Your feature artists on this week’s Phantom Dancer with Greg Poppleton – your two hour non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio – are singers Frankie Laine, Mel Torme and Jo Stafford from live 1940s radio. The last hour is all vinyl.

You can hear The Phantom Dancer online now at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/

FRANKIE LAINE

Frankie Laine (born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio) was an American singer, songwriter and actor whose career spanned nearly 75 years.

He first sang in 1930 with a marathon dance company. His final performance was “That’s My Desire” in 2005. Often billed as “America’s Number One Song Stylist”, his other nicknames include “Mr. Rhythm”, “Old Leather Lungs”, and “Mr. Steel Tonsils”. His hits included “That’s My Desire”, “That Lucky Old Sun”, “Mule Train”, “Jezebel”, “High Noon”, “I Believe”, “Hey Joe!”, “The Kid’s Last Fight”, “Cool Water”, “Rawhide”, and “Lord, You Gave Me a Mountain”.

He sang well-known theme songs for many movie Western soundtracks, including 3:10 To Yuma, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and Blazing Saddles, although his recordings were not charted as a country & western. Laine sang an eclectic variety of song styles and genres, stretching from big band crooning to pop, western-themed songs, gospel, rock, folk, jazz, and blues.

On this week’s Phantom Dancer, The Velvet Fog, Mel Torme, sings two songs including one when aged 17 in front of Chico Marx’s Orchestra on a CBS Fitch Bandwagon.

MEL TORME

Melvin Howard Tormé was nicknamed “The Velvet Fog”. He was an American musician, singer, composer, arranger, drummer, actor, and author. He composed the music for “The Christmas Song” (“Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire”) and co-wrote the lyrics with Bob Wells.

A child prodigy, Torme first performed professionally at age 4 with the Coon-Sanders Orchestra, singing “You’re Driving Me Crazy” at Chicago’s Blackhawk restaurant.

He played drums in the drum-and-bugle corps at Shakespeare Elementary School. From 1933 to 1941, he acted in the radio programs The Romance of Helen Trent and Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy. He wrote his first song at 13. Three years later his first published song, “Lament to Love,” became a hit for bandleader Harry James.

From 1942 to 1943 he was a member of a band led by Chico Marx of the Marx Brothers. He was the singer, drummer, and also did some arrangements. In 1943, Tormé made his movie debut in Frank Sinatra’s first film, the musical Higher and Higher. His appearance in the 1947 film musical Good News made him a teen idol.

In 1944 he formed the vocal quintet Mel Tormé and His Mel-Tones, modeled on Frank Sinatra and The Pied Pipers. The Mel-Tones, which included Les Baxter and Ginny O’Connor, had several hits fronting Artie Shaw’s band and on their own, including Cole Porter’s “What Is This Thing Called Love?” The Mel-Tones were among the first jazz-influenced vocal groups.

JO STAFFORD

Jo Elizabeth Stafford was an American traditional pop music singer and actor. Her career spanned the late 1930s to the early 1980s. Admired for the purity of her voice, she originally underwent classical training to become an opera singer before following a career in popular music, and by 1955 had achieved more worldwide record sales than any other female artist. Her 1952 song “You Belong to Me” topped the charts in the United States and United Kingdom, the record becoming the first by a female artist to reach number one on the UK Singles Chart.

Born in Coalinga, California, Stafford made her first musical appearance at age 12. While still at high school, she joined her two older sisters to form a vocal trio named the Stafford Sisters, who found moderate success on radio and in film. In 1938, while the sisters were part of the cast of Twentieth Century Fox’s production of Alexander’s Ragtime Band, Stafford met the future members of the Pied Pipers and became the group’s lead singer. Bandleader Tommy Dorsey hired them in 1939 to perform back-up vocals for his orchestra.

In addition to her recordings with the Pied Pipers, Stafford featured in solo performances for Dorsey. After leaving the group in 1944, she recorded a series of pop standards for Capitol Records and Columbia Records. Many of her recordings were backed by the orchestra of Paul Weston. She also performed duets with Gordon MacRae and Frankie Laine. Her work with the United Service Organizations giving concerts for soldiers during World War II earned her the nickname “G.I. Jo”. Starting in 1945, Stafford was a regular host of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) radio series The Chesterfield Supper Club and later appeared in television specials—including two series called The Jo Stafford Show, in 1954 in the U.S. and in 1961 in the U.K.

Jo Stafford film and TV clips make up your Video of the Week. The first clip is introduced by Ronald Reagan and includes a live version of ‘Temtayshun’, with Jo Stafford as ‘Cinerella G Stump’ singing a quarter tone out and taking no spaces like all of our great indie singers (but back then it was considered a joke).

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!

Thank you.

14 JANUARY PLAY LIST