Golden Gems

Golden Gems is a biography show about popular singers, and its method is plain. Dave Shaw and Bill Hanson take one artist per episode and follow the career forward in order, from birth name and hometown through record contracts, hit singles, albums and later work. The artist's personal life is covered along with the music. The effect is close to a well-kept liner note read aloud. The detail is the draw. The Billie Holiday profile covers her broadcasts with Artie Shaw's band, her tours with Count Basie and a run of hits with Teddy Wilson, and it notes that singers across America were imitating What a Little Moonlight Can Do and Easy Living. It then reaches Strange Fruit, which it traces to a poem about lynching by a Bronx schoolteacher who wrote under the name Lewis Allen. The Tommy Edwards episode goes back to his own radio show in Richmond in the 1940s and to That Chick's Too Young to Fry, a song he wrote that became a sizable hit for Louis Jordan, before MGM offered him a contract. It calls It's All in the Game his most successful record and says it made him the first African American to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The Billy Joel profile covers the topical songwriting of Allentown and Goodnight Saigon, the 1982 motorcycle accident that held up The Nylon Curtain, and the lighter turn of An Innocent Man, his tribute to 1950s and 1960s R&B and doo-wop. That episode also cites Stephen Thomas Erlewine of All Music on the album. Patti LaBelle's profile runs from New Attitude, her first pop hit, to On My Own and Winner in You, her only album to top the Billboard 200. Regina Belle's is mostly a story of partnerships: a duet with Johnny Mathis, A Whole New World, and a song from The Swan Princess, recorded with Jeffrey Osborne, that was nominated for a Golden Globe. The numbers are part of the pleasure, from gold and platinum certifications to the month a single ranked sixth among the most played songs. The show doesn't play the songs. The opening says so plainly and points to a companion webcast at goldengems.net, where the hits are played. That split shapes how the show is heard: the podcast carries the story and the website the soundtrack. The format can also change. A St. Patrick's Day episode, which the pair call a change-up from their usual approach, sets aside the single artist for a survey of Irish music: composers tied to Dublin Castle and the cathedrals, the search for an Irish voice after independence, the growth of Irish broadcasting and a long choral tradition. The framing stays gentle, with an invitation to sit back and relax at the start and a request for feedback by email at the close. Each sign-off has Dave and Bill heading back into the archives for more.