Swing Years and Beyond

The Swing Years and Beyond was a radio program on KUOW, an NPR station from Seattle. It began in 1968 and was hosted by then-KUOW program Director Don Wirtz before he handed the reins to Bill Snoopy who became the first to hold the position long term. In 1979 Cynthia Doyon took over the hosting duties, and in 2003 Amanda Wilde hosted until the last show on February 25, 2017.

There is a generation of Seattle residents that spent at least some of their Saturday nights listening to a thoughtfully curated playlist of music from the 1920s to the 1950s. I was able to connect with Amanda Wilde and offered to make one of her shows available for fans to download. Then, my scouring of the internet turned up two other shows available and have added them here.

If you have others that you would like to share, please feel free to reach out and I can add them to this list.

I created a playlist of all the Swing Years and Jazz podcasts:

https://www.kuow.org/donate

28 comments

  1. This is wonderful. I miss having this show on the air and listened for many years. In it’s absence, I created my own playlist but it’s missing the thoughtful curation and thoughts of the hosts.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. Hi, thanks for doing this! I am only able to download two of the five shows posted. Two of them seem to be corrupt files and the last one redirects to one of the shows that does work.

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  3. Great to hear “The Swing Years” again. I’ve missed it. Wonderful music.

    I’ve had trouble downloading the files too. They seem to repeat the same show under different dates. Not sure what the trouble is. Is it possible to get each of the show files sent directly? Thanks. Bryan

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    1. Sorry to hear you are having difficulties, I checked all the files and they seem to be attached to the corresponding show info. The files are too big to be sent via email. Each one is five hours of music. I have created a bulk link that should give you access to download them all. For some reason, Dropbox adds an expiration date on the link of 8/15/2020. Give this a try: https://www.dropbox.com/t/tpuuEuAITDBGOa8O

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      1. Thanks Scott. Downloads worked fine this time. I appreciate your effort on sharing the music. I’ll keep an eye out for any additional shows that are posted. Thanks for your help.

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  4. Hi Scott. I’m really enjoying these programs. Now we have another big installment of additional programs. Wonderful. I’m looking forward to listening to them.

    One question about the first set of downloads. It sounds like the two Christmas shows December 18, 2010 and December 19, 2015 link to the same show. I didn’t listen all the way through but the beginnings sound the same. Let me know if I’ve made a mistake. Thanks.

    I so appreciate you hosting these programs and thanks to Amanda for all the joy she brought everyone over the years.
    Thank you,
    Bryan

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    1. Bryan,

      So glad you are enjoying it. I think I have untangled everything. Thankfully, listening to the news portion of the shows helps confirm the date of the show. I think I received one show with two different dates on it. I have had to delete the incorrect one, but it should be correct now.

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  5. This is so comforting to have back for my Saturday night background music. I hope you are able to find even more shows. Thanks so much for hosting this!

    Liked by 1 person

  6. Thank you, thank you, thank you! My wife and I listened to this show coming home from one of our first dates and really miss it.

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  7. Oh, wow. This is so appreciated. I wish I had shows to add to your archive, but we want to express how much this means to us. My wife and I had a weekly date listening to these shows and trying out recipes, and just enjoying all the music. We’ve tried different podcasts, but nothing quite captures the feel of what Amanda put together each week. Thank you!

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    1. I feel the same. I am creating podcasts of them, if that is easier to use for everyone. I will be updating the posts/pages as they become available. For whatever reason, most of the archived shows I have right now are from the Fall, so you can expect a lot to be posting…

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  8. What happened to mp3 downloads? There were link to download various segments as mp3 as recently as a few months ago. It will be good to be able to listen to these without an internet connection.

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      1. Why should other people have access to delete/rename/move these files? Is that a limitation of dropbox that you cannot have them as read/download-only files? If so I can offer you alternative storage space for free on my server.

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      2. I am not sure. I found a solution and will be working my way through all the files and changing them so there will be podcast and download options. Check out the December 20, 2003 Holiday Special one and see if it works for you. Should be a link to a zippyshare.com download.

        Like

      3. I create a new forwarding email address for every Website that requires an email address for registration to protect my real email address from spammers and unauthorized use. That way if spammers get hold of the email address or if the Website sells/shares the email address to/with other businesses or my account on Website gets compromised due to hacking, etc., I can identify the source and delete the forwarding email address without any consequences.

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