Pete Kelly's Blues

Pete Kelly's Blues book cover

Pete Kelly's Blues was an American crime-musical radio drama which aired over NBC as an unsponsored summer replacement series on Wednesday nights. It was broadcast from July 4 through September 19, 1951.

It was the creation of Jack Webb. Webb got his start as a late night disc jockey playing Jazz records in San Francisco. His move to radio drama in a series of crime dramas based in San Francisco. In 1949 he found lasting fame when he created and starred in Dragnet. It is a little jarring during the first few minutes of Pete Kelly to hear Sgt. Joe Friday's voice looking for more than "Just the facts, Ma'am."

Webb was a life-long enthusiast of Dixieland Jazz, and with his well known insistence on realism in his productions, it isn't surprising the Pete Kelly's Blues would be filled with Jazz powerhouses. Cornet player Dick Cathcart became friends with Webb during WWII, and was his musical stand-in. Other members of the Big Seven were Matty Matlock on clarinet, brothers Ray and Moe Schneider on piano and trombone, Morty Corb on bass, and Bill Newman's guitar.

Pete Kelly is a jazz man who just wants the chance to play his kind of music. The world that he plays in isn't always the kindest, and the stories on this short lived show won't always end happily. "…it's about the blues; Pete Kelly's Blues."

The series was produced during three months, but inspired a 1955 film version of Pete Kelly's Blues, in which Jack Webb produced, directed and starred. It used many of the same musicians, including Cathcart, and Ella Fitzgerald was cast as Maggie Jackson. A  television version, still produced and directed by Webb but with William Reynolds in the lead, aired in 1959, using scripts originally written for the radio version.

Two albums were released, a soundtrack recording and Pete Kelly Lets His Hair Down, an instrumental album using the musicians from the series with songs arranged by tempo - "blue songs" and "red songs".