Welcome to Down These Mean Streets, bringing you the best of prohibition and smoky speake's on the podcast this week, it's Pete Kelly's Blues, a

1951 NBC Summer Replacement Series from Creator, producer, and star Jack Webb.

Of the Web series we've heard on the show before, Pete Kelly's Blues is closest in tone

to Pat Novak for hire.

It's a hard-boiled downbeat drama set in the world of Kansas City

jazz during the 1920s and the stories are backed by the music of the era performed

by a group of artists hand-picked by Webb himself.

Webb starred as Pete Kelly, a Cornette player with his own Big Seven Jazz combo.

The group performed regularly at a speakeasy at 417 Cherry Street

run by the often mentioned but never seen George Lupo. Kelly's first-person narration and descriptions suggest

Lupo might find a kindred spirit in Anthony J. Lyon on Jeff Regan

investigator. In between sets at the club, Kelly found himself tangled up with

gangsters, the police and FBI, and other sorted characters in the murky world of

hot jazz and illegal booze. The series was a passion project. Hot Jazz and Illegal Booze.

The series was a passion project for Webb, a lifelong jazz aficionado.

He had a collection of over 6,000 jazz albums and his earliest days in radio were spent as a San Francisco

DJ where he played jazz in the late night and early morning hours. By the summer of

1951 Dragnet was a full-blown radio hit with a TV version on the horizon, and

Webb's success earned him some credit at ABC to try something different with Pete Kelly's

Blues.

One of the most innovative aspects of the series was the integration of jazz music from the period,

Dick Cathcart, who subbed for Pete Kelly's Cornette solos, and Maddie Matlock, arranged and led the musical

...