Arnošt Kavka is your Phantom Dancer feature artist this week. He was a Czech swing singer and composer who you’ll hear with Karel Vlach’s Orchestra and the Allan Sisters in records made between 1939-44.
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 6 June) and weeks of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/
ARNOST
Arnošt Kavka began learning saxophone at fifteen. A year later he switched to drums, studying with drummer Laci Ollah.
He founded the student orchestra Black and White in 1934, then worked as a drummer in the Gramoklub orchestra led by Jan Šíma and finally the Blue Music band which became the Karel Vlach Orchestra.
Karel Vlach suggested he move from drums to singing. So he studied with Josef Malina and with the Robert de Kers Orchestra in Oostende, Belgium, where he mainly learned microphone technique.
Returning from Belgium, he sang with the Blue Boys Orchestra and made his first records for Ultraphon in 1939
That year he entered the law faculty of Charles University in Prague. When the Second World War came the universities were closed.
Karel Vlach formed his orchestra in 1939 and Arnošt Kavka became his permanent singer until 1944. During this time he acquired his nickname “Doctor Swing” from his most famous Vlach recording (you’ll hear it on the Allan Sisters Phantom Dancer show) and which became his trademark.
KAVKA
During the war Arnošt Kavka trained as a bookseller and publisher with orchestra leader RA Dvorský, who protected him from total deployment.
Total deployment (German Totaleinsatz or NS-Zwangsarbeit ) was the name for forced labor deployment which inhabitants of occupied countries were subjected to during Nazi Germany.
Totally deployed, they were mostly involuntarily transported to the Third Reich, where they performed slave labor under inhumane conditions.
Kavka was arrested by the Gestapo in Zlín in 1944 for avoiding total deployment and spent the rest of the war in concentration camps.
Shortly before the end of World War II, he managed to escape from the labour camp in Prague’s Hagibor . In 1944, his daughter died during the bombing of the Holešovice power plant.
He finished law school after 1945 and started his own septet.
Following the communist coup in 1948, he tried to meet the demands of the time and play socialist jazz based on folk motifs. However, by the 1950s, he was forbidden to perform in public and had to take band exams.
Later he performed as a musical comedian in spa towns and abroad.
After the Prague Spring in the 1960s he played on radio and television. He used his own instrument, the Kavka eintet – he played the organ with his left hand, an electrophonic instrument like a piano with thirty registers with his right, and operated a large drum and cymbal with his feet.
In the early 1970s, he performed on an American ocean liner.
He appeared on Czechoslovak Television programs, including Televariete in the 1980s
Your Phantom Dancer feature artist this week is ‘the father of the blues’, W. C. Handy, who you’ll hear speaking on live 1941 radio.
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 May) and weeks of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/
WILLIAM
William Christopher Handy, who referred to himself as the Father of the Blues, did not create the blues genre but was the first to publish music in the blues form, thereby taking the blues from a limited audience to broard popularity.
Handy was an educated musician who used elements of folk music in his compositions. He was scrupulous in documenting the sources of his works, which frequently combined stylistic influences from various performers.
Handy’s father believed that musical instruments were tools of the devil. Without his parents’ permission, Handy bought his first guitar, which he had seen in a local shop window and secretly saved for by picking berries and nuts and making lye soap. Upon seeing the guitar, his father asked him, “What possessed you to bring a sinful thing like that into our Christian home?” and ordered him to “take it back where it came from”, but he also arranged for his son to take organ lessons. The organ lessons did not last long, but Handy moved on to learn to play the cornet. He joined a local band as a teenager, but he kept this fact a secret from his parents. He purchased a cornet from a fellow band member and spent every free minute practicing it.
CHRISTOPHER
While growing up, he apprenticed in carpentry, shoemaking, and plastering. He was deeply religious. His musical style was influenced by the church music he sang and played in his youth and by the sounds of nature. He cited as inspiration the “whippoorwills, bats and hoot owls and their outlandish noises”, Cypress Creek washing on the fringes of the woodland, and “the music of every songbird and all the symphonies of their unpremeditated art”.
He worked on a “shovel brigade” at the McNabb furnace, where he learned to use his shovel to make music with the other workers to pass the time. The workers would beat their shovels against hard surfaces in complex rhythms that Handy said were “better to us than the music of a martial drum corps.” Handy would later recall this improvisational spirit as being a formative experience for him, musically: “Southern Negroes sang about everything….They accompany themselves on anything from which they can extract a musical sound or rhythmical effect.” He reflected, “In this way, and from these materials, they set the mood for what we now call Blues.”
In September 1892, Handy traveled to Birmingham, Alabama, to take a teaching exam. He passed but didn’t take the job. Instead, he took another labouring job and in his spare time organized a small string orchestra and taught musicians how to read music. He later organized the Lauzetta Quartet. When the group read about the upcoming World’s Fair in Chicago, they decided to attend. To pay their way, they performed odd jobs along the way. They arrived in Chicago and then learned that the World’s Fair had been postponed for a year. Next they headed to St. Louis, Missouri, but found no work.
