UKELELE IKE

The Phantom Dancer feature artist with Greg Poppleton this week is the earliest recorded scat singer, Cliff Edwards, also known as Ukelele Ike.

You’ll hear Ukelele Ike from 1936 and 1940 radio including a wild scat version of Margie.

See the full Phantom Dancer play list of swing and jazz mixed by Greg Poppleton from live 1920s-60s radio below.

ONLINE

This week’s Phantom Dancer will be online right after the 28 May 2SER live mix at 2ser.com.
Hear the show live every Tuesday 12:04-2pm on 107.3 2SER Sydney

CLIFF EDWARDS

Cliff Edwards left school at age 14 in 1909 and began entertaining as a singer in saloons.

Most bars had pianos in bad shape or none at all, so Edwards taught himself to play ukulele to serve as his own accompanist (choosing it because it was the cheapest instrument in the music shop).

BIG BREAK

He was nicknamed ‘Ukulele Ike’ by a club owner who could never remember his name. He got his first break in 1918 at the Arsonia Cafe in Chicago, Illinois, where he performed a song called ‘Ja-Da’ written by the club’s pianist, Bob Carleton. Edwards and Carleton made it a hit on the vaudeville circuit. Vaudeville headliner Joe Frisco hired Edwards as part of his act, which was featured at the Palace in New York City – the most prestigious vaudeville theatre – and later in the Ziegfeld Follies.

In 1924, Edwards performed as the headliner at the Palace, the pinnacle of his vaudeville success. That year he also featured in George and Ira Gershwin’s first Broadway musical Lady Be Good, alongside Fred and Adele Astaire.

RECORDS

Edwards made his first records in 1919 and recorded early examples of jazz scat singing in 1922.

In 1923 he signed to Pathé Records and became one of the most popular singers of the 1920s, appearing in several Broadway shows. He recorded many of the pop hits of the day, including ‘California, Here I Come’, ‘Hard Hearted Hannah’, ‘Yes Sir, That’s My Baby’, and most famously, ‘I’ll See You in My Dreams’.

UKELELE

Edwards was responsible for the soaring popularity of the ukulele.Millions of ukuleles were sold during the 1920s and Tin Pan Alley publishers added ukulele chords to standard sheet music. Edwards always played American Martin ukuleles, favoring the small soprano model in his early career. In his later years, he moved to the sweeter-sounding, large tenor ukulele more suitable for crooning, which was becoming popular in the 1930s.

Edwards’ continued to record until shortly before his death in 1971. His last record album, Ukulele Ike, was released posthumously on the independent Glendale label.

FILM

In 1929, Cliff Edwards was playing at the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles where he caught the attention of movie producer-director Irving Thalberg. His film company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer hired Edwards to appear in early sound movies. After performing in some short films, Edwards was one of the stars in the feature Hollywood Revue of 1929, doing some comic bits and singing some numbers, including the film debut of his hit ‘Singin’ in the Rain’. He appeared in a total of 33 films for MGM into 1933.

WESTERNS

Edwards was also an occasional supporting player in feature films and short subjects at Warner Brothers and RKO Radio Pictures. He played a wisecracking sidekick to western star George O’Brien, and filled in for Allen Jenkins as “Goldie” opposite Tom Conway in The Falcon Strikes Back. In a 1940 short, he led a cowboy chorus in Cliff Edwards and His Buckaroos. Throughout the 1940s he appeared in a number of B westerns playing the comic, singing sidekick to the hero, seven times with Charles Starrett and six with Tim Holt.

JIMINY CRICKET

Cliff Edwards most famous voice role was as Jiminy Cricket in Walt Disney’s Pinocchio (1940). Edwards’s rendition of ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’ is his most familiar recorded legacy. He voiced the head crow in Disney’s Dumbo (1941) and sang ‘When I See an Elephant Fly’.

FILM and TV

In 1932 Edwards had his first national radio show on CBS Radio. He continued hosting network radio shows into 1946.

Edwards was an early arrival on television. In the 1949 season, he starred in The Cliff Edwards Show, a three-days-a-week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings) TV variety show on CBS. In the 1950s and early 1960s, he made appearances on The Mickey Mouse Club (see video below), in addition to performing his Jiminy Cricket voice for various Disney shorts and the Disney Christmas spectacular, From All of Us to All of You.

VIDEO

This week’s Phantom Dancer video of the week is The Mouseketeers jitterbugging and playing uke to Cliff Edwards on a Mickey Mouse Club from 20 November 1956 TV. Includes Dennis Day and Annette Funicello. Enjoy!

28 MAY PLAY LIST