Boyd Raeburn was an American jazz band leader, tenor and bass saxophonist. No major label wanted to record him because his arrangements were considered “too weird” for dancers. He’s your Phantom Dancer feature artist this week.
The Phantom Dancer is your weekly non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV every week.
LISTEN to this week’s Phantom Dancer mix (online after 2pm AEST, Tuesday 7 May) and weeks of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/
BOYD
Boyd Raeburn’s musical career started at the University of Chicago, where he led a campus band. He was then a commercial bandleader at Chicago’s World Fair (1933–1934) and worked for dance bands throughout the 30s, sometimes leading them.
In the 40s, Boyd passed through swing before becoming identified with the bop school.
His later 1944-1947 big band performed arrangements that were often comparable to those used by Woody Herman and the “progressive jazz” of Stan Kenton during the same period.
Female vocalist in the band was the popular singer, who was aslo Boyd’s wife, Ginny Powell.
The compositions arranged by George Handy were the most contemporary, utilising dissonance somewhat in the manner of Igor Stravinsky.
Johnny Richards joined in 1947 and stayed for a year writing 50 compositions.
Boyd Raeburn’s band made a big critical splash in New York.
Billy Eckstine, whose own bebop big band also suffered from the recording ban, was ecstatic about it, helping Raeburn play a week at the all-black Apollo Theatre.
Eckstine exhorted the audience to pay attention to what the band was playing.
During one of their New York gigs at the Commodore Hotel, their late-night broadcast was heard by trumpeter Roy Eldridge who rushed down and sat in night after night, for free, until the band’s manager simply hired him. (He stayed for two months.)
Bad luck dogged Raeburn throughout his career. His arranger, Finckel left in 1945 to become chief arranger for Gene Krupa’s big band. Sonny Berman and Earl Swope jumped to the high-profile band of Woody Herman. No major label wanted to record him because his arrangements were considered “too weird” for dancers.
Raeburn did record 12 sides for the small Guild label in 1945, including performances of “March of the Boyds” and “A Night in Tunisia” on which trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie sat in.
2SER radio, Sydney Educational Radio, celebrates 45 years of continuous, quality broadcasting this year. The Phantom Dancer has been on 2SER for thirty-nine of those years. Jazz birthdays live on 1950s radio for Duke Ellington and Sarah Vaughan feature on this week’s Phantom Dancer.
The Phantom Dancer is your weekly non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV every week.
LISTEN to this week’s Phantom Dancer mix (online after 2pm AEST, Tuesday 30 April) and weeks of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/
Oran Thaddeus “Hot Lips” Page was a US jazz trumpeter, singer and band leader. He played swing and trad, but also was key in the development of bop and r’n’b. Hot Lips Page was known as “Mr After Hours” to his many friends for his ability to take on challengers in late-night jam sessions. He’s your Phantom Dancer feature artist this week.
The Phantom Dancer is your weekly non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV every week.
LISTEN to this week’s Phantom Dancer mix (online after 2pm AEST, Tuesday 23 April) and weeks of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/
HOT LIPS
Hot Lips Page played in Walter Page’s Blue Devils, Artie Shaw’s Orchestra and Count Basie’s Orchestra. He worked with Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Ida Cox. And he was one of the five musicians booked for the opening night at Birdland with Charlie Parker in 1949.
Page’s earliest gigs were in circuses and minstrel shows while also backing such blues singers as Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Ida Cox.
Louis Armstrong was his main trumpet influence was Louis Armstrong, as well as Harry Smith (Kansas City) and Benno Kennedy (San Antonio).
From 1929, he made over 200 recordings, most as a leader, for Bluebird, Vocalion, Decca and Harmony Records.
In 1926, he caught the eye of the bassist Walter Page (no relation) who had recently assumed leadership of the Oklahoma City Blue Devils.
He played and toured with the Blue Devils until early 1931, when he joined the Bennie Moten Orchestra, the leading dance band of Kansas City.
Though not a regular member of the band, Page appeared as a vocalist, emcee and hot trumpet soloist with Count Basie’s Reno Club orchestra, after the Moten band disbanded upon that leader’s sudden death in April 1935.
The Reno Club, in downtown Kansas City, had a floor show, which included Page and vocalist Jimmy Rushing.
Basie’s band was just starting to build their reputation, but in the summer of 1936—on the eve of Basie’s national success—and at the beckoning of Louis Armstrong’s manager, Joe Glaser, Page decided to pursue a solo career. He moved to New York City in December 1936.
PAGE
Hot Lips Page’s career as a bandleader had a swinging start with sold-out appearances and an extended run at Harlem’s Smalls Paradise in the summer of 1937.
However, by 1939 he was struggling to maintain a regular working band. He still led several bands and combos of his own, particularly on New York’s 52nd Street, where he appeared from 1938 and in many venues in Harlem.
Page toured extensively throughout the southern United States, and throughout the northeast and Canada at the head of as many as 13 different big bands during the 1930s and 1940s.
He appeared briefly with Bud Freeman’s Orchestra in 1938, and was a featured vocalist and hot soloist with Artie Shaw’s Symphonic Swing Orchestra in 1941 and 1942, for who he recorded more than 40 sides.