After the quartet disbanded, Handy went to Evansville, Indiana. He played the cornet in the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. In Evansville, he joined a successful band that performed throughout neighboring cities and states. His musical endeavors were varied: he sang first tenor in a minstrel show, worked as a band director, choral director, cornetist, and trumpeter. At the age of 23, he became the bandmaster of Mahara’s Colored Minstrels.
In a three-year tour they traveled to Chicago, throughout Texas and Oklahoma to Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida, and on to Cuba, Mexico and Canada. Handy was paid a salary of $6 per week. Returning from Cuba the band traveled north through Alabama, where they stopped to perform in Huntsville. Weary of life on the road, he and his wife, Elizabeth, stayed with relatives in his nearby hometown of Florence.
In 1896, while performing at a barbecue in Henderson, Kentucky, Handy met Elizabeth Price. They married on July 19, 1896. She gave birth to Lucille, the first of their six children, on June 29, 1900, after they had settled in Florence.
Around that time, William Hooper Councill, the president of State Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes in Huntsville (which became Alabama A&M University), the same college Handy had refused to teach at in 1892 due to low pay, hired Handy to teach music. He became a faculty member in September 1900 and taught through much of 1902. He was disheartened to discover that the college emphasized teaching European music considered to be “classical”. He felt he was underpaid and could make more money touring with a minstrel group.
In 1902, Handy traveled throughout Mississippi, listening to various styles of popular black music. The state was mostly rural and music was part of the culture, especially in cotton plantations in the Mississippi Delta. Musicians usually played guitar or banjo or, to a much lesser extent, piano. Handy’s remarkable memory enabled him to recall and transcribe the music he heard in his travels.
After a dispute with AAMC President Councill, Handy resigned his teaching position to return to the Mahara Minstrels and tour the Midwest and Pacific Northwest. In 1903, he became the director of a black band organized by the Knights of Pythias in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Handy and his family lived there for six years. During this time, he had several formative experiences that he later recalled as influential in his developing musical style. In 1903, while waiting for a train in Tutwiler, Mississippi in the Mississippi Delta, Handy overheard a black man playing a steel guitar using a knife as a slide.
HANDY
About 1905, while playing a dance in Cleveland, Mississippi, Handy was given a note asking for “our native music”. He played an old-time Southern melody but was asked if a local colored band could play a few numbers. Handy assented, and three young men with well-worn instruments began to play. In his autobiography, Handy described the music they played:
“They struck up one of those over and over strains that seem to have no beginning and certainly no ending at all. The strumming attained a disturbing monotony, but on and on it went, a kind of stuff associated with [sugar] cane rows and levee camps. Thump-thump-thump went their feet on the floor. It was not really annoying or unpleasant. Perhaps “haunting” is the better word.”
Handy also took influence from the square dances held in Mississippi which typically had music in the G major key. In particular, he picked the same key for his 1914 hit, “Saint Louis Blues”.
In 1909 Handy and his band moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where they played in clubs on Beale Street. “The Memphis Blues” was a campaign song written for Edward Crump, the successful Democratic Memphis mayoral candidate in the 1909 election and political boss. Handy later rewrote the tune and changed its name from “Mr. Crump” to “Memphis Blues.” The 1912 publication of the sheet music of “The Memphis Blues” introduced his style of 12-bar blues; it was credited as the inspiration for the foxtrot by Vernon and Irene Castle, a New York dance team. Handy sold the rights to the song for $100. By 1914, when he was 40, he had established his musical style, his popularity had greatly increased, and he was a prolific composer.
In his autobiography, Handy described how he incorporated elements of black folk music into his musical style. The basic three-chord harmonic structure of blues music and the use of flat third and seventh chords in songs played in the major key all originated in vernacular music created for and by impoverished southern blacks. Those notes are now referred to in jazz and blues as blue notes. His customary three-line lyrical structure came from a song he heard Phil Jones perform. Finding the structure too repetitive, he adapted it: “Consequently I adopted the style of making a statement, repeating the statement in the second line, and then telling in the third line why the statement was made.” He also made sure to leave gaps in the lyrics for the singer to provide improvisational filler, which was common in folk blues.
Writing about the first time “Saint Louis Blues” was played, in 1914, Handy said, “The one-step and other dances had been done to the tempo of Memphis Blues. … When St Louis Blues was written the tango was in vogue. I tricked the dancers by arranging a tango introduction, breaking abruptly into a low-down blues. My eyes swept the floor anxiously, then suddenly I saw lightning strike. The dancers seemed electrified. Something within them came suddenly to life. An instinct that wanted so much to live, to fling its arms to spread joy, took them by the heels.”
