Keys to success in popular music include a compelling back story that informs the music preferably with a rags to riches theme, a catchy name and/or a gimmick.

Shep Fields found fame almost as soon as he found the latter. And changing his name from Saul Feldman to the catchier Shep Fields also would have helped.

Shep Field is the feature artist on today’s Phantom Dancer. He was so popular and internationally famous even the Australian swing band of Wally Portingale included him in a song for their ‘All In Fun Revue’.

WHAT’S THE PHANTOM DANCER?

Excellent question young Harry. It’s your non-stop mixtape of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio. And it’s been live-to-air on 107.3 2SER Sydney, Tuesdays 12:04 – 2pm, since 1985.

The Phantom Dancer is then re-broadcast on 22 radio stations of the Community Radio Network and online.

In fact, you’ll be able to hear this week’s Phantom Dancer on 2ser.com online after the show. And there’s a stack of past Phantom Dancer swing jazz mix tapes for you to enjoy there as well.

The last hour is always ALL VINYL

THIS WEEK’S PHANTOM DANCER MIX

– has a set of ‘Women in Jazz’ introduced by jazz writer Leonard Feather for the Voice of America in 1951, we go free form with John Coltrane over WCBS-FM in 1965 and there’s the Shep Fields feature.

See the full play list below….

SHEP FIELDS

was a Swing Era U.S musician and band leader. He found fame by incorporating a simple idea into his music.

This week’s Phantom Dancer video, below, is a 1930s dramatisation of the eureka moment the idea struck. But here’s how the story goes for those of you not into film.

UP THE LADDER

Shep played clarinet and tenor saxophone in bands while at university. He played in a band at the prestigious Roseland Ballroom in 1931. In 1933 he was leading a band in that great proving ground for New York musicians and comedians in the 1930s and 1940s – the Borscht Belt. Next year he replaced the Jack Denny Orchestra in a residency at Hotel Pierre in New York City. He left that gig to back the dancers Veloz and Yolanda on a tour. 1936 found him in Chicago, with a contract to play at the Palmer House with radio broadcasts from that same spot included.

EUREKA!

Now he had come this far, the question was, how could he distinguish himself sufficiently from all the other dance band on the air and on stage to move to the next level of ‘name band’.

The inspiration came when he and his wife were sitting in a milk bar. Mrs Fields was blowing bubbles into her soft drink through a straw.

Eureka! Shep decided there and then that bubbling sound was what would introduce his band over the air. This moment was dramatised in a short film for cinema release in the late 1930s.

A BRAND IS BORN

Fields staged a contest amongst his fans in Chicago to suggest a new name for his band with the new sound.

The word ‘rippling’ came up in a number of entries. Fields himself came up with ‘Rippling Rhythm.’ And so a brand was born.

IDENTITY

That same year, 1936, with brand in place and signature sound, Shep Fields landed a record deal with the popular Bluebird label. His hits for this famous jazz record company included ‘Cathedral in the Pines’, ‘Did I Remember?’ and ‘Thanks for the Memory’.

In 1937 Fields had his own radio show, ‘The Rippling Rhythm Revue’ with comedian Bob Hope, whose theme song was ‘Thanks for the Memory’ as announcer.

In 1938, Fields and Hope were featured together in the comedian’s first feature movie, The Big Broadcast of 1938.

Today’s Phantom Dancer will feature 1930s radio transcriptions of Shep Field’s Rippling Rhythm Orchestra in the final vinyl hour. In a 1940 radio transcription you’ll hear singer Hal Derwin who later became a band leader in his own right.

ALL REEDS

Shep Fields dropped his Rippling Rhythm Orchestra in 1941 for a bold experiment, an all-reeds orchestra with rhythm section and no brass called Shep Fields and His New Music.

We’ll hear his New Music in a radio transcription from 1942.

Though the critics liked it, the public wanted Rippling Rhythm.

And with the popularity of the big bands declining after World War Two, Fields bowed to the public pressure of declining New Music ticket sales. In 1947 he re-launched his Rippling Rhythm Orchestra.

He had already brought his own venue to guarentee bookings and radio airtime, the prestigious Glen Island casino in New Rochelle, New York, which is where the opening track in this week’s Shep Field set originates.

The Rippling Rhythm Orchestra lasted until 1963. That year, Shep Fields quit band leading to be a radio disc jockey in Houston. When that ended, he worked at Creative Management Associates with his brother Freddie Fields in Los Angeles.

VIDEO OF THE WEEK

It’s Shep Fields and his New Music with the ‘soundie’ The Whistler’s Mother-in-Law. Happy viewing!

31 JULY PLAY LIST