His band backed the singer Wynonie Harris on the session that produced the hit “Good Rocking Tonight”, though Page was never credited as the leader.
He was the leader of the house band at the Apollo Theater during the early 1940s.
And he was recorded at Harlem’s Minton’s Playhouse in 1941 playing in a proto-bebop style.
He recorded for the Mezzrow-Bechet Septet (on two consecutive dates in 1945, as Pappa Snow White, with Mezz Mezzrow, Sidney Bechet, Jimmy Blythe, Jr., Danny Barker, Pops Foster, and Sid Catlett, and on the second session with Cousin Joe on vocals.)
Page recorded duets with Pearl Bailey on “The Hucklebuck” and “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” in 1949.
He traveled to Europe in 1949 and appeared at Salle Pleyel in the first international jazz festival there, and returned to Europe at least twice for extended tours in the early 1950s.
Raymond Stanley ‘Ray’ Noble was a swing band leader, composer, arranger, radio host, television and film comedian and actor in both this native England and the United States. He is your Phantom Dancer feature artist this week.
The Phantom Dancer is your weekly non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV every week.
LISTEN to this week’s Phantom Dancer mix (online after 2pm AEST, Tuesday 16 April) and weeks of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/
ENGLAND
Ray Noble wrote lyrics and music for many popular songs during the Golden Age of British Dance Bands, notably for his longtime friend and singer, Al Bowlly, including “Love Is the Sweetest Thing”, “Cherokee”, “The Touch of Your Lips”, “I Hadn’t Anyone Till You”.
Noble studied at the Royal Academy of Music.
In 1927 he won a competition for the best British dance band orchestrator.
In 1929, he became leader of the New Mayfair Dance Orchestra, an HMV Records studio band that featured members of many of the top hotel orchestras of the day.
Ray Noble recorded prolifically during this time and US Victor released several of his HMV recordings, including “Butterflies in the Rain”, “Mademoiselle”, “My Hat’s on the Side of My Head” and “The Very Thought of You”.
The most popular vocalist with Noble’s studio band was Al Bowlly, who joined in 1930.
During this time, Noble co-wrote “Turkish Delight”, “By the Fireside” and “Goodnight, Sweetheart”. The latter song was a number one hit for Guy Lombardo in the American charts. It was also used (with vocals by Al Bowlly) on the original Star Trek television series episode “The City on the Edge of Forever”.
US CAREER
Ray Noble moved to New York City in 1934 on the success of his New Mayfair Dance Orchestra records.
Noble took Al Bowlly and his drummer Bill Harty to the US and asked trombonist Glenn Miller to recruit American musicians to complete the band.
Miller played trombone in the Ray Noble orchestra. The American Ray Noble band had a successful run at the Rainbow Room in New York City with Bowlly as principal vocalist.
Although Noble was not a singer, he did appear twice as an upper-class Englishman on two of his more popular New York records, 1935’s “Top Hat” and 1937’s “Slumming on Park Avenue”.
Noble was also an arranger who scored many record hits in the 1930s: “Mad About the Boy” (1932), “Paris in the Spring” (1935) and “Easy to Love” (1936),
Noble and his orchestra appeared in the 1937 film A Damsel in Distress with Fred Astaire, Joan Fontaine, George Burns and Gracie Allen.
Noble played a somewhat “dense” character who was in love with Gracie Allen. Bowlly returned to England in 1938, but Noble continued to lead bands in America, moving into an acting career portraying a stereotypical upper-class English idiot.
Noble played the piano, but seldom did so with his orchestra. In a movie short from the 1940s featuring Ray Noble and Buddy Clark (one of his most popular band singers), Ray Noble is asked by the announcer to play one of his most popular hits. He sits down at the piano and plays “Goodnight, Sweetheart”.
Ray Noble provided music for many radio shows such as The Chase and Sanborn Hour, The Charlie McCarthy Show, Burns and Allen and On Stage with Cathy and Elliott Lewis and also guest-appeared in some of their films.
He worked with Bergen for nearly fifteen years, playing the foil to McCarthy and the slow-witted Mortimer Snerd, and his orchestra appeared with Edgar Bergen in the 1942 film Here We Go Again.
He also provided the orchestration for the 1942 Lou Gehrig biopic The Pride of the Yankees starring Gary Cooper. Noble’s last major successes as a bandleader came with Buddy Clark in the late 1940s.
Marie Magdalene “Marlene” Dietrich was a German and American actress and singer whose career spanned from the 1910s to the 1980s. She was known for her humanitarian efforts during World War II, housing German and French exiles, providing financial support and even advocating their American citizenship. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Dietrich the ninth greatest female screen legend of classic Hollywood cinema. She is your Phantom Dancer feature artist this week.
The Phantom Dancer is your weekly non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV every week.
LISTEN to this week’s Phantom Dancer mix (online after 2pm AEST, Tuesday 9 April) and weeks of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/
MARLENE
In 1920s Berlin, Marlene Dietrich performed on stage and in silent films. Her breakthroigh role as Lola Lola in Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel (1930) brought her international acclaim and a contract with Paramount Pictures.