His published musical works were groundbreaking because of his race. In 1912, he met Harry Pace at the Solvent Savings Bank in Memphis. Pace was the valedictorian of his graduating class at Atlanta University and a student of W. E. B. Du Bois. By the time of their meeting, Pace had demonstrated a strong understanding of business. He earned his reputation by saving failing businesses. Handy liked him, and Pace later became the manager of Pace and Handy Sheet Music.
In 1916, American composer William Grant Still, early in his career, worked in Memphis for W.C. Handy’s band. In 1918, Still joined the United States Navy to serve in World War I. After the war, he went to Harlem, where he continued to work for Handy.
In 1917, Handy and his publishing business moved to New York City, where he had offices in the Gaiety Theatre office building in Times Square. By the end of that year, his most successful songs had been published: “Memphis Blues”, “Beale Street Blues”, and “Saint Louis Blues”. That year, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a white New Orleans jazz ensemble, had recorded the first jazz record, introducing the style to a wide segment of the American public. Handy had little fondness for jazz, but bands dove into his repertoire with enthusiasm, making many of these songs jazz standards.
Handy encouraged performers such as Al Bernard, a soft-spoken white man who nonetheless was a powerful blues singer. He sent Bernard to Thomas Edison to be recorded, which resulted in a series of successful recordings. Handy also published music written by other writers, such as Bernard’s “Shake Rattle and Roll” and “Saxophone Blues”, and “Pickaninny Rose” and “O Saroo”, two black traditional tunes contributed by a pair of white women from Selma, Alabama. Publication of these hits, along with Handy’s blues songs, gave his business a reputation as a publisher of black music.
In 1919, Handy signed a contract with Victor Talking Machine Company for a third recording of his unsuccessful 1915 song “Yellow Dog Blues”. The resulting Joe Smith recording of the song was a strong seller, with orders numbering in the hundreds of thousands of copies.
Handy tried to interest black singers in his music but was unsuccessful; many musicians chose to play only the current hits, and did not want to take risks with new music. According to Handy, he had better luck with white bandleaders, who “were on the alert for novelties. They were therefore the ones most ready to introduce our numbers.” Handy also had little success selling his songs to black women singers, but in 1920, Perry Bradford convinced Mamie Smith to record two non-blues songs (“That Thing Called Love” and “You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down”) that were published by Handy and accompanied by a white band. When Bradford’s “Crazy Blues” became a hit as recorded by Smith, black blues singers became popular. Handy’s business began to decrease because of the competition.
In 1920, Pace amicably dissolved his partnership with Handy, with whom he also collaborated as lyricist. Pace formed Pace Phonograph Company and Black Swan Records, and many of the employees went with him. Handy continued to operate the publishing company as a family-owned business. He published works of other black composers as well as his own, which included more than 150 sacred compositions and folk song arrangements and about 60 blues compositions. In the 1920s, he founded the Handy Record Company in New York City; while this label released no records, Handy organized recording sessions with it, and some of those recordings were eventually released on Paramount Records and Black Swan Records. So successful was “Saint Louis Blues” that, in 1929, he and director Dudley Murphy collaborated on a RCA motion picture of the same name, which was to be shown before the main attraction. Handy suggested blues singer Bessie Smith for the starring role because the song had made her popular. The movie was filmed in June and was shown in movie houses throughout the United States from 1929 to 1932.
The importance of Handy’s work as a musician and musicologist crossed the boundaries of genre, coming to influence European composers such as Maurice Ravel, who was inspired during a stay in Paris of Handy and his orchestra for the composition of the famous sonata nr 2 for violin and piano known not by chance as the Blues sonata.
In 1926 Handy wrote Blues: An Anthology—Complete Words and Music of 53 Great Songs. It is an early attempt to record, analyze, and describe the blues as an integral part of the South and the history of the United States. To celebrate the publication of the book and to honor Handy, Small’s Paradise in Harlem hosted a party, “Handy Night”, on Tuesday October 5, which contained the best of jazz and blues selections provided by Adelaide Hall, Lottie Gee, Maude White, and Chic Collins.
After the publication of his autobiography, Handy published a book on African-American musicians, titled Unsung Americans Sung (1944). He wrote three other books: Blues: An Anthology: Complete Words and Music of 53 Great Songs, Book of Negro Spirituals, and Negro Authors and Composers of the United States.
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 May) and weeks of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/
Rex Stewart was an American jazz cornetist, composer and chef.
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 May) and weeks of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/
REX
Rex studied piano and violin and dropped out of high school to become a member of the Ragtime Clowns led by Ollie Blackwell.
He was with the Musical Spillers led by Willie Lewis in the early 1920s, then with Elmer Snowden, Horace Henderson, Fletcher Henderson, Fess Williams, and McKinney’s Cotton Pickers as a cornetist.
In 1933 he led a big band at the Empire Ballroom in New York City.
From 1934-45, he was in the Duke Ellington Orchestra, co-writing “Boy Meets Horn” and “Morning Glory” amongst others.
