Zelda, Magazine of the Vintage Nouveau, is a glossy annual published by the multi-talented US actor, cinematographer and stills photographer, Don Spiro.
If you’re a fan of what matters in Nouveau Vintage in the USA, then this magazine is for you. Even the ads for newly tailored vintage suits and cravats are a great resource for those of us worldwide who look sharp.
In this, the latest 2022 edition, the Zelda annual invites you to “enjoy a vintage cocktail, and listen to some old jazz while you page through the articles in this issue…”
WHAT’S IN THIS YEAR’S ZELDA
“We start with researcher and historian Garret Richard’s take on Trader Vic’s tropical tequila classic cocktail, El Diablo, followed by Eff’s Style Emporium’s review of the allure of that vintage summer fabric, Palm Beach Cloth.
We have interviews with Jazz-Age-style singer Greg Poppleton and New York burlesque star Dandy Dillinger.
We’ll catch up on the undertakings of Philadelphia bandleader, Drew Nugent and we’ll learn about the history of the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum.”
“We’ll learn from Queen Esther how influential accomplishments people of color have gone unacknowledged, and Mr. Burton will enlighten us about appreciating vintage style without vintage values.
We’ll introduce you to the sites of jazz age arts and culture in Atlanta, Georgia, and our Recipe Box feature about the U. S. Department Of Agriculture’s Circular 109 from 1918, “Cottage Cheese Dishes,” appropriately shows how to enjoy tasty recipes in hard times, and with social activities returning, we are thrilled to showcase various Jazz Age and Prohibition-era events that our readers have attended in On The Town.”
It’s an honour to be published in this year’s Zelda.
1920s 1930s Jazz Swing Songs by Greg Poppleton. Enjoy this 53 minute YouTube mix of 1920s – 1930s jazz swing songs. It’s mixed from six albums by Australian 1920s-30s singer, Greg Poppleton.
1920s – 1930s SONG MIX:
0:00 Tip Toe Through the Tulips
3:48 The Charleston (correct tempo, dancers!)
6:17 Sweet Sue
8:33 Carolina in the Morning
12:13 It’s Only a Paper Moon
14:34 My Gal Sal
17:39 San Antonio Rose
19:47 St James Infirmary
22:47 Singing the Bathtub
24:50 Love Me or Leave Me
28:50 Walkin’ My Baby Back Home
32:27 Exactly Like You
34:39 On The Sunny Side Of The Street
39:54 If I Could Be With You (One Hour Tonight)
42:43 Ain’t She Sweet (Grahame Conlon ukulele)
45:15 Cakewalkin’ Babies From Home
47:46 St Louis Blues
1920s 1930s Jazz Swing Songs by Greg Poppleton Band:
Greg Poppleton: 1920s – 1930s singer
Paul Furniss: soprano, alto, tenor saxes and clarinet
Al Davey: trumpet and trombone
Bob Henderson: trumpet
Matt Baker: piano
Peter Locke: piano
Grahame Conlon: guitar and banjo
Geoff Power: sousaphone
Rod Herbert: sousaphone
Darcy Wright: double bass
Mark Harris: double bass
Dieter Vogt: double bass
Lawrie Thompson: drums and washboard
Joel Davis: drums
What are you doing this Saturday? We’ll be having fun with songs from the 1920s-30s at Penrith RSL. It’s free and you’re invited. 2-5pm, this Saturday 11 December. First 5,000 at door get in FREE.
Dance floor
Bar
Bistro
Free car parking
10 min walk from Penrith Station
Child friendly.
Just 10 minutes walk from Penrith train station and bus interchange.
With me as I sing the songs of the 1920s and 1930s are, Dave Clayton on double bass.
Guitarist for Ricky May, Grahame Conlon, swings on Spanish guitar and banjo.
Damon Poppleton, will be joining us on alto saxophone.
