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About this episode

The episode celebrates 4/20 with three historical music recordings that evoke the theme without explicit mention.

Three Tune Tuesday marks 4/20 the only way it knows how: by reaching into the pre-1926 catalog and finding three recordings whose names, in combination, do all the work without saying anything at all. We open under the canopy — Renée Chemet’s violin drifting through Francis Thomé’s pastoral miniature “Under the Leaves,” recorded the day after 4/20 in 1924. Then the Victor Military Band crashes in with a one-step medley from Rudolf Friml’s Broadway smash High Jinks, whose plot concerns patients of a Dr. Thorne who take a mysterious Tibetan elixir that causes them to laugh and fall in love — and the show’s best-loved song is the one where they try to describe how it feels. We close with “Some Smoke,” a 1913 dance number by Sigmund Romberg, one year before he’d become Broadway’s most prolific house composer. Plausible deniability maintained throughout. Happy 4/20.

People in this episode

Hosts: Boneapart, Yulia

Topics covered

• music
• history
• 4/20
• recordings
• Broadway

Keywords

• 4/20
• music history
• Renée Chemet
• Victor Military Band
• Sigmund Romberg

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Victor Military Band

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