He supervised recording sessions by members of the Ellington band, then left to lead “little swing bands that were a perfect setting for his solo playing.”
He toured in Europe and Australia with from 1947 to 1951.
STEWART
In the early 1950s, he worked in radio and television and wrote jazz criticism for the Los Angeles Times and DownBeat.
He hosted a jazz radio program in Troy, New York, and owned a small restaurant for a short time.. While living in France, he attended the Le Cordon Bleu school of cooking and dedicated his life to becoming a chef.
Stewart moved to Los Angeles, where he reunited with musicians from the Ellington band and played jam sessions in clubs. He was a studio musician for The Steve Allen Show and with George Cole he hosted two radio shows: Dixieland Doings and Things Aint What They Used to Be.
Stewart continued to be a witty lyric artist, as shown in The Big Challenge, a recording of sessions he and Cootie Williams led together in 1957.
Jazz Masters of the Thirties is a collection of articles he wrote as a jazz critic
He made a cameo appearance in the film Rendezvous in July (1949) directed by Jacques Becker. He also appeared in Hellzapoppin’ (1941) and The Sound of Jazz (1957) telecast.[2
Stan Getz was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, known as “The Sound” because of his warm, lyrical tone. Getz played bebop, cool jazz groups and helped popularize bossa nova in the United States with the hit 1964 single, “The Girl from Ipanema”.
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 May) and weeks of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/
FIRST CAREER
Stan Getz was an American ,jazz tenor saxophonist, known as “The Sound” because of his warm, lyrical tone. Getz played bebop, cool jazz groups. and helped popularize bossa nova in the United States with the hit 1964 single “The Girl from Ipanema”.
Getz started on an alto his father bought him when Stan was 13 and learned to play clarinet and bassoon through his high school band during which time he played for paid private events.
In 1943, at the age of 16, he joined Jack Teagarden’s band. Because of his age, he became Teagarden’s ward.
Getz also played along with Nat King Cole and Lionel Hampton. A period based in Los Angeles with Stan Kenton was brief. Following a comment from Kenton that his main influence, Lester Young, was too simple, he quit.
After performing with Jimmy Dorsey, and Benny Goodman, Getz was a soloist with Woody Herman from 1947 to 1949 in “The Second Herd”, and he first gained wide attention as one of the band’s saxophonists, who were known collectively as “The Four Brothers”; the others being Serge Chaloff, Zoot Sims and Herbie Steward. With Herman, he had a hit with “Early Autumn” in 1948.
SECOND CAREER
After Getz left “The Second Herd”, he launched his solo career. He booked Horace Silver’s trio for touring gigs, gaining Silver his earliest national exposure.
For an unknown period, Silver was not paid by Getz, who was using the money due the pianist to buy heroin. Silver left in June 1952.
Zoot Sims, who had known Getz since their time with Herman, once described him as “a nice bunch of guys”, an allusion to his unpredictable personality. Bob Brookmeyer, another performing colleague, responded to speculation Getz had a heart operation with a query: “Did they put one in?”
In the same period, Getz performed with pianists Al Haig and Duke Jordan, drummers Roy Haynes and Max Roach, and bassist Tommy Potter, all of whom had worked with Charlie Parker. Guitarists Jimmy Raney and Johnny Smith were also associated with the saxophonist in this period. His profile was enhanced by his featured performance on Johnny Smith’s version of the song “Moonlight in Vermont”, recorded in 1952, which became a hit single and stayed on the charts for months. A DownBeat readers’ poll voted the single as the second best jazz record of 1952.
A 1953 line-up of the Dizzy Gillespie/Stan Getz Sextet featured Gillespie, Getz, Oscar Peterson, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown and Max Roach. He moved to Copenhagen, Denmark in 1958 to perform.
THIRD CAREER
Returning to the U.S. from Europe in 1961, Getz recorded the album Focus with arrangements by Eddie Sauter, who created a strings backing for the saxophonist.
Getz became involved in introducing bossa nova music to the American audience. Teaming with guitarist Charlie Byrd, who had just returned from a U.S. State Department tour of Brazil, Getz recorded Jazz Samba in 1962.
Getz won the Grammy for Best Jazz Performance of 1963 for his cover of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Desafinado”, from Jazz Samba. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.
His second bossa nova album, also recorded in 1962, was Big Band Bossa Nova with composer and arranger Gary McFarland.
As a follow-up, Getz recorded the album, Jazz Samba Encore!, with one of the originators of bossa nova, Brazilian guitarist Luiz Bonfá. It also sold more than a million copies by 1964, giving Getz his second gold disc.
He then recorded the album Getz/Gilberto, in 1963, with Antônio Carlos Jobim, João Gilberto and his wife, Astrud Gilberto. Their recording of “The Girl from Ipanema” won a Grammy Award. Getz/Gilberto won two Grammys (Best Album and Best Single). As a single (1964), “The Girl from Ipanema” became a smash hit.
