Radio Vintage, a Chicago-based pureplay, offers deep sonic nostalgia — the same sort of musty romance you get when walking into a vintage clothing boutique in the East Village. The music focus is Big Band, swing, rockabilly, and old-time rhythm & blues. In our latest listening session we heard Lilian Briggs, Sanford Clark, Don Lang, Maggie Sue Wimberly, Ben Hewitt, Billy Fury, Teresa Brewer, Chuck Berry, Slim & Slam, Sam Cooke, and may more names, some of which we recognized. The stream evoked the pop sound of a bygone era.
The Radio Vintage website is clean, fast-loading, informational, with a pop-out one-touch player provided by RadioTuna. Website sections on music castegories, old-time radio, and fashion of the 1940s and 1950s make for interesting reading while listening to the tunes. The “Vintage Pin Ups” page is safe for work, if an obvious time-waster.
A promotional burst we received from the station said, “There’s no need for skipping and favoriting if you like straight-ahead, guitar-oriented, beer-drinking, good-time-having, backbeat-driven 12-bar with an oldies slant.” We’ll buy into that. Radio Vintage is an example of loving curation of a hyper-specific period music genre (1939-1959 only), a shining characteristic of indie online radio.