atomic Age Cocktail Party, a show filled with tons of Shimmering Strings! It’s a look at music from the hi-fi era that featured lots of lush string orchestrations. We’ll hear from 101 Strings, the Living Strings, The Clebanoff Strings, The Hollyridge Strings, and many more.
This week, on The Atomic Age Cocktail Party, it’s James Bond and Beyond! Swinging spy tunes from the early Bond films as well as other music inspired by that suave secret agent! We’ll hear from Shirley Bassey, Billy Strange, Leroy Holmes, Johnny & the Hurricanes, and more.
Coming up on the next Atomic Age Cocktail Party, Dynamic Duets! The hi-fi magic that happens when two musical talents team up. We’ll hear from Al Hirt & Ann-Margret, Frank & Nancy Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong, and many more.
This week, The Atomic Age Cocktail Party, it’s Percussion Exotique-- exciting exotica that came out during the hi-fi era that was filled to the brim with all sorts of wild percussion. We’ll hear from Augie Colón, Frank Hunter & His Orchestra, Martin Denny, Robert Drasnin, and more.
Coming up, on The Atomic Age Cocktail Party, it’s another in our Great Arrangers Series, this time with the focus on Johnny Mandel—the man who penned such hits as Shadow of Your Smile, Emily, and the theme to a certain movie and TV show set during the Koren War. We’ll hear from Frank Sinatra, June Christy, Gerry Mulligan, Natalie Cole, and more.
This week, it’s the 100th episode of The Atomic Age Cocktail Party! And this time, it’s Crime Jazz! Music with driving beats and powerful brass that invoke private eyes hitting the pavement or criminals running through back alleys of a city at night. We’ll hear from Enoch Light, Irving Joseph, Skip Martin, and more.
Join us this week, on The Atomic Age Cocktail Party, for a Romantic Rendezvous. Lush sounds that help set the mood for those times when you turn the lights down low and turn the hi-fi up. We’ll hear from Connie Francis, The Melachrino Strings, Dinah Washington, The Percy Faith Strings, and more.
Jason Croft has been collecting, enjoying, and programming lounge, easy-listening, and other music of the Atomic Age for over two decades. Now he is sharing this genre with you every Saturday and Sunday night with the Atomic Age Cocktail Party on WILL-FM. When he’s not knee-deep in his record collection, he’s the Technical Director for The 21st, local host for Here and Now, and one of the voices of AM580 on the weekends.
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