She starred in six iconic Hollywood films directed by Sternberg: Morocco (1930) (her only Academy Award nomination), Dishonored (1931), Shanghai Express and Blonde Venus (both 1932), The Scarlet Empress (1934), The Devil Is a Woman (1935).
Marlene Dietrich became one of the era’s highest-paid actresses.
Throughout World War II, she was a high-profile entertainer in the United States. Although she delivered notable performances in several post-war films, including Billy Wilder’s A Foreign Affair (1948), Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright (1950), Billy Wilder’s Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil (1958), and Stanley Kramer’s Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), she spent most of the 1950s to the 1970s touring the world as a marquee live-show performer.
The earliest professional stage appearances by Dietrich were as a chorus girl on tour with Guido Thielscher’s Girl-Kabarett vaudeville-style entertainments and in Rudolf Nelson revues in Berlin.
In 1922, Dietrich auditioned unsuccessfully for theatrical director and impresario Max Reinhardt’s drama academy. She soon found herself working in his theatres as a chorus girl and playing small roles in dramas.
Dietrich’s film debut was a small part in the film The Little Napoleon (1923).
She met her future husband Rudolf Sieber on the set of Tragedy of Love in 1923. Dietrich and Sieber were married in a civil ceremony in Berlin on 17 May 1923. Her only child, daughter Maria Elisabeth Sieber, was born on 13 December 1924.
Dietrich continued to work on stage and in film both in Berlin and Vienna throughout the 1920s.
On stage, she had roles of varying importance in Frank Wedekind’s Pandora’s Box, William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and George Bernard Shaw’s Back to Methuselah and Misalliance.
It was in musicals and revues such as Broadway, Es Liegt in der Luft, and Zwei Krawatten, however, that she attracted the most attention. By the late 1920s, Dietrich was also playing sizable parts on screen, including roles in Café Elektric (1927), I Kiss Your Hand, Madame (1928), and The Ship of Lost Souls (1929).
In 1929, Dietrich landed her breakthrough role of Lola Lola, a cabaret singer who caused the downfall of a hitherto respectable schoolmaster, played by Emil Jannings, in the UFA production of The Blue Angel (1930) shot at Babelsberg film studios.
Josef von Sternberg directed the film and thereafter took credit for having “discovered” Dietrich. The film introduced Dietrich’s signature song “Falling in Love Again”, which she recorded for Electrola. She made further recordings in the 1930s for Polydor and Decca Records.
1930s
In 1930, on the strength of The Blue Angel’s international success, and with encouragement and promotion from Josef von Sternberg, who was established in Hollywood, Dietrich moved to the United States under contract to Paramount Pictures, the U.S. film distributor of The Blue Angel.
The studio sought to market Dietrich as a German answer to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s Swedish-born star Greta Garbo. Sternberg welcomed her with gifts, including a green Rolls-Royce Phantom II. The car later appeared in their first U.S. film Morocco.
The collaboration of one actress and director creating seven films is still unmatched in motion pictures, with the possible exception of Katharine Hepburn and George Cukor, who made ten films together over a much longer period but which were not created for Hepburn the way the last six von Sternberg/Dietrich collaborations were.
Dietrich’s first film after the end of her partnership with von Sternberg was Frank Borzage’s Desire (1936) with Gary Cooper, a commercial success that gave Dietrich an opportunity to try her hand at romantic comedy. Her next project, I Loved a Soldier (1936), ended in shambles when the film was scrapped several weeks into production due to script problems, scheduling confusion and the studio’s decision to fire the producer Ernst Lubitsch.
Extravagant offers lured Dietrich away from Paramount to make her first color film The Garden of Allah (1936) for independent producer David O. Selznick, for which she received $200,000, and to Britain for Alexander Korda’s production, Knight Without Armour (1937), at a salary of $450,000, which made her one of the best paid film stars of the time.
While both films performed decently at the box office, her vehicles were costly to produce and her public popularity had declined. By this time, Dietrich placed 126th in box office rankings, and American film exhibitors proclaimed her “box office poison” in May 1938, a distinction she shared with Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Mae West, Katharine Hepburn, Norma Shearer, Dolores del Río, and Fred Astaire among others.
While in London, Dietrich later said in interviews, she was approached by Nazi Party officials and offered lucrative contracts, should she agree to return to be a foremost film star in Nazi Germany. She refused their offers and applied for U.S. citizenship in 1937. She returned to Paramount to make Angel (1937), another romantic comedy directed by Ernst Lubitsch; the film was poorly received, leading Paramount to buy out the remainder of Dietrich’s contract.
Dietrich, with encouragement from Josef von Sternberg, accepted producer Joe Pasternak’s offer to play against type in her first film in two years: that of the cowboy saloon girl, Frenchie, in the western-comedy Destry Rides Again (1939), with James Stewart. This was a significantly less well paid role than she had been accustomed to.
The bawdy role revived her career and “See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have”, a song she introduced in the film, became a hit when she recorded it for Decca. She played similar types in Seven Sinners (1940) and The Spoilers (1942), both with John Wayne.
Dietrich was known to have strong political convictions and the mind to speak them. In the late 1930s, Dietrich created a fund with Billy Wilder and several other exiles to help Jews and dissidents escape from Germany.
