The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street
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The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street was a musical variety radio program which began on the Blue Network on February 11, 1940. The magazine Radio Life described it as "one of radio's strangest offsprings... a wacky, strictly hep tongue-in-cheek burlesque of opera and symphony."
The satirical gimmick was the use of host Milton Cross, well known for his announcing on the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, to take a similar stance in his introductions to swing music. His opening went like this:
- Welcome to the no-doubt world famous Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street, and another concert dedicated to the perpetuation of the three Bs -- barrelhouse, boogie woogie and the blues.
The program then delivered 30 minutes of blues and jazz, with Cross stepping in between numbers to deliver such lines as, "A Bostonian looks like he's smelling something. A New Yorker looks like he's found it."
The series initially ran from 1940 to October 8, 1944, with Woodbury Soap as a sponsor. It returned on NBC in 1950. During the early 1940s, Dinah Shore rose to stardom on this series, and Zero Mostel became a regular in the summer of 1942.
Music from the series has been reissued on CDs from Harlequin Records and Nostalgia Arts.
