The Miltons: \"St.James Infirmary\" on The World-Famous \"Viva! NashVegas® Radio Show\" LIVE @ Kimbro's Café in the Antique District of Beautiful DownTown Franklin, Tennessee!!!
*The World-Famous \"Viva! NashVegas® Radio Show\":
CELEBRATED Its FIFTH ANNIVERSARY in May 2017!!!
The Miltons are: Ben Blankenship – Electric Guitar, Vocals // Mark MacKenzie – Steel Guitar, Vocals // Davis Raines – Vocals, Guitar // Norm Stannard – Bass, Vocals // Ward Stout – Fiddle and Violin
*\"The Miltons\" are an American swing ensemble based in Nashville, Tennessee. Their repertoire draws heavily from the height of the Jazz era, when Louis Armstrong and Django Rheinhardt were changing the musical landscape and from the Western Swing developed by Texans Bob Wills and Milton Brown, the underappreciated “Father of Western Swing,” from whom the band takes its name. The Miltons feature tunes from a myriad of American sub-genres – hot jazz, minstrel songs, country breakdowns, blues, and pure pop standards, all approached from a string band’s perspective – a grand Southern tradition in itself.
Milton Brown (September 7, 1903 – April 18, 1936) was an American band leader and vocalist who co-founded the genre of Western swing. His band was the first to fuse hillbilly hokum, jazz, and pop together into a unique, distinctly American hybrid, thus giving him the nickname, \"Father of Western Swing\". The birthplace of Brown's upbeat \"hot-jazz hillbilly\" string band sound was developed at the Crystal Springs Dance Hall in Fort Worth, Texas from 1931 to 1936. Brown's music inspired the great string jazz musicians from Europe, Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grapelli who in 1935 formed the Hot Club de Paris quintet.
Along with Bob Wills, whom he performed with at the beginning of this career, Brown developed the sound and style of Western swing in the early 1930s. For a while, he and his band, the Musical Brownies, were more popular than Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. Brown's career was cut short in 1936 when he died following a car accident, just as he was poised to break into national stardom.
In the words of \"Gee\" Hamilton V (\"Poet, Troubadour, Cult Hero™\"): \"Franklin is The New Music City!™\"