In 1937, her entire salary for Knight Without Armor ($450,000) was put into escrow to help the refugees.
In 1939, she became an American citizen and renounced her German citizenship.
1940s
In December 1941, the U.S. entered World War II, and Dietrich became one of the first public figures to help sell war bonds. She toured the U.S. from January 1942 to September 1943 (appearing before 250,000 troops on the Pacific Coast leg of her tour alone) and was reported to have sold more war bonds than any other star.
During two extended tours for the USO in 1944 and 1945, she performed for Allied troops in Algeria, Italy, the UK, France and Heerlen in the Netherlands, then entered Germany with Generals James M. Gavin and George S. Patton.
When asked why she had done this, in spite of the obvious danger of being within a few kilometers of German lines, she replied, “aus Anstand”—”out of decency”.
Wilder later remarked that she was at the front lines more than Dwight Eisenhower. Her revue, with Danny Thomas as her opening act for the first tour, included songs from her films, performances on her musical saw (a skill taught to her by Igo Sym that she had originally acquired for stage appearances in Berlin in the 1920s) and a “mindreading” act that her friend Orson Welles had taught her for his Mercury Wonder Show.
Dietrich would inform the audience that she could read minds and ask them to concentrate on whatever came into their minds. Then she would walk over to a soldier and earnestly tell him, “Oh, think of something else. I can’t possibly talk about that!” American church papers reportedly published stories complaining about this part of Dietrich’s act.
In 1944, the Morale Operations Branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) initiated the Musak project, musical propaganda broadcasts designed to demoralize enemy soldiers. Dietrich, the only performer who was made aware that her recordings would be for OSS use, recorded a number of songs in German for the project, including “Lili Marleen”, a favorite of soldiers on both sides of the conflict. Major General William J. Donovan, head of the OSS, wrote to Dietrich, “I am personally deeply grateful for your generosity in making these recordings for us.”
At the war’s end in Europe, Dietrich reunited with her sister Elisabeth and her sister’s husband and son. They had resided in the German village of Belsen throughout the war years, running a cinema frequented by Nazi officers and officials who oversaw the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Dietrich’s mother remained in Berlin during the war; her husband moved to a ranch in the San Fernando Valley of California. Dietrich vouched for her sister and her sister’s husband, sheltering them from possible prosecution as Nazi collaborators. However, Dietrich later omitted the existence of her sister and her sister’s son from all accounts of her life, completely disowning them and claiming to be an only child.
Dietrich received the Medal of Freedom in November 1947, for her “extraordinary record entertaining troops overseas during the war”. She said this was her proudest accomplishment. She was also awarded the Légion d’honneur by the French government for her wartime work.
1950s – 70s
From the early 1950s until the mid-1970s, Dietrich worked almost exclusively as a cabaret artist, performing live in large theatres in major cities worldwide.
In 1953, Dietrich was offered $30,000 per week to appear live at the Sahara Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. The show was short, consisting only of a few songs associated with her. Her daringly sheer “nude dress”—a heavily beaded evening gown of silk soufflé, which gave the illusion of transparency—designed by Jean Louis, attracted a lot of publicity. This engagement was so successful that she was signed to appear at the Café de Paris in London the following year; her Las Vegas contracts were also renewed.
Dietrich employed Burt Bacharach as her musical arranger starting in the mid-1950s; together, they refined her nightclub act into a more ambitious theatrical one-woman show with an expanded repertoire. Her repertoire included songs from her films as well as popular songs of the day. Bacharach’s arrangements helped to disguise Dietrich’s limited vocal range — she was a contralto — and allowed her to perform her songs to maximum dramatic effect. Together, they recorded four albums and several singles between 1957 and 1964. In a TV interview in 1971, she credited Bacharach with giving her the “inspiration” to perform during those years.
Dietrich’s return to West Germany in 1960 for a concert tour received a mixed reception—despite a consistently negative press, vociferous protest by Germans who felt she had betrayed her homeland, and two bomb threats, her performance attracted huge crowds. During her performances at Berlin’s Titania Palast theatre, protesters chanted, “Marlene Go Home!”
On the other hand, Dietrich was warmly welcomed by other Germans, including Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt, who was, like Dietrich, an opponent of the Nazis who had lived in exile during their rule.
The tour was an artistic triumph, but a financial failure. She was left emotionally drained by the hostility she encountered, and she left convinced never to visit again.
East Germany, however, received her well. She also undertook a tour of Israel around the same time, which was well-received; she sang some songs in German during her concerts, including, from 1962, a German version of Pete Seeger’s anti-war anthem “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”, thus breaking the unofficial taboo against the use of German in Israel.
She would become the first woman and German to receive the Israeli Medallion of Valor in 1965, “in recognition for her courageous adherence to principle and consistent record of friendship for the Jewish people”. Dietrich in London, a concert album, was recorded during the run of her 1964 engagement at the Queen’s Theatre.
She performed on Broadway twice (in 1967 and 1968) and received a Special Tony Award in 1968. In November 1972, I Wish You Love, a version of Dietrich’s Broadway show titled An Evening with Marlene Dietrich, was filmed in London. She was paid $250,000 for her cooperation but was unhappy with the result. The show was broadcast in the UK on the BBC and in the U.S. on CBS in January 1973.
