Phantom Dancer :: 12:00pm 1st Jan 2019
Your New Year’s Phantom Dancer is choc-a-bloc full of New Years swing and jazz from live 1936 – 1966 radio.
Presented by myself, Greg Poppleton, since 1985 on 107.3 2SER Sydney, the show is now re-broadcast over 24 stations of the Community Radio Network across Australia. Hear the show online from midday 1 January (AEST).
See the play list below.
This week’s featured ‘artist’ is Wynn the Astrologer…
SEER
This famous 1930s astrologer gives his prognostications for 1937 on this week’s Phantom Dancer. In fact, get ready for disappointment at the end of Set 1, where I play Wynn’s ‘wise words’ (and some musical excerpts) from the 1936 New Year’s Eve Rudy Vallee show.
You’ll hear most of what Wynn had to say about the year ahead. I cut it short for time. Think of the audience for the 1936 radio broadcast, they never got that Wynn wasted time back.
Wynn, born Sidney Kimball Bennett, wrote the stars for the New York Daily News. And it seems he didn’t do it for a laugh. He was ridiculously serious about himself, as you’ll hear.
SPOOKY
His claim to fame was a prediction he made in the NY Daily News in 1932. He ‘foresaw’ financial turmoil for early March of 1933. That’s when President Roosevelt closed the banks for a week as the US struggled with the Great Depression.
UNCANNY
Wynn’s predictions for 1937 are typically vague, and, well, predictable. More interesting is just a short list of what actually happened in 1937 out of the trillions of things Wynn’s charts failed to predict…
- Safety glass in vehicle windscreens becomes mandatory in Great Britain
- Bradman scores 270 Aust v England at the MCG, incl 110 singles
- 2nd of Stalin‘s purge trials; Pyatakov & 16 others sentenced to death
- DuPont Corp patents nylon, developed by employee Wallace H Carothers
- Initial flight of the first successful flying car, Waldo Waterman’s Arrowbile
- Bradman scores 169 in 5th Test Cricket v England in 223 minutes
- Mexico nationalizes oil
- Pope Pius XI publishes anti-nazi-encyclical Mit brennender Sorge
- Astronomer Fritz Zwicky publishes his research on stellar explosion in which he coins the term “supernova” and hypothesizes that they were the origin of cosmic rays
- Spinach growers of Crystal City, Texas, erect statue of Popeye
- Debut of cartoon characters Daffy Duck, Elmer J Fudd and Petunia Pig
- German Luftwaffe destroys Basque town of Guernica in Spain
- 1st commercial flight across Pacific operated by Pan Am
- The Philippines holds a plebiscite for Filipino women on whether they should be extended the right to suffrage; over 90% voted yes
- San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge opens
- Spam, the luncheon meat, is first introduced into the market by the Hormel Foods Corporation
- Japanese & Chinese troops clash at the Marco Polo Bridge, beginning the Second Sino-Japanese War
- Buchenwald Concentration Camp opens
- Isolation of pituitary hormone announced (Yale University)
- 1st FM radio construction permit issued (W1X0J (WGTR) in Boston MA)
- Date celebrated as the first International Hobbit Day and the birthdays of Bibo and Frodo Baggins
- 1st Santa Claus Training School opens (Albion NY)
- Balinese Tiger declared extinct
- Dmitri Shostakovitch’s 5th Symphony premieres
- Clifford Odets’ “Golden Boy” premieres in NYC
- Japanese troops conquer and plunder Nanjing (Nanjing Massacre)
- Bill O’Reilly takes 9-41 for NSW against South Australia
- Constitution of Ireland (Irish: Bunreacht na hÉireann) is enacted and Irish free state is named Eire
- Pan Am starts service between San Francisco and Auckland, New Zealand
Here’s some footage of the first successful flying car, Waldo Waterman’s Arrowbile. How did Wynn miss this one? Probably the same way he missed foretelling his own 1926 car accident…(gosh, on today’s Phantom Dancer he warns Rudy Vallee to be ‘careful of cars’, spooky!)