Getz and producer Creed Taylor claimed that the music’s success was a result of their discovery of the talent of Astrud Gilberto, who had never before been recorded as a vocalist, shifting the spotlight away from her and depriving her of credit, when it had been her vocal rendition that had made the song a smashing success with the general public. Getz even made sure she got none of the royalties. Gilberto and later her and João Gilberto’s son Marcelo disputed Getz and Taylor’s version of the story.
A live album, Getz/Gilberto Vol. 2, followed, as did Getz Au Go Go (1964), a live recording at the Cafe au Go Go. While still working with the Gilbertos, he recorded the jazz album Nobody Else But Me (1964), with a new quartet including vibraphonist Gary Burton, but Verve Records, wishing to continue building the Getz brand with bossa nova, refused to release it. It came out 30 years later, after Getz had died.
FOURTH CAREER
In 1972, Getz recorded the jazz fusion album Captain Marvel with Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke and Tony Williams, and in this period experimented with an Echoplex on his saxophone. He had a cameo in the film The Exterminator (1980).
In the mid-1980s, Getz worked regularly in the San Francisco Bay area and taught at Stanford University as an artist-in-residence at the Stanford Jazz Workshop until 1988. In 1986, he was inducted into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame. During 1988, Getz worked with Huey Lewis and the News on their Small World album. He played the extended solo on part 2 of the title track, which became a minor hit single.
His tenor saxophone of choice was the Selmer Mark VI.
The Sestry Allanovy (Allan Sisters) were a Czech vocal trio formed in 1940. They were together until 1967
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 2 May) and weeks of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/
ALLAN
The trio was formed during World War II in German-occupied Prague by Jiřina Salačová, Vera Kočvarová and Radka Hlavsová, who were members of the Kühn Choir. Her role models were the Boswell Sisters and the Andrews Sisters .
They first called themeselves The Three Prague Girls, then chose the name Allan after the pseudonym of the composer, Alfons Jindra .
Their first success was in the Červená sedma (Red Seven) cabaret, where Karel Vlach discovered them .
As well as Karel Vlach’s orchestra, they sung with R. A. Dvorský’s Melody Boys and with pianist Leopold Korbar. They were in the musical The Wonder Cauldron. As the “Allan-Terzett” they recorded many songs in German for Telefunken and Deutsche Grammophon-Gesellschaft.
After the war they only sang in Czech. Radka Hlavsová was replaced by Máša Horová and the group expanded into a quartet with Bozena Port. In 1948 they were involved in the production of the musical Divotvorný hrnec .
SISTERS
After the end of World War 2, the trio expanded into a quartet:: Jiřina Salačová, Máša Horová, Věra Kočvarová, Bozena Portová.
From 1946–1948, Věra Holotíková (later Holotíková-Krumniklová) also sang in the quartet .
They made both solo recordings (Land of Singing, Svět je veselý, Behind the Blue Horizon) and accompanied, for example, by male singer Václav Irmanov (Sweet and Lovely; Straighten Up and Fly Right), all with Karel Vlach’s orchestra.
After the arrival of Rudolf Cortés as a permanent singer in Vlach’s orchestra in 1948, they also began to accompany him, and in the late 1940s, their songs Písnička o Číňánek and Starý mlýn were popular.
Jiřina Salačová gave up her career and her place was taken by Blažena Lázničková. This was the line-up until 1955, when it broke up.
The Allan Sisters last performed together in 1967 in Podskalské’s movie comedy Ta naše písnička česká. The last living member was Věra Holotíková (1924–2018).
Enoch Light swing band leader, violinist, lounge music wizard and recording engineer, inventor of the ‘ping-pong sound’ on 1950s-60s hi-fi records, gatefold albums and distinctive commissioned album art, is this week’s Phantom Dancer feature artist.
This is a classic Phantom Dancer from earlier this year as I’m currently in rehearsal for the Arthur Miller 1947 play, All My Sons. I play Joe Keller. TICKETS
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 14 February) and weeks of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/
ENOCH
Enoch Henry Light was an American classically trained violinist, danceband leader, and recording engineer.
His earliest dance band recordings are from March 1927. You’ll hear his ‘Light Brigade’ swing dance band on this weeks Phantom Dancer from a fun park broadcast aired in 1944.
In 1928 he led a band in Paris, where, in the 1930s he studied conducting with the French conductor Maurice Frigara. He studied classical conducting at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and the Opera Comique in Paris.
Throughout the 1930s, Light and his orchestras played on the Society Band circuit in New York City playing polite dance music for well-heeled patrons..
When he formed his Light Brigade he got radio exposure in broadcasts from NYC’s Hotel Taft.
A head-on car accident interrupted his band leading for two years. In those 2 years, the big band business had died and Light turned to the business side of recorded music.