Dietrich continued with a busy performance schedule until September 1975. When Clive Hirschhorn asked her why she continued to perform, she said, “Do you think this is glamorous? That this is a great life, and that I do it for my health? Well, it isn’t. It’s hard work. And who would work if they didn’t have to?”
In her 60s and 70s, Dietrich’s health declined: she survived cervical cancer in 1965 and suffered from poor circulation in her legs. Dietrich became increasingly dependent on painkillers and alcohol. A stage fall at the Shady Grove Music Fair in Maryland in 1973 injured her left thigh, necessitating skin grafts to allow the wound to heal. She fractured her right leg in August 1974.
Dietrich’s show business career largely ended on 29 September 1975, when she fell on the stage and broke a thigh bone during a performance in Sydney, Australia.
POST-CAREER
The following year, her husband, Rudolf Sieber, died of cancer on 24 June 1976. Dietrich’s final on-camera film appearance was a brief appearance in Just a Gigolo (1978), starring David Bowie and directed by David Hemmings, in which she sang the title song.
Dietrich withdrew to her apartment at 12 Avenue Montaigne in Paris. She spent the final 13 years of her life mostly bedridden, allowing only a select few—including family and employees—to enter the apartment. During this time, she was a prolific letter-writer and phone-caller. Her autobiography Nehmt nur mein Leben (Take Just My Life), was published in 1979.
In 1982, Dietrich agreed to participate in a documentary film about her life, Marlene (1984), but refused to be filmed. The film’s director, Maximilian Schell, was allowed only to record her voice. Schell used his interviews with her as the basis for the film, set to a collage of film clips from her career. The film won several European film prizes and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary in 1984. Newsweek named it “a unique film, perhaps the most fascinating and affecting documentary ever made about a great movie star”.
In 1988, Dietrich recorded spoken introductions to songs for a nostalgia album by Udo Lindenberg.
In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel in November 2005, Dietrich’s daughter and grandson said Dietrich was politically active during these years.
She kept in contact with world leaders by telephone, including Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Margaret Thatcher, running up a monthly bill of over US$3,000.
In 1990, her appeal to save the Babelsberg Studios from closure was broadcast on BBC Radio. She had spoken on television via telephone on the occasion of the fall of the Berlin Wall the previous year.
In spring 1990, she spoke on French forces radio station addressing her fellow Berliners in Germany about her then most recent conversation with French president Mitterrand regarding his promise to her that Berlin would be the capital city of a united Germany later on—at that point in time, a quite appealing but non-official French presidential statement.
Her picture was used in the Cannes Film Festival poster the year she died, pasted up all over Paris.
Horrie Dargie was an Australian harmonica player and clarinetist, television compère (Personally Yours (1959), BP Super Show (1959–1962) and The Delo and Daly Show (1963–1964)), talent manager, music label founder (Go!! Records) and music arranger.
Horrie was to be last week’s feature artist, however a technical issue meant the segment couldn’t be played. Chiemi Eri was last week’s feature artist in his place.
The Horrie Dargie Quintet was awarded the first gold record in Australia for ‘Horrie Dargie Concert’ (1952). Horrie Dargie was to be last week’s feature artist, however a technical issue meant the segment couldn’t be played.
The Phantom Dancer is your weekly non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV every week.
LISTEN to this week’s Phantom Dancer mix (online after 2pm AEST, Tuesday 26 March) and weeks of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/
HORRIE
Horace Dargie was given a harmonica by his father. From the age of ten, he practised the instrument for five hours a day.
A self-taught musician, Horrie Dargie, began his musical career as a diatonica harmonica player. At 16-years-old, in 1933, he joined the Yarraville Mouth Organ Band.
He joined the Victorian Mouth Organ Band conducted by William Ketterer.
In the early 1930s Dargie took up the chromatic harmonica and won a variety competition for professional and amateurs on local radio station 3KZ in 1937.
The Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) hired him as a harmonica player to tour Australia for three months from November 1937.
He started his tour in Tasmania and broadcasting on radio, which he preferred to concert halls as his effects are “concentrated in the one volume of sound, and not thinned by the spread of sound in a hall.”
In February 1938 he joined ABC-sponsored Jim Davidson’s Dance Band alongside hillbilly comedian Bobby Dyer on “an extended tour of capital cities and provincial centres.”
Some tour performances were broadcast on local radio stations.
Dargie’s first recording was with Davidson’s orchestra in 1938, issued via Columbia Records, which you’ll hear on this week’s Phantom Dancer.
After the tour Dargie moved to Sydney where he studied clarinet and orchestration, before starting his own harmonica school there.
With Henry “Doc” Bertram on bass harmonica; Alec Lois, Ron Metcalfe and George Williamson on chromatics and Roy Shea on chords he formed a harmonica group, the Rockin’ Reeds.
The group released six recordings by 1941.
From early March to late April 1942 Horrie Dargie and His Rockin’ Reeds played a weekly programme on ABC radio.
DARGIE
Dargie enlisted in the Australian Army’s Entertainment Unit on 13 November 1942, where he became a Warrant Officer Class 2.
