Phantom Dancer :: 12:00pm 11th Apr 2023

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).

The Eel…

11 APRIL PLAY LIST

Play List – The Phantom Dancer
107.3 2SER-FM Sydney
LISTEN ONLINE

Community Radio Network Show CRN #593

107.3 2SER Tuesday 11 April 2023
12:04 – 2:00pm (+10 hours GMT) and Saturdays 5 – 5:55pm
National Program
5GTR Mt Gambier Monday 2:30 – 3:30am
3MBR Murrayville Monday 3 – 4am
4NAG Keppel FM Monday 3 – 4am
2MIA Griffith Monday 3 – 4am
2BAR Edge FM Bega Monday 3 – 4am
2BRW Braidwood Monday 3 – 4am
2YYY Young Monday 3 – 4am
3VKV Alpine Radio Monday 6 – 7pm
7MID Oatlands Monday 6 -7pm
6GME Radio Goolarri Broome Tuesday 12am – 1am
2SEA Eden Tuesday 6 – 7pm
2MCE Bathurst Wednesday 9 – 10am
2RDJ Burwood Wednesday 12 – 1pm
1ART ArtsoundFM Canberra Friday 10 – 11am
2RRR Ryde Friday 11am -12 noon
2ARM Armidale Friday 12 – 1pm
5LCM Lofty FM Adelaide Friday 1 – 2pm
Denmark FM (West Australia) Saturdays 10 – 11am
Repeat: Wednesdays 10 – 11pm
7LTN Launceston Sunday 5 – 6am
3MGB Mallacoota Sunday 5 – 6am
3BBR West Gippsland Sunday 5 – 6pm

Set 1
Glenn Miller
Moonlight Serenade (theme) + Ain’t You Coming Out?
Glenn Miller Orchestra (voc) Marion Hutton + Tex Beneke
Glen Island Casino
New Rochelle NY
WEAF NBC Red NY
15 Aug 1939
The Lamp is Low
Glenn Miller Orchestra (voc) Ray Eberle
Glen Island Casino
New Rochelle NY
WEAF NBC Red NY
15 Aug 1939
The Isle of Golden Dreams
Glenn Miller Orchestra
Glen Island Casino
New Rochelle NY
WEAF NBC Red NY
15 Aug 1939
The Pagan Love Song + Moonlight Serenade (theme) Glenn Miller Orchestra (voc)
Glen Island Casino
New Rochelle NY
WEAF NBC Red NY
15 Aug 1939
Set 2
Kay Kyser
Hallelujah
Kay Kyser and his Band from the Carolines (voc) Band
Radio Transcription
1934
Swing Low Sweet Chariot
Kay Kyser and his Band from the Carolines (voc) Glee Club
Radio Transcription
1934
How Do I Know It’s Sunday?
Kay Kyser and his Band from the Carolines (voc) Art Wilson and Band
Radio Transcription
1934
Simple Symphony
Kay Kyser and his Band from the Carolines
Radio Transcription
1934
Set 3
Selling Scholls
Open + What is This Thing Called Love?
Melodyland Orchestra
‘Ambassadors of Melodyland’
Radio Transcription
1931
Fallen Arch Story
Announcer
‘Ambassadors of Melodyland’
Radio Transcription
1931
Where the Golden Daffodils Grow + Close
Melodyland Orchestra
‘Ambassadors of Melodyland’
Radio Transcription
1931
Set 4
Bud Freeman
Theme + I Ain’t Gonna Give You None Of My Jelly Roll
Bud Freeman’s Summa cum Laude Orchestra
Hotel Sherman
WMAQ NBC Red Chicago
20 May 1940
Secrets in the Moonlight
Bud Freeman’s Summa cum Laude Orchestra
Hotel Sherman
WMAQ NBC Red Chicago
20 May 1940
Shake Down the Stars + Medley + Sierra Sue
Bud Freeman’s Summa cum Laude Orchestra
Hotel Sherman
WMAQ NBC Red Chicago
20 May 1940
The Long Blues
Bud Freeman and Roy Eldridge
Blue Note
WMAQ NBC Chicago
1957
Set 5
Dance Bands
Open + It Was Just One of Those Things
Russ Morgan Orchestra
‘One Night Stand’
Biltmore Hotel
Los Angeles
AFRS Re-broadcast
13 May 1946
In a Magic Garden
Raymond Scott Orchestra
Garden Room
Palace Hotel
KQW CBS San Francisco
Apr 1944
Monday Morning
Jan Savitt’s Top Hatters (voc) Carlotta Dale
KYW NBC Red Philadelphia
17 Oct 1938
Creepy Weepy
Raymond Scott Orchestra
‘Music Depreciation’
KHJ Don Lee Mutual Los Angeles
1940
Set 6
Muggsy Spanier 1953
Relaxin’ at the Trouro (theme) + Royal Garden Blues
Muggsy Spanier
Blue Note
WMAQ NBC Chicago
18 Oct 1953
Riverside Blues
Muggsy Spanier
Club Hangover
KCBS San Francisco
18 Apr 1953
I Ain’t Got Nobody
Muggsy Spanier
Blue Note
WMAQ NBC Chicago
25 Oct 1953
That’s a’Plenty + Close
Muggsy Spanier
Club Hangover
KCBS San Francisco
18 Apr 1953
Set 7
Dutch and Belgian Swing
A Strange Fact
De Ramblers with Coleman Hawkins
Comm Rec
Hilversum Holland
26 Apr 1937
Washington Squabble
Fud Candrix Orchestra Comm Rec
Blankenberghe
Belgium
27 Jun 1938
Crazy Rhythm
De Ramblers with Coleman Hawkins
Comm Rec
Hilversum Holland
28 Apr 1937
The Oldest Swinger in Harlem
Duke Ellington Orchestra
Comm Rec
Brussels Belgium
22 Nov 1940
Set 8
1950s Swing
Theme + Dizzy’s Blues
Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra
Birdland
WCBS CBS NYC
Jun 1956
Two Handed Blues
Erroll Garner Trio
Storyville
WHDH Boston
Dec 1953
Tangerine + Close
Dorsey Brothers’ Orchestra (voc) Tommy Mercer and Dolly Houston
Cafe Rouge
Hotel pennsylvania
WRCA NBC NYC
Dec 1955

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