WEDDING OF THE YEAR

This week’s Phantom Dancer feature artist with Greg Poppleton, is ‘the Red-Headed Music Maker’, Wendall Hall. Wendall was an early radio star and was the first to be married live on radio on 4 June 1924 to Marion Martin over WEAF New York.

ONLINE

This week’s Phantom Dancer will be online after the 10 November 107.3 2SER Sydney live mix at 2ser.com.
Hear the show live every Tuesday 12:04-2pm on 107.3 2SER Sydney.

WENDALL

This week’s Phantom Dancer goes back to the earliest radio of the 1920s – 39s for its feature artist. Wendall Hall was an American country singer, vaudeville artist, songwriter, pioneer radio performer, Victor recording artist and ukulele player.

RAIN

In 1923, Hall released the song “It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo’,” which sold over two million copies in the United States. It was awarded a gold disc by the RIAA. The song is also considered the first musical hit on radio. He wrote “Underneath the Mellow Moon” and “Carolina Rose”. Hall also wrote songs with Carson Robison and Art Gillham.

1920s RADIO STAR

Hall began his career in 1922 Chicago as a song plugger for Forster Music. He traveled around the US and stopped in towns to play in music stores, theaters, and radio. In vaudeville he began singing and playing the xylophone. He found the ukulele to be more portable and quickly became an expert with that instrument. In January, 1924 he signed with the National Carbon Company to host the Eveready Hour a pioneer commercially sponsored variety program on WEAF in New York. On November 4, 1924 the program was on a pre-network 18 station “hook-up” to broadcast election returns with entertainers Will Rogers, Carson Robison, Art Gillham, and the Waldorf Astoria Orchestra. Eveready even painted their batteries with a red top to cash in on Hall’s popularity. In 1929 Wendell Hall hosted the Majestic Music Hour and a few years later Gillette’s Community Sing. He made a few musical short films.

On a 1925 European tour he was broadcast over a 21 station hook-up, the largest ever attempted up to that time.

After his radio days were over, Wendell Hall wrote commercials for radio.

TAROPATCH

Hall performed on a variety of stringed instruments, including the standard ukulele, the taropatch ukulele, banjo, and the hybrid banjolele, as well as the tiple. Like so many of the other performers during the era, Hall was a big fan of the instruments created by the C.F. Martin & Company, particularly their Taropatch. Like other performers, he was unsuccessful in obtaining an endorsement deal with Martin, but in response to his letter offering to endorse their product, Martin offered their 20% discount for professional performers and to inlay his name in the head of the instrument.

UKULELE

He published an instruction book, Wendell Hall’s Ukulele Method, with Forster Music in 1925, that was edited by May Singhi Breen. He also marketed a series of custom ukuleles through the Regal Musical Instrument Company of Chicago, with his picture on the head of The Red Head Ukulele and banjolele with red tuning pegs that became collectors’ items for several generations afterward

With the resurgence of the uke’s popularity in the 1950s, Hall was able to land a radio show on WBKB five days a week, the home of the Griff Williams Show which is your Phantom Dancer Video of the Week…