He served in New Guinea (December 1943–September 1944), Darwin (May–July 1945) and in the occupational forces in Japan (March 1946–February 1947). He was discharged in March 1947 and returned to Sydney.
He formed the Horrie Dargie Quintet (also known as the Horrie Dargie Harlequintet) in 1949.
By 1952 the Quintet had risen in popularity and played their farewell concert at the Sydney Town Hall in November 1952 before leaving for England. The line-up of the quintet was Dargie on clarinet, harmonica, vocals; Bertram on bass, harmonica, vocals; Reg Cantwell on piano; Joe Hudson on drums, harmonica, vocals; Vern Moore on guitar, harmonica, vocals.
By chance, a recording was made on a wire recorder using just one microphone – the 10-inch record of the performance, Horrie Dargie Concert (1953) became Australia’s first gold record, selling 75,000 copies.
While in England they appeared several times on BBC television via BBC from 1953.
The quintet’s line-up, in January 1955, was Dargie (harmonica, clarinet, saxophone, vocals), Bertram (bass, harmonica), Cantwell (piano), Hudson (drums, harmonica) and Moore (saxophone, guitar, trombone, harmonica). One of their numbers “The Green Door” (1956) become a hit.
While performing in London in late 1955 Dargie contracted polio and was hospitalised. The disease affected his diaphragm and legs, at the time he was told he would not be able to play a wind instrument again.
He once described the illness as a “bit of a problem” – he was paralysed except for his right arm and he could swallow. With persistence he recovered and returned to his music career by June of the following year.
Upon their return to Australia in 1958 they performed at the Tivoli, Sydney.
The quintet appeared on the Stan Freberg TV Show in June 1959, which was filmed at ATN-7 studios, Sydney.
Dargie took up positions at the then-affiliated TV stations ATN-7 (Sydney) and GTV-9 (Melbourne), where he was in charge of the talent division – variety was popular at the time – he worked on four or five shows a week.
He compèred BP Super Show (1959–1962), Personally Yours (1962) and The Delo and Daly Show (1963–1964) and organised on-air talent and guests. The latter programme was produced by DYT Productions, which had been established by Dargie with Arthur Young and Johnny Tillbrook.
Dargie compèred the first nationwide-edition of The Price Is Right in 1963 on Seven Network, which had previously had rival versions in Melbourne (1958) and Sydney (1957–1958). By 1963 ATN-7 was affiliated with HSV-7 (Melbourne).
DYT Productions also produced The Go!! Show (1964–1967) for ATV-0 (Melbourne).[27] It was a pop music show, which regularly featured solo entertainers Johnny Young, Ian Turpie and Olivia Newton-John. DYT Productions established the related Go!! Records in 1964 to promote artists, which appeared on the show; with distribution by Astor Records. In August 1967, ATV-0 abruptly cancelled The Go!! Show and the loss of its promotional outlet led to the demise of the Go!! label in the following year.
Dargie provided musical arrangements for film Crocodile Dundee and TV series The Leyland Brothers. Under the musical directorship of Sven Libaek, he also participated in the background music in the 1960s TV show Nature Walkabout (hosted by Vincent Serventy). Dargie played background music for TV series Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. One of Dargie’s last recordings was for pop music group the Reels’ third studio album, Beautiful (May 1982).
Greg is one of Australia’s most authentic 1920s-30s singer with 1.3 million total YouTube views and 8 albums! Greg shines on stage as he brings his love for the dazzling Hollywood Golden Era to life.
Whether on his award-winning Phantom Dancer live swing jazz show, on stage at Sydney Festival, or his appearance in the movies with Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge!), Greg Poppleton is the real deal.
Horrie Dargie was an Australian harmonica player and clarinetist, television compère (Personally Yours (1959), BP Super Show (1959–1962) and The Delo and Daly Show (1963–1964)), talent manager, music label founder (Go!! Records) and music arranger. His Horrie Dargie Quintet was awarded the first gold record in Australia for ‘Horrie Dargie Concert’ (1952). Horrie is your Phantom Dancer feature artist this week.
The Phantom Dancer is your weekly non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV every week.
LISTEN to this week’s Phantom Dancer mix (online after 2pm AEST, Tuesday 26 March) and weeks of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/
HORRIE
Horace Dargie was given a harmonica by his father and, from the age of ten, he practised the instrument for five hours a day.
A self-taught musician, Horrie Dargie, began his musical career as a diatonica harmonica player. At 16-years-old, in 1933, he joined the Yarraville Mouth Organ Band.
He joined the Victorian Mouth Organ Band conducted by William Ketterer.
In the early 1930s Dargie took up the chromatic harmonica and won a variety competition for professional and amateurs, PandA Parade on local radio station 3KZ in 1937.
The Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) hired him as a harmonica player to tour Australia for three months from November 1937.
He started his tour in Tasmania and broadcast from a radio studio, which he preferred to concert halls as his effects are “concentrated in the one volume of sound, and not thinned by the spread of sound in a hall.”
In February 1938 he joined ABC-sponsored Jim Davidson’s Dance Band alongside hill-billy comedian Bobby Dyer on “an extended tour of capital cities and provincial centres.”
In March of that year they performed at Tivoli Theatre, Broken Hill.