LOUNGE KING
Light is credited with being one of the first musicians to go to extreme lengths to create high-quality recordings.
He was particularly into stereo effects that bounced the sounds between the right and left channels (often described as “Ping-pong recording”).
He introduced recording practices now used in multitrack recording, including overdubbing and isolating various groups of musicians from each other in the recording studio.
His first LP produced for Command Records, Persuasive Percussion, became one of the first big-hit albums based solely on retail sales. Light’s music received little or no airplay on the radio, because AM radio, the standard of the day, was monaural and had very poor fidelity.
The album covers were generally designed with abstract, minimalist artwork that stood out boldly from other album covers. These pieces were usually the work of Josef Albers.
GATEFOLD ALBUMS
Light was so interested in the sound of his music that he would include lengthy prose describing each song’s sounds. In order to fit all of his descriptions on to the album sleeve, he doubled the size of the sleeve but enabled it to fold like a book, thus popularizing the gatefold packaging format.
Enoch Light released 25 albums in various genres of music under a variety of names during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Some were released under Grand Award Records, which he founded in 1955. He founded Command Records in 1959. ABC-Paramount Records acquired the Light family of labels in October 1959. Light stayed on to manage and handle A&R.
During this time, he pioneered many recording techniques such as the use of 35 mm magnetic film instead of magnetic tape, reducing wow and flutter. The recordings were released under the “35MM” series, starting from “Stereo 35-MM” released by Command Records. Musicians who appeared on Light’s albums include The Free Design, The Critters, Rain, Doc Severinsen, Tony Mottola, Dick Hyman, and organist Virgil Fox. As an arranger, Lew Davies was one of the label’s most important contributors.
Light remained with tABC/Command until 1965. After his departure, the quality of the records plummeted dramatically. The signature gatefold format (along with Light’s prose) was immediately discontinued, and the covers changed to budget labels pressed on recycled vinyl. In 1975, they were completely discontinued.
Light joined forces with the Singer Corporation in August 1966, to help the company launch production of phonograph records, tapes, and tape cartridges. Plans called for a new company to be formed, with Light and Singer each having half-interest and Light as both president and chief executive officer.
Light’s new label was called Project 3. It did not concentrate as heavily on stereo effects. Light recorded several successful big band albums with group of top New York studio musicians. Many of them were veterans of the bands of the swing era.
Released as Enoch Light and the Light Brigade, the arrangements used on the recordings were transcribed note-for-note from some of what were the hallmark recordings by many of the best bands of the swing era.
REMEMBERED
Enoch Light holds the record for having the most charting LPs without having a Top 40 single.
Events coinciding with Light’s birthday near his birthplace of northeastern Ohio have occurred since the late 1990s. The most recent is 2014’s Enoch Light Birthday Memorial Go-Go Happening and features bands performing Light’s work and multimedia installations remixing the distinctive Command Records album cover designs.
Bud Freeman was an American jazz musician, bandleader and composer. He is this week’s Phantom Dancer feature artist. Bud Freeman was one of the first tenor saxophonists in jazz along with Coleman Hawkins.
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 11 April) and two years of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/
SCHOOL
Freeman was one of the young musicians inspired by New Orleans ensembles and the innovations of Louis Armstrong to synthesize the Chicago style in the late 1920s.
He was one of the ‘Austin High Gang’.
One hundred years ago, in 1922, five kids from Austin High School in Chicago, Illinois formed a little band: Jim Lanigan on piano, Jimmy McPartland on cornet, his older brother Dick McPartland on banjo and guitar, Frank Teschemacher on alto saxophone, and Bud Freeman on C-melody tenor saxophone.
Bud was the greenhorn of the group and the only one who did not also play the violin. At the time, their ages ranged from Jimmy McPartland, who was fourteen, to Jim Lanigan and Dick McPartland, seventeen. Teschemacher was sixteen and Freeman was slightly younger.
The boys, like many other students from their high school, frequented an ice cream parlor across the street known as “The Spoon and the Straw.” One of them would feed a nickel to the automatic phonograph and one day they discovered a record by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. They were so enthralled by the sound of such authentic jazz that they played the record over and over. Then and there, they named their band “The Blue Friars,” after The Friar’s Inn on the Chicago Loop where the Rhythm Kings played.
They went and heard King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band live, rounding off their identity with New Orleans jazz.
Sometimes the Austin High Gang played at Lewis Institute, which Dave Tough attended, and he added his drums to the little band. Later, Jim Lanigan picked up the bass through Chink Martin’s playing and soon became the band’s bassist; Teschemacher also began practicing the clarinet, his style showing traces of the glissandi from violin playing. Dave found Floyd O’Brien playing trombone at a University of Chicago jam session. Then, recruiting him and pianist Dave North, they named themselves Husk O’Hare’s Wolverines and were ready to play professionally. They got a job at White City, a large dance hall of Chicago’s south side amusement park, where they played until their disbandment at the end of the White City engagement.