Penrith is a suburb in New South Wales, Australia, located west of Sydney. It is located in Greater Western Sydney, 50 kilometres (31 mi) west of the Sydney central business district on the banks of the Nepean River, on the outskirts of the Cumberland Plain.
Penrith is the administrative centre of the local government area of the City of Penrith. It is also acknowledged on the register of the Geographical Names Board of New South Wales as one of only four cities within the Greater Sydney metropolitan area.
Penrith has a number of heritage-listed sites, including:
34-40 Borec Road: Craithes House 26 Coombes Drive: Torin Building Great Western railway: Penrith railway station, Sydney Nepean River, Great Western Highway: Victoria Bridge Off Bruce Neale Dr, Steel Trusses 1.3 km past station: Emu Plains Underbridge 1 Museum Drive: Penrith Museum of Fire, including the following: Fire and Rescue NSW Heritage Fleet NSW Fire Brigades No 10 Vehicle Number Plates 1869 Shand Mason 7 inch Manual Fire Engine 1891 Shand Mason Fire Engine 1898 Shand Mason Curricle Ladders 1909 Edward Smith Headquarters Switchboard 1929 Ahrens Fox PS2 Fire Engine 1939 Dennis Big 6 Fire Engine 1942 Ford 21W Fire Brigade Mobile Canteen
Phil Harris is this week’s Phantom Dancer feature artist. Wonga Phil Harris was a drummer, band leader, singer, comedian, actor, Academy Award winner and voice-over artist. Because of the continuing Sydney lockdown, this show is a re-broadcst of the 23 Feb 2021 Phantom Dancer
His first name, Wonga, is a Cherokee word meaning fast messenger.
The Phantom Dancer is your non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV hosted by me, Greg Poppleton. Hear past Phantom Dancer online now at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/.
Phil Harris’ parents were circus performers. Phil started playing in his father’s tent band as a drummer at age 9.
He began his dance band career as a drummer in San Francisco, first in 1925 with the Henry Halstead Orchestra, which toured Australia in 1927. In the late 20s he formed an orchestra with Carol Lofner which had a three year engagement at the St. Francis Hotel.
In 1933, he made a short film for RKO called So This Is Harris!. It won the Academy Award for best live action short subject. He followed with a feature-length film, Melody Cruise.
He made many TV appearances guesting on the Ed Sullivan Show and Dean Martin Show in the 1960s
As a singer, he had a #1 hit in 1950 with the novelty record, “The Thing”.
He was an avid golfer and won many amateur golf tournaments. Took over managing the Bing Crosby Golf Tournament after Crosby’s death
RADIO
On this week’s Phantom Dancer you’ll hear Phil Harris from a radio transcription simulating a broadcst from the Cocoanut Grove of the Ambassador Hotel where his band was resident in 1933-34.
In 1936, Harris became musical director of The Jell-O Show Starring Jack Benny singing and leading his band.
When Harris showed a knack for giving snappy one-liners, he joined the cast.
In 1946, after serving in the US Navy during WW2, Harris and wife Alice Faye began co-hosting The Fitch Bandwagon, a comedy-variety program that followed the Jack Benny show on Sunday nights.
On The Fitch Bandwagon and its later incarnation as The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show, Harris played a vain, stumbling husband, while Faye played his sarcastic but loving wife.
The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show ran until 1954. Harris was concurrently on Jack Benny’s show from 1948 to 1952.
Sam ‘The Man’ Taylor, influential 1940s jump and 1950s rock tenor saxophonist, is this week’s Phantom Dancer non-stop swing jazz feature artist. You’ll hear him from two 1956 Rock ‘n’ Roll Dance Party broadcasts on this week’s mix.
Because of the current Sydney Covid lockdown I can’t mix live from the 2SER studios as I normally do on Tuesdays, so this is a ‘classic’ Phantom Dancer from ‘the vaults’ in a ‘repeat premier’ for your aural enjoyment. Make sure you donate to community radio 2SER to keep these Phantom Dancers going.