Some tour performances were broadcast on local radio stations.
Dargie’s first recording was with Davidson’s orchestra in 1938, issued via Columbia Records.
After the tour Dargie moved to Sydney where he studied clarinet and orchestration, before starting his own harmonica school there.
With Henry “Doc” Bertram on bass harmonica; Alec Lois, Ron Metcalfe and George Williamson on chromatics and Roy Shea on chords he formed a harmonica group, the Rockin’ Reeds.
The group released six recordings by 1941. From early March to late April 1942 Horrie Dargie and His Rockin’ Reeds played a weekly programme on ABC radio.
DARGIE
Dargie enlisted in the Australian Army’s Entertainment Unit on 13 November 1942, where he became a Warrant Officer Class 2. He served in New Guinea (December 1943–September 1944), Darwin (May–July 1945) and in the occupational forces in Japan (March 1946–February 1947). He was discharged in March 1947 and returned to Sydney.
He formed the Horrie Dargie Quintet (also known as the Horrie Dargie Harlequintet) in 1949.
By 1952 the Quintet had risen in popularity and played their farewell concert at the Sydney Town Hall in November 1952 before leaving for England. The line-up of the quintet was Dargie on clarinet, harmonica, vocals; Bertram on bass, harmonica, vocals; Reg Cantwell on piano; Joe Hudson on drums, harmonica, vocals; Vern Moore on guitar, harmonica, vocals.
By chance, a recording was made on a wire recorder using just one microphone – the 10-inch record of the performance, Horrie Dargie Concert (1953) became Australia’s first gold record, selling 75,000 copies.
While in England they appeared several times on BBC television via BBC from 1953.
The quintet’s line-up, in January 1955, was Dargie (harmonica, clarinet, saxophone, vocals), Bertram (bass, harmonica), Cantwell (piano), Hudson (drums, harmonica) and Moore (saxophone, guitar, trombone, harmonica). One of their numbers “The Green Door” (1956) become a hit in its own right.
While performing in London in late 1955 Dargie contracted polio and was hospitalised – apparently he collapsed on stage. The disease affected his diaphragm and legs, at the time he was told he would not be able to play a wind instrument again. He once described the illness as a “bit of a problem” – he was paralysed except for his right arm and he could swallow. With persistence he recovered and returned to his music career by June of the following year.
Upon their return to Australia in 1958 they performed at the Tivoli, Sydney.
The quintet appeared on Stan Freberg Show in June 1959, which was filmed at ATN-7 studios, Epping.[25] Dargie took up positions at the then-affiliated TV stations ATN-7 (Sydney) and GTV-9 (Melbourne), where he was in charge of the talent division – variety was popular at the time – he worked on four or five shows a week. He compèred BP Super Show (1959–1962), Personally Yours (1962) and The Delo and Daly Show (1963–1964) and organised on-air talent and guests. The latter programme was produced by DYT Productions, which had been established by Dargie with Arthur Young and Johnny Tillbrook.
Dargie compèred the first nationwide-edition of The Price Is Right in 1963 on Seven Network, which had previously had rival versions in Melbourne (1958) and Sydney (1957–1958). By 1963 ATN-7 was affiliated with HSV-7 (Melbourne).
DYT Productions also produced The Go!! Show (1964–1967) for ATV-0 (Melbourne).[27] It was a pop music show, which regularly featured solo entertainers Johnny Young, Ian Turpie and Olivia Newton-John. DYT Productions established the related Go!! Records in 1964 to promote artists, which appeared on the show; with distribution by Astor Records. In August 1967, ATV-0 abruptly cancelled The Go!! Show and the loss of its promotional outlet led to the demise of the Go!! label in the following year.
Dargie provided musical arrangements for film Crocodile Dundee and TV series The Leyland Brothers. Under the musical directorship of Sven Libaek, he also participated in the background music in the 1960s TV show Nature Walkabout (hosted by Vincent Serventy). Dargie played background music for TV series Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. One of Dargie’s last recordings was for pop music group the Reels’ third studio album, Beautiful (May 1982).
Joseph Christopher Liggins, Jr. was an American R’n’B, jazz and blues pianist and vocalist who led Joe Liggins and his Honeydrippers in the 1940s and 1950s. His band appeared often on the Billboard magazine charts. Joe Liggins was the older brother of R’n’B performer Jimmy Liggins. Joe is this week’s Phantom Dancer feature artist.
The Phantom Dancer is your weekly non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV every week.
LISTEN to this week’s Phantom Dancer mix (online after 2pm AEST, Tuesday 19 March) and weeks of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/
JOE
Joe Liggins biggest hit was “The Honeydripper”, in 1945.
After high school, Joe Liggins, performed with local bands at clubs and naval bases in San Diego. He wrote arrangements on a freelance basis for Curtis Mosby’s Blue Blowers, and in 1935 Liggins joined the Creole Crusaders, led by the drummer Ellis Walsh.
He moved to Los Angeles in 1939, where he played with Sammy Franklin’s California Rhythm Rascals and other groups.
When Franklin turned down a chance to record Liggins’ song “The Honeydripper”, Liggins decided to start his own band. Joe Liggins’ Honeydrippers was formed in the basement of the Los Angeles home of the saxophonist Little Willie Jackson.