In 1927, Eddie Condon recorded the Austin High Gang as the “Mackenzie-Condon Chicagoans”. These recordings catapulted the young musicians into the spotlight and they all subsequently developed acclaimed careers in New York, playing and recording with established musicians like Jack Teagarden, Pee Wee Russell, Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey. Of the original Austin High Gang, Jimmy McPartland and Bud Freeman sustained the longest careers in jazz
EEL
By the 1930s, Bud Freeman was working in New York City, typically in the company of ex-Chicagoans, especially Eddie Condon, in whose band Freeman recorded a noted solo, “The Eel” (1933).
By then he had developed a fluent, romantic style featuring sinuous legato melodies. His tenor saxophone sound was especially distinctive—full and smooth, with a rough edge and a large vibrato—and he played with a robust, at times almost violent swing.
Along with a Chicago friend, drummer Dave Tough, Freeman played in the big bands of Tommy Dorsey (1936–38) and Benny Goodman (1938) before embarking on a freelance career as bandleader and soloist.
He formed the Summa Cum Laude Orchestra (1939–1940) which you’ll hear live from Chicago on this week’s Phantom Dancer.
Freeman led a U.S. Army dance band based in the Aleutian Islands during World War II, then lived in New York and Chile.
He often reunited with Condon and other former Chicagoans in concert. Among his notable albums are The Bud Freeman All-Stars and the 1957 Cootie Williams–Rex Stewart album, The Big Challenge, which brought together Freeman and his great tenor saxophone rival, Coleman Hawkins.
After touring with the World’s Greatest Jazz Band (1969–71), Freeman lived in England (1974–80) and performed there and in Europe; thereafter he was based in Chicago.
He wrote two short volumes of reminiscences, You Don’t Look Like a Musician (1974) and If You Know of a Better Life, Please Tell Me (1976), and an autobiography, Crazeology (with Robert Wolf, 1989).
Bunny Berigan was one of the virtuoso jazz trumpeters of the Swing Era. He also sang. He’s 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 28 March) and weeks of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/
BUNNY
Roland Bernard “Bunny” Berigan is best known for his virtuoso jazz trumpeting. His 1937 classic recording “I Can’t Get Started” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1975.
As a child he learned violin and trumpet. In his teenage years he played in local bands as a teenager, including the University of Wisconsin jazz ensemble (although he wasn’t enrolled).
He joined the Hal Kemp Orchestra in 1929 on his second attempt and made his first recorded trumpet solos were with the orchestra.
He also appeared as featured soloist with bands fronted by Rudy Vallee, Tommy Dorsey, Abe Lyman, Paul Whiteman and Benny Goodman.
He joined the staff of CBS radio network musicians in early 1931. Berigan recorded his first vocal, “At Your Command”, with Freddy Rich’s orchestra that year.
From late 1932 – early 1934, Berigan was a member of Paul Whiteman’s orchestra, before playing with Abe Lyman’s band briefly in 1934.
He then freelanced in the New York recording studios and worked at CBS radio in 1934. He recorded as a sideman on hundreds of commercial records, most notably with the Dorsey Brothers and on Glenn Miller’s earliest recording as a leader in 1935, playing on “Solo Hop”.
Berigan joined Benny Goodman’s orchestra, talent scouted by producer John H. Hammond. Hammond later wrote that he helped persuade Gene Krupa to re-join Goodman, with whom he had had an earlier falling-out, by mentioning that Berigan, whom Krupa admired, was already committed to the new ensemble.
With Berigan and Krupa both on board, the Goodman band made the tour that ended at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles. The performance often credited with the launch of the swing era. Berigan recorded a number of solos while with Goodman, including “King Porter Stomp”, “Sometimes I’m Happy”, and “Blue Skies”.
BERIGAN
Berigan left Goodman to freelance and record regularly under his own name. He backed singers such as Bing Crosby, Mildred Bailey, and Billie Holiday.
He spent some time with Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra in late 1936 and early 1937, working as a jazz soloist on Dorsey’s radio program and on several records. His solo on the Dorsey hit recording “Marie” became one of his signature performances.
In 1937, Berigan assembled a band to record and tour under his name, picking the then-little known Ira Gershwin–Vernon Duke composition “I Can’t Get Started” as his theme song.
Berigan modeled his trumpet style in part on Louis Armstrong’s, and he often acknowledged Armstrong as his idol. Still, his trumpet sound and jazz ideas were unique, earning Armstrong’s praise both before and after Berigan’s death.
Bunny led his own band full-time from early 1937 until June 1942, with a six-month hiatus in 1940 as a sideman in Tommy Dorsey’s band.
