“Dean took the wheel and drove clear the rest of the way to New York, and we began to hear the Symphony Sid show on the radio with all the latest bop, and now we were entering the great and final city of America.” (Jack Kerouac, On the Road, pt. 3, ch. 11)

Ah yes, we’ll be hearing some of those broadcasts from the ‘all-night, all-frantic one’, Symphony Sid, on this week’s Phantom Dancer.

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This week you’ll also hear some early rock’n’roll airchecks from the 1950s, Jack Teagarden and his Trad band from Club Hangover over KCBS San Francisco (in particular Saint James Infirmary which has been requested), a set of Martha Tilton singing in front of Benny Goodman’s Orchestra over CBS in January and February 1939 and a whole lot more.

See the full play list below.

The Phantom Dancer is your non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV. It’s made in the studios of 2SER in Sydney. The Phantom Dancer is heard across Australia on stations of the Community Radio Network.

The Phantom Dancer is produced and presented by Australia’s only authentic 1920s-30s-style singer and band leader, Greg Poppleton.

Hear this week’s Phantom Dancer (and past Phantom Dancers online) at radio 2ser.com

Greg Poppleton music website.

SYMPHONY SID

Born Sidney Tarnopol, which he shortened to Sid Torin, Symphony Sid was a DJ and bop promoter, credited with introducing bebop to the mass audience. He did this by co-producing ‘modern progressive jazz concerts’, as he called them, from 1945, but mainly through his radio show, the all-night, all-frantic Symphony Sid show.

Listening to many Symphony Sid airchecks, it seemed the show ran on WMCA New York from 1948-49, and then on the flagship New York ABC station, WJZ, until 1953, from midnight to 5pm Saturday and Sunday mornings.

Symphony Sid championed what he called ‘the finest in modern progressive jazz’. And as we’ll hear today, he also championed latin music by Machito and others, and he also hosted gospel radio shows not much later in his career when he moved from New York to Boston. At the end of his radio career in Miami, he was an influential Latin DJ and hosted live latin music on WBUS.

His show was a DJ show, where he’d spin records and listeners could call in Circle 6-2500 (WMCA) or Circle 6-4343 (WJZ), “guess the ‘gone’ side,” and make requests.

Then from 3:03am to 4, the show broadcast live bop (mostly) from The Royal Roost nightclub, and then from Birdland.

Sid would make the live introductions in a ‘flying-by-the-seat-of-his-pants’ style: a little bit dope-addled perhaps, sometimes forgetting names, sometimes covering for time with an impromptu interview, but always conversational and hipster.

Bandleaders who played these early morning shows included Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Tadd Dameron, Dinah Washington, Terry Gibbs, Lester Young, Machito, Charlie Ventura, Dave Brubeck, Chubby Jackson and Slim Gaillard.

Being on the Symphony Sid Show gave huge exposure to musicians. Some wrote tribute songs to him. ‘Jumpin’ With Symphony Sid’, which became his radio theme, was written by Lester Young with lyrics added later by King Pleasure. It was a hit in 1950 for the George Shearing Quintet. Illinois Jacquet wrote ‘Symphony in Sid’. Louis Jordan’s song, ‘After School Swing Session’ had the added title, ‘Swinging With Symphony Sid’.

“[Symphony Sid] is probably the greatest middleman jazz has ever known. A broadcaster for 35 years, once billed as ‘the all-night, all-frantic one’, he was the man to listen to in the forties, fifties and sixties if you wanted to know what was happening in jazz.”— Leslie Gourse, New York Times.

VIDEO OF THE WEEK

Your Phantom Dancer Video of the Week is a short aircheck of Symphony Sid introducing the live portion of on eof his 1948 WMCA shows from The Royal Roost. He introduces the Tadd Dameron small group. Enjoy…