Two decades later, Darrell Brogdon’s Retro Cocktail Hour is still a-go-go

When Darrell Brogdon launched The Retro Cocktail Hour in 1996, exotica was making one of its many comebacks, courtesy of Combustible Edison and other acts and Capitol Records’ series of Ultra-Lounge compilations. Coming on the heels of the swing revival, the interest in tunes to drink martinis to flourished, albeit briefly, and The Retro Cocktail Hour appeared.

In the years since, Brogdon’s space-age-pop-revival show has grown to include not only a Saturday 7-9 p.m. slot on Kansas Public Radio, but movie nights, live concerts and even syndication.

I talked with Brogdon in the KPR studios about the show’s two-decade history.

The Pitch: The Retro Cocktail Hour launched in 1996, which means it came at the end of the ’90s swing revival, right?

Brogdon: That was kind of what persuaded us to try it, because all the major labels had latched onto it. There was a brief moment where they were reissuing all the tiki music and stuff from the ’50s and ’60s, which I think was just kind of a short-lived marketing thing from the record companies, but I read an article about it in Time magazine, and I got to thinking: “I’m into this kind of music, and public radio stations are always searching for younger listeners, and much of this music kind of crosses over into jazz, which we already play, so maybe there’s a serendipity here.”

The depth and breadth of knowledge you bring to the Retro Cocktail Hour seems to be born of a genuine love and interest in the music. How did you come to be so deeply involved in it?

I don’t really have an answer for that. I’ve never really ever liked anything mainstream. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones: completely passed me by. I’ve always — and this is true in movies, books, everything — kind of liked the outsider stuff. While this music I wouldn’t classify as “outsider stuff” when it was first created, it certainly became that, because it was more or less forgotten by everyone until the ’90s, when vinyl fans kind of started digging this stuff out for a couple of bucks a pop at record stores.

When I was a kid, my mother had a subscription to the Columbia [House] Record Club. She was always getting all these albums, and she got a Martin Denny album one time — his first album, Exotica, whose cover just mesmerized me when I was a kid. I think, when I became aware of people getting into that stuff again, it brought all that back, and I had a lot of that music already — and I’ve acquired a lot more since then, sad to say for my wife. [laughs] I’ve just always been into that kind of stuff.

Lots of people seem to share your obsession, as the online Retro Cocktail Hour community seems to be vibrant. Was that something you knew of?

Yeah, that was kind of a surprise. We started that — you have to have a social-media platform somewhere — before Kansas Public Radio even had a Facebook page. I think we’re up to 3,500 people all over the world who are dialed into this stuff. I was surprised, but it just proves that people everywhere have all kinds of tastes in all kinds of music. There are people on the page who are rock and rollers, jazz heads, and stuff like that, but there’s also a place for this music with them, too.

It’s not just online, either. Those movie nights at Liberty Hall seem to be really popular, be it Cinema A-Go-Go or Cinema Con Queso.

Again, that was just something that we tried that seemed like the vibe was similar. At first, we didn’t even know if anyone was going to come to those. They actually began because we did a concert in 2008 for the 500th episode of the show with the Waitiki 7. At that concert, I met a guy from the Mexican consulate in Kansas City, Daniel Aguado-Ornelas, and we got to talking about Esquivel, and that somehow led into luchador movies.

I mentioned that we’d been talking about doing screenings, and he said, “Through the consulate, I can get you those movies, and we’ll co-sponsor those with you,” and that’s how the first one came about. The first half-dozen were co-sponsored with the Mexican Consulate in Kansas City, and after that, it just kind of took off on its own. I mean, there are only so many Mexican wrestler movies you can do, and that’s when Cinema A-Go-Go was born. We do Cinema Con Queso maybe once a year or every couple of years, because we’ve kind of worked through all the movies that are watchable and that’s with a very generous definition of that word.

In the beginning, we were doing those for no money. The consulate was getting us these movies out of Mexico for free, and we didn’t have to pay licensing. As we continued the series, we had to keep finding public-domain movies to avoid licensing fees, but thankfully, the series has become successful enough that it’s allowed us to step up the quality a little bit. Although, whenever we do a film that’s halfway decent, people complain about it, because they expect a certain level of crap at Cinema A-Go-Go, and if we lift ourselves out of it too much, they get disappointed. We kind of have to ride that fence a bit.

Listening to the show and the type of music that you play, one of the most appealing parts of the Cocktail Hour is all the new music you mix in.

It could easily turn into that, and what’s one of the more exciting parts of the show for me is all the people who are creating new music in the genre.

I think, in a small way, radio shows like this one play a part in inspiring musicians who are involved in a type of music that not too many people are playing. It’s really been cool to see bands like the Waitiki 7 or Mr. Ho’s Orchestrotica or Exotik-A-Go-Go come along since we’ve been doing the show. My feeling about the new stuff is that it needs to be part of every show, both to demonstrate to listeners that this is still a living music and to also avoid the show becoming a wax museum. It could easily become that, but I’m more interested in the past, the present and the future.

BogoTini Retro Cocktail Hour celebration
Friday, May 6
Jackpot Music Hall
943 Massachusetts, Lawrence

The Retro Cocktail Hour 20th anniversary concert featuring Exotik-A-Go-Go
Saturday, May 7
Liberty Hall
644 Massachusetts, Lawrence