31 DECEMBER 2018 PLAY LIST
|
Phantom Dancer After the 2SER 12 noon news, 12:04 – 2:00pm (+11 hours GMT) |
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| Set 1 | ||
| New Years Eve Aboard An Ocean Liner | Raymond Scott Quintette | Comm Rec New York 21 Jul 1939 |
| In The Mood | Glenn Miller Orchestra | ‘Chesterfield Show’ WABC CBS NY 27 Dec 1939 |
| Never Should Have Told You + Predictions for 1937 + Chim Bomba + Close | Rudy Vallee and Wynn the Astrologer | ‘Royal Gelatin Show’ WEAF NBC Red NY 31 Dec 1936 |
| Set 2 | ||
| Open + Happy Holidays | Bing Crosby (voc) John Scott Trotter Orchestra | ‘Kraft Music Hall’ KFI NBC LA 30 Dec 1943 |
| Rhapsody In Blue (theme) + Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah | Paul Whiteman Orchestra and Chorus | ‘The Paul Whiteman Show’ WJZ ABC NY 1 Jan 1947 |
| Poinciana + Close | Bing Crosby (voc) John Scott Trotter Orchestra | ‘Kraft Music Hall’ KFI NBC LA 30 Dec 1943 |
| Set 3 | ||
| Deep Forest (theme) + Dippermouth Blues + When The Saints Go Marching In + Tiger Rag | Earl ‘Fatha’ Hines | Club Hangover KCBS CBS San Francisco 1 Jan 1957 |
| Set 4 | ||
| Auld Lang Syne + Newport Up + Together + Maccarena + You Better Know It | Duke Ellington Orchestra (voc) Jimmy Grissom and Ozzie Bailey | ‘All-Star Parade of Bands’ Blue Note WMAQ NBC Chicago 1 Jan 1958 |
| Set 5 | ||
| Sad Sack | Harry James Orchestra (Hollywood) | ‘New Year’s Dancing Party’ AFRS Hollywood 31 Dec 1945 |
| One O’Clock Jump | Count Basie Orchestra (New York) | ‘New Year’s Dancing Party’ AFRS Hollywood 31 Dec 1945 |
| Warsaw Concerto | Freddy Martin Orchestra (Cocoanut Grove, Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles) | ‘New Year’s Dancing Party’ AFRS Hollywood 31 Dec 1945 |
| Woodchopper’s Ball | Woody Herman Orchestra (Meadowbrook Ballroom, Cedar Grove NJ) | ‘New Year’s Dancing Party’ AFRS Hollywood 31 Dec 1945 |
| Set 6 | ||
| Open + Stompin’ At The Savoy + Tea For Two | Teddy Wilson Trio | ‘All-Star Parade of Bands’ The Embers WRCA NBC NY 31 Dec 1957 |
| Stompin’ Down Broadway + Opus 1 (close) | Dorsey Brothers Orchestra | Meadowbrook Ballroom Cedar Grove NJ WCBS CBS NY 1 Jan 1956 |
| Set 7 | ||
| Afterthoughts + Canadian Sunset + Soft Summer Breeze + The Man I Love + Begin The Beguine | Eddie Haywood Trio | ‘All-Star Parade of Bands’ The Embers WRCA NBC NY 31 Dec 1957 |
| Set 8 | ||
| Robin Hood | Louis Prima Orchestra (voc) LP | ‘New Year’s Dancing Party’ AFRS Hollywood 31 Dec 1945 |
| Gotta Be This Or That | Benny Goodman Orchestra (with Slam Stewart b, Red Norvo vibes, Boston) | ‘New Year’s Dancing Party’ AFRS Hollywood 31 Dec 1945 |
| Let The Zoomers Drool | Duke Ellington Orchestra (Evansville, Indiana) | ‘New Year’s Dancing Party’ AFRS Hollywood 31 Dec 1945 |