“The Honeydripper” topped the R’n’B chart for 18 weeks in 1945. More than 60 years later, It sold two million records.
LIGGINS
The Honeydrippers performed at five of the Cavalcade of Jazz concerts, all of which took place at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles.
In the Honeydrippers were:
Little Willie Jackson – alto saxophone, baritone saxophone
James Jackson, Jr. – tenor saxophone
Joe Liggins – piano, vocal
Frank Pasley – guitar
Eddie Davis – bass
Preston “Peppy” Prince – drums
The first Cavalcade of Jazz concert was on September 23, 1945, and included Count Basie, The Peters Sisters, Slim and Bam, and Big Joe Turner to a crowd of 15,000.
The second Cavalcade of Jazz concert was held on October 12, 1946, and included Jack McVea, Slim Gaillard, T-Bone Walker, Lionel Hampton and his Orchestra and Louis Armstrong.
The third Cavalcade of Jazz was held on September 7, 1947, and included Woody Herman, The Valdḗs Orchestra, T-Bone Walker, Slim Gaillard, Johnny Otis and his Orchestra, Toni Harper, The Three Blazers, and Sarah Vaughan.
The fourth Cavalcade of Jazz was held September 12, 1948, and included Joe Adams as Emcee, Dizzy Gillespie, Frankie Lane, Little Miss Cornshucks, the Sweethearts of Rhythm, Big Joe Turner, Jimmy Witherspoon, the Blenders and the Sensations.
The seventh Cavalcade of Jazz was held on July 8, 1951, and featured Billy Eckstine, Lionel Hampton, Percy Mayfield, Jimmy Witherspoon, and Roy Brown.
Joe Liggins and his Honeydrippers were on the program for more Cavalcade of Jazz concerts than any other artist. In the program description it was noted that band critics called Joe Liggins and his Original Honeydrippers, “The Hottest Little Band in the Land.”
Liggins had a series of further R’n’B chart hits on the Exclusive label, including “Left a Good Deal in Mobile” (#2, 1945); “Got a Right to Cry” (#2, 1946); “Tanya” (#3, 1946); and “Blow Mr. Jackson” (#3, 1947).[14] He signed with Specialty Records in 1950, where he gained more hits, including “Rag Mop” (#4, 1950), “Boom-Chick-A-Boogie”, “Pink Champagne” (#1 for 13 weeks in 1950), and “Little Joe’s Boogie”. “Pink Champagne” also reached number 30 on the pop chart,[14] and both “Pink Champagne” and “Got A Right To Cry” sold over one million copies and were awarded gold discs.
His songs were mostly a blend of jump blues and basic R’n’B. With Roy Milton, he was an architect of the small-band jump blues of the first post-war decade.
Liggins often toured with such acts as Jimmy Witherspoon, Amos Milburn and the jump blues shouter H-Bomb Ferguson.
In March 1954, the band took part in a benefit show held at the Club 5-4 in Los Angeles for the wife of Stan Getz.
In 1946, before the concept of rock music had been defined, Billboard described the group’s song “Sugar Lump” as “right ryhthmic rock and roll music”.
Although Liggins’ success stopped in the late 1950s, he continued to perform until his death at age 71
Sorcery and Swing. Close-Up Magic and Illusions, 1920s Jazz for Dancing, Sparkling Champagne, Canapes, 3 Course Dinner in Sydney’s only 1920s Room!
Bookings open 30 March. Call: 02 9284 1006
Sorcery and Swing, where we love you coming dressed to the nines for glamorous 1920s magic and music fun. Girls in pearls, guys in ties!
When you arrive at speakeasy hidden in the swank, wood-panelled Castelreagh Boutique Hotel, you are be warmly greeted with close-up magic by The Gentleman Magician, Bruce Glen, and refreshing ‘moonshine’ and canapes.
At 7pm on the gong, Greg Poppleton’s 1920s jazz band serenades you into Cello’s.
What’s Cello’s? It’s that dazzling Sydney ballroom straight out of 1924 where your entree begins a sumptuous 3-courses curated by Cello’s fine chef.
Between courses, Bruce Glen takes you breath away with illusions and stories.
Greg Poppleton, Australia’s only authentic 1920s singer and his voh-de-oh-doh Sorcery and Swing jazz band is guaranteed to get you ‘Shaking That Thing’ whether your at your table or on the dance floor.
And what a bonzer dance band it is with sousaphone, trumpet, grand piano, and alto sax.
In the Greg Poppleton Sorcery and Swing 1920s band: Greg Poppleton: 1920s-30s vocals Geoff Power: sousaphone/trumpet Damon Poppleton: alto sax Bradley Newman: grand piano
Greg Poppleton 1920s singer and The Gentleman Magician Bruce Glen – Sorcery & Magic Show
Bookings & Enquiries: 02 9284 1006
WE’RE MAKING AN IMPACT – *We have chosen Humanitx as our ticketing partner, contributing to creating a positive impact on the world. Humanitix is making a difference by reinvesting 100% of profits back into helping the world’s most disadvantaged children.
Actor - Singer - Voiceover 