Greg Poppleton has been bringing you The Phantom Dancer, your non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV, each week since 1985.
Hear The Phantom Dancer online from 12:04pm AEST Tuesday 6 July at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/ where you can also hear two years of archived shows.
The finyl hour is vinyl.
SAM ‘THE MAN’ TAYLOR
Taylor was born in Lexington, Tennessee. He attended Alabama State University, where he played with the Bama State Collegians. He later worked with Scatman Crothers, Cootie Williams, Lucky Millinder, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles, Buddy Johnson, Louis Jordan and Big Joe Turner. Taylor was one of the most requested session saxophone players in New York recording studios in the 1950s. He also replaced Count Basie as the house bandleader on Alan Freed’s radio series, Rock ‘n’ Roll Dance Party, on CBS, from where this week’s Phantom Dancer Sam ‘The Man’ Taylor tracks originate.
Taylor played the saxophone solo on Turner’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll”. He also played on “Harlem Nocturne”; on “Money Honey”, recorded by Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters in 1953; and on “Sh-Boom” by the Chords.
During the 1960s, he led a five-piece band, the Blues Chasers. In the 1970s, he frequently played and recorded in Japan.
VIDEO OF THE WEEK
Sam ‘The Man’ Taylor’s hit 1955 recording on the 1930s jazz standard, Harlem Nocturne. The song was written by Earle Hagen when he was a teenager! He later gave us some of the greatest TV themes ever: “Andy Griffith Show”, “Dick Van Dyke Show”, “Gomer Pyle USMC”, “Danny Thomas Show”, “That Girl”, “I Spy”, “Mod Squad”
Make sure you come back to this blog, Greg Poppleton’s Radio Lounge, every Tuesday, for the newest Phantom Dancer play list and Video of the Week!
6 JULY PLAY LIST
Play List – The Phantom Dancer
107.3 2SER-FM Sydney, Live Stream, Digital Radio Community Radio Network Show CRN #499
Barbara James, Australian dance band singer features on this week’s Phantom Dancer with some of her broadcasts from the 1930s and 1940s. This is a repeat of a 2018 mix as I’ll be filming this Tuesday.
Presented every week by, Greg Poppleton, The Phantom Dancer, is your non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV.
It’s recorded live at 107.3 2SER Sydney, Tuesdays 12:04 – 2pm, and sent to 23 radio stations of the Community Radio Network and online.
Hear this week’s Phantom Dancer (after 1 May), and plenty of past Phantom Dancers for your enjoyment, online at radio 2ser.com
In the mix this week, live 1930s-60s radio by Glenn Miller’s Army Air Forces Band, Lee Konitz, Charlie Parker in Boston, a Frank Sinatra aircheck from 1939 (singing his first record release), singer Loyce Whiteman (daughter of ‘King of Jazz’ Paul Whiteman), and Australian dance band singer, Barbara James.
See the full play list below.
BARBARA JAMES
Born in Sydney in 1907 (some sources say 1908), Barbara James was a jazz and swing singer. Her parents were entertainers Will James and Malvena Moore. Her father, Will, taught her to play the saxophone, xylophone and banjo. She also played violin and danced. She was married to musician and band leader, Reg Lewis, who we’ll also here on this week’s Phantom Dancer.
Over her career, James performed and recorded with numerous jazz bands in Australia such as Frank Coughlan’s Trocadero Orchestra, Dick Freeman and his Trocadero Orchestra and Johnny Tozer and his Swing Band.
From 1921, she was contracted by Harry George Musgrove to Musgrove’s Theatres, appearing at theatres in Sydney and Melbourne, including the Tivoli circuit and Trocadero, and on ABC radio.
She first appeared on the Tivoli theatre circuit billed as a ‘child wonder xylophonist’.
This week’s Phantom Dancer presents a selection of her radio broadcasts from 1937-45.