Among the players who worked in the Berigan band were: drummers Buddy Rich, Dave Tough, George Wettling, Johnny Blowers and Jack Sperling; alto saxophonists and clarinetists Gus Bivona, Joe Dixon and Andy Fitzgerald; vocalists Danny Richards, Ruth Bradley and Kathleen Lane; pianist Joe Bushkin; trombonist and arranger Ray Conniff; trombonist Sonny Lee; bassists Hank Wayland and Morty Stulmaker; trumpeters Carl Warwick, Steve Lipkins and Les Elgart; tenor saxophonists Georgie Auld and Don Lodice; and pianist and arranger Joe Lipman.
Jack Teagarden was one of the great trombonists of the 1930s-50s and a laid-back jazz singer. He’s 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 14 March) and weeks of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/
JACK
His mother was a ragtime pianist and Jack started on piano when he was 5. His father played in brass bands and encouraged himon the baritone horn. He switched to trombone when he was 10 and was largely self-taught so he had unusual slide positions in his style.
His brother, Charlie, with whom Jack played in bands throughout his careeer was an excellent trumpet player. He had a drummer sister, Clois.
His other sister, Norma, played piano (and violin in the early part of her career). She toured with her Jack from 1944–1947 and from 1952–1955.
Outside the Teagarden family, she worked with Ben Pollack, Matty Matlock, and Ray Bauduc. She often performed on solo piano or with bandleader Turk Murphy in San Francisco.
Teagarden worked in the Southwest in a variety of territory bands (most notably with the legendary pianist Peck Kelley) and then caused a sensation when he came to New York in 1928.
His daring solos with Ben Pollack caused Glenn Miller to de-emphasize his own playing with the band, and during the late-’20s/early Depression era, “Mr. T.” recorded frequently with many groups including units headed by Roger Wolfe Kahn, Eddie Condon, Red Nichols, and Louis Armstrong (“Knockin’ a Jug”).
His versions of “Basin Street Blues” and “Beale Street Blues” (songs that would remain in his repertoire for the remainder of his career) were definitive. Teagarden, who was greatly admired by Tommy Dorsey, would have been a logical candidate for fame in the swing era but he made a strategic error.
In late 1933, when it looked as if jazz would never catch on commercially, he signed a five-year contract with Paul Whiteman. Although Whiteman’s Orchestra did feature Teagarden now and then (and he had a brief period in 1936 playing with a small group from the band, the ThreeT’s, with his brother Charlie and Frankie Trumbauer), the contract effectively kept Teagarden from going out on his own and becoming a star.
In 1939, Jack Teagarden was finally “free” and he soon put together a big band that would last until 1946.
However, the arrangements lacked their own musical personality, and by the time it broke up Teagarden was facing bankruptcy.
The trombonist, however, was still a big name (he had fared well in the 1940 Bing Crosby film The Birth of the Blues) and he had many friends.
Crosby helped Teagarden straighten out his financial problems, and from 1947-1951 he was a star sideman with Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars; their collaborations on “Rocking Chair” are classic.
After leaving Armstrong, Teagarden was a leader of a steadily working sextet throughout the remainder of his career, playing Dixieland with such talented musicians as brother Charlie, trumpeters Jimmy McPartland, Don Goldie, Max Kaminsky, and (during a 1957 European tour) pianist Earl Hines. Teagarden toured the Far East during 1958-1959, teamed up one last time with Eddie Condon for a television show/recording session in 1961, and had a heartwarming (and fortunately recorded) musical reunion with Charlie, sister/pianist Norma, and his mother at the 1963 Monterey Jazz Festival. He died from a heart attack four months later and has yet to be replaced.
TEAGARDEN
In late 1933, when it looked as if jazz would never catch on commercially, he signed a five-year contract with Paul Whiteman. Although Whiteman’s Orchestra did feature Teagarden now and then (and he had a brief period in 1936 playing with a small group from the band, the Three T’s, with his brother Charlie and Frankie Trumbauer), the contract effectively kept Teagarden from going out on his own and becoming a star.
In 1939, Jack Teagarden was finally “free” and he soon put together a big band that would last until 1946.
However, the arrangements lacked their own musical personality, and by the time it broke up Teagarden was facing bankruptcy.
The trombonist, however, was still a big name (he had fared well in the 1940 Bing Crosby film The Birth of the Blues) and he had many friends.
Crosby helped Teagarden straighten out his financial problems, and from 1947-1951 he was a star sideman with Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars; their collaborations on “Rocking Chair” are classic.
After leaving Armstrong, Teagarden was a leader of a steadily working sextet throughout the remainder of his career, playing Dixieland with such talented musicians as brother Charlie, trumpeters Jimmy McPartland, Don Goldie, Max Kaminsky, and (during a 1957 European tour) pianist Earl Hines.
Teagarden toured Asia during 1958-1959, teamed up one last time with Eddie Condon for a television show/recording session in 1961, and had a musical reunion with Charlie, sister/pianist Norma, and his mother at the 1963 Monterey Jazz Festival.
Actor - Singer - Voiceover 