Barbara toured Hong Kong in 1946. From 1949 to 1955, Reg and Barbara Lewis toured Europe and Britain.
In London, they performed in the West End at Café Anglaise and the Windmill Theatre.
London variety shows featuring Reg and Barbara Lewis included, ‘Stars, Songs and Society’ Windmill Theatre London, 1950, ‘Nudes of the East’ 1951, ‘The Talk of the Town’ Tribe Bros Ltd London, 1950-1951 and ‘Midday Music Hall’, 1953.
They appeared on BBC radio and TV.
They had a regular 15 minute vocal and piano show on Sydney radio in the 1960s called, ‘Between You and Me’.
You are cordially invited to a very special evening of magic and music – or as we like to call it: Sorcery & Swing.
For one night only the original, ornate 1920s vintage Cellos Grand Dining Room in the historic 1920s Castlereagh Boutique Hotel will be transformed into the Sydney Solstice Speakeasy for Sorcery and Swing.
Come dressed to the nines in your finest Roaring Twenties fashion (girls in pearls, guys in ties). There’s even a small dance floor to swing, Charleston and balboa to.
You will be greeted with close-up magic, champagne & canapés before being seated for a delicious three-course dinner.
My quartet and I will serenade you with 1920s music for dining and dancing throughout the evening. On sousaphone and trumpet will be Geoff Power, guitar and banjo Grahame Conlon and Damon Poppleton will play alto and soprano saxophone. My friend, Bruce Glen will be making the magic.
Bruce is known as The Gentleman Magician, “Charming and with impeccable manners…you’re almost unaware of the stunts he’s pulling off in front of you until they’ve actually happened,” Edinburgh International Magic Festival.
WHEN: 7:00PM Saturday 12th June
WHERE: The Castlereagh Boutique Hotel, 169 Castlereagh Street, Sydney
TICKETS: $125 includes welcome champagne and canapés, three course dinner, all entertainment. Cash bar available (but shhhh….this is the Prohibition Era).
Max Roach began playing drums in his church at age 10. At 18, in 1942, Duke Ellington booked him to fill in for Ellington drummer, Sonny Greer, at the Paramount Theatre, NYC. He made his first professional recording backing Coleman Hawkins in 1943.
In 1945 he played on Charlie Parker’s pioneering bop records and he backed bop pioneers Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk and Bud Powell on radio and discs. Radio airchecks of these collaborations will be heard on this week’s show.
STUDY
In the late 1940s, Roach traveled to Hailti to study with the traditional drummer Ti Roro.
Long involved in jazz education, in 1972 Roach was recruited to the faculty of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He taught at the university until the mid-1990s.
1950s
In 1952, Roach co-founded Debut Records with bassist Charles Mingus. The label released a record of the 1953 Massey Hall Concert featuring Parker, Gillespie, Powell, Mingus, and Roach. The label also put out the groundbreaking bass-and-drum free improvisation, Percussion Discussion.
In 1954, Roach and trumpeter Clifford Brown formed a quintet that also featured tenor saxophonist Harold Land, pianist Richie Powell (brother of Bud Powell), and bassist George Morrow. Land left the quintet the following year and was replaced by Sonny Rollins. You’ll hear this band with Sonny Rollins on this week’s Phantom Dancer from a live radio broadcast.
In 1955, he played drums for vocalist Dinah Washington at several live appearances and recordings. He appeared with Washington at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958, which was filmed, and at the 1954 live studio audience recording of Dinah Jams, considered to be one of the best and most overlooked vocal jazz albums of its genre.
1960s-70s
In 1960 he composed and recorded the album We Insist! (subtitled Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite), with vocals by his then-wife Abbey Lincoln and lyrics by Oscar Brown Jr., after being invited to contribute to commemorations of the hundredth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln‘s Emancipation Proclamation. In 1962, he recorded the album Money Jungle, a collaboration with Mingus and Duke Ellington. This is generally regarded as one of the finest trio albums ever recorded.
During the 1970s, Roach formed M’Boom, a percussion orchestra. Each member composed for the ensemble and performed on multiple percussion instruments. Personnel included Fred King, Joe Chambers, Warren Smith, Freddie Waits, Roy Brooks, Omar Clay, Ray Mantilla, Francisco Mora, and Eli Fountain.
1980s-90s
In the early 1980s, Roach presented solo concerts, demonstrating that multiple percussion instruments performed by one player could fulfill the demands of solo performance and be entirely satisfying to an audience. He created memorable compositions in these solo concerts.
Roach also embarked on a series of duet recordings. Departing from the style he was best known for, most of the music on these recordings is free improvisation, created with Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, Archie Shepp, and Abdullah Ibrahim. Roach created duets with other performers, including: a recorded duet with oration of the “I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King Jr.; a duet with video artist Kit Fitzgerald, who improvised video imagery while Roach created the music; a duet with his lifelong friend and associate Gillespie; and a duet concert recording with Mal Waldron.
He also wrote music for theater, including plays by Sam Shepard. He was composer and musical director for a festival of Shepard plays, called “ShepardSets”, at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in 1984. The festival included productions of Back Bog Beast Bait, Angel City, and Suicide in B Flat. In 1985, George Ferencz directed “Max Roach Live at La MaMa: A Multimedia Collaboration”.
Roach found new contexts for performance, creating unique musical ensembles. One of these groups was “The Double Quartet”, featuring his regular performing quartet with the same personnel as above, except Tyrone Brown replaced Hill. This quartet joined “The Uptown String Quartet”, led by his daughter Maxine Roach and featuring Diane Monroe, Lesa Terry, and Eileen Folson.
Another ensemble was the “So What Brass Quintet”, a group comprising five brass instrumentalists and Roach, with no chordal instrument and no bass player. Much of the performance consisted of drums and horn duets. The ensemble consisted of two trumpets, trombone, French horn, and tuba. Personnel included Cecil Bridgewater, Frank Gordon, Eddie Henderson, Rod McGaha, Steve Turre, Delfeayo Marsalis, Robert Stewart, Tony Underwood, Marshall Sealy, Mark Taylor, and Dennis Jeter.
Not content to expand on the music he was already known for, Roach spent the 1980s and 1990s finding new forms of musical expression and performance. He performed a concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He wrote for and performed with the Walter White gospel choir and the John Motley Singers. He also performed with dance companies, including the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Dianne McIntyre Dance Company, and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. He surprised his fans by performing in a hip hop concert featuring the Fab Five Freddy and the New York Break Dancers. Roach expressed the insight that there was a strong kinship between the work of these young black artists and the art he had pursued all his life.
Though Roach played with many types of ensembles, he always continued to play jazz. He performed with the Beijing Trio, with pianist Jon Jang and erhu player Jeibing Chen. His final recording, Friendship, was with trumpeter Clark Terry. The two were longtime friends and collaborators in duet and quartet. Roach’s final performance was at the 50th anniversary celebration of the original Massey Hall concert, with Roach performing solo on the hi-hat.
Roach’s most significant innovations came in the 1940s, when he and Kenny Clarke devised a new concept of musical time. By playing the beat-by-beat pulse of standard 4/4 time on the ride cymbal instead of on the thudding bass drum, Roach and Clarke developed a flexible, flowing rhythmic pattern that allowed soloists to play freely. This also created space for the drummer to insert dramatic accents on the snare drum, crash cymbal, and other components of the trap set.
By matching his rhythmic attack with a tune’s melody, Roach brought a newfound subtlety of expression to the drums. He often shifted the dynamic emphasis from one part of his drum kit to another within a single phrase, creating a sense of tonal color and rhythmic surprise. Roach said of the drummer’s unique positioning, “In no other society do they have one person play with all four limbs.”
While this is common today, when Clarke and Roach introduced the concept in the 1940s it was revolutionary. “When Max Roach’s first records with Charlie Parker were released by Savoy in 1945”, jazz historian Burt Korall wrote in the Oxford Companion to Jazz, “drummers experienced awe and puzzlement and even fear.” One of those drummers, Stan Levey, summed up Roach’s importance: “I came to realize that, because of him, drumming no longer was just time, it was music.”
In 1966, with his album Drums Unlimited (which includes several tracks that are entirely drum solos) he demonstrated that drums can be a solo instrument able to play theme, variations, and rhythmically cohesive phrases. Roach described his approach to music as “the creation of organized sound.”
Deco Park Picnic, Valentines’ Day, Sunday 14 February 2021: the 1920s Greg Poppleton Trio with Paul Baker on banjo, Adam Barnard on washboard (and myself singing), serenaded revellers with songs of the 1920s.
Greg Poppleton sings 1920s songs at Deco Park Picnic
Think Jazz on a Summer’s Day meets a Great Gatsby garden party was the theme. Inspired by summer picnics of the 1920s, dining al fresco with friends and family is one of summer’s greatest pleasures.
Greg Poppleton, Australia’s only authentic 1920s-1930s singer
Sydney Olympic Park’s Deco Park Picnic was the chance for friends to gather, dress in their Sunday best and enjoy a long lunch on the lawn.
The Deco Park Picnic connected the creativity of musicians and picnickers with the culture of the wide open.
There were themed hosts, visual performers, kids games, immersive theatre and roving live music. Guests revelled in curious vintage characters, live jazz and a shared glamorous nostalgia.
Greg Poppleton serenading picnickers with songs from the 1920sGreg Poppleton 1920s Trio: Greg with megaphone, Paul Baker banjo, Adam Barnard washboard, backstage at the Deco Park Picnic
Phil Harris is this week’s Phantom Dancer feature artist. Wonga Phil Harris was a drummer, band leader, singer, comedian, actor, Academy Award winner and voice-over artist.
His first name, Wonga, is a Cherokee word meaning fast messenger.
The Phantom Dancer is your non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV hosted by me, Greg Poppleton. Hear past Phantom Dancer online now at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/.
Phil Harris’ parents were circus performers. Phil started playing in his father’s tent band as a drummer at age 9.
He began his dance band career as a drummer in San Francisco, first in 1925 with the Henry Halstead Orchestra, which toured Australia in 1927. In the late 20s he formed an orchestra with Carol Lofner which had a three year engagement at the St. Francis Hotel.
In 1933, he made a short film for RKO called So This Is Harris!. It won the Academy Award for best live action short subject. He followed with a feature-length film, Melody Cruise.
He made many TV appearances guesting on the Ed Sullivan Show and Dean Martin Show in the 1960s
As a singer, he had a #1 hit in 1950 with the novelty record, “The Thing”.
He was an avid golfer and won many amateur golf tournaments. Took over managing the Bing Crosby Golf Tournament after Crosby’s death
RADIO
On this week’s Phantom Dancer you’ll hear Phil Harris from a radio transcription simulating a broadcst from the Cocoanut Grove of the Ambassador Hotel where his band was resident in 1933-34.
In 1936, Harris became musical director of The Jell-O Show Starring Jack Benny singing and leading his band.
When Harris showed a knack for giving snappy one-liners, he joined the cast.
In 1946, after serving in the US Navy during WW2, Harris and wife Alice Faye began co-hosting The Fitch Bandwagon, a comedy-variety program that followed the Jack Benny show on Sunday nights.
On The Fitch Bandwagon and its later incarnation as The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show, Harris played a vain, stumbling husband, while Faye played his sarcastic but loving wife.
The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show ran until 1954. Harris was concurrently on Jack Benny’s show from 1948 to 1952.
Actor - Singer - Voiceover 