FIRST ELECTRIC GUITARIST

On this week’s Phantom Dancer with Greg Poppleton we hear from the world’s first electric guitarist, Alvino Rey, at the peak of his popularity in 1942. He invented the world’s first amplified guitar at age 15 in 1923.

There’s also a set of Claude Hopkins 1935 radio transcriptions, a Duke Ellington extended work from live 1945 radio and much more live 1920s-60s radio swing and jazz.

PHANTOM DANCER

The Phantom Dancer is your non-stop swing and jazz mix of live 1920s-60s radio and TV every week. I’ve been bringing you The Phantom Dancer on Radio 2SER, and now online, since 1985.

Hear this week’s Phantom Dancer (after 18 Dec) and past Phantom Dancers at 2ser.com.
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ALVINO REY

Was the stage name of big band leader, electronica and electric guitar pioneer, Alvin McBurney.

Alvin adopted the stage name in 1929 at the start of the Latin music craze in the U.S.

He wanted to be an electronics engineer and was an electronic genius as a kid.

He built his first radio at age 8, in 1916.

In the 1910s he had one of the first, and was the youngest, ham radio broadcaster.

STRINGY

Alvino was given a banjo as a child and then learnt guitar from age 12 in 1920, listening to records by Roy Smeck. At age 15, in 1923, Rey invented an electrical amplifier for the guitar but didn’t have it patented. He patented several later improvements.
Big Band historian, Christopher Popa, wrote about Rey’s early career in an interview he conducted with the World’s first electric guitarist,

“In 1927, Rey landed a job playing banjo with Cleveland bandleader Ev Jones.
“Yes, I joined the Union when I was 16,” he told me. “I went to Lakewood High School and from there I went to New York and never did come back.”
To capitalize on the popularity of Latin music in New York City during 1929, he added an “o” to his first name and changed his last name to “Rey,” which meant “the King” in Spanish.
He replaced banjoist Eddie Peabody with violinist Phil Spitalny, whose band was appearing at the Pennsylvania Hotel and was heard coast-to-coast over the radio.
“I spent two years in New York with Phil Spitalny and then went to California,” he recalled. “I joined Horace Heidt in San Francisco . . . he had a stage band, sort of like Fred Waring.”
Between 1934 and 1939, Rey was often featured on steel guitar with Heidt and became one of the best-known (and best-paid) sidemen in the country, thanks to Heidt’s weekly radio program.
“And there I met the King Sisters, and I married Luise, one of the sisters,” he reminisced.
Alvino Rey was the first to amplify the guitar.
“Well, that came about around 1930, when I was at NBC in San Francisco,” he explained to me. “And I’ve always been an electronic nut and I’ve been a ham operator and studied electronics. In fact, that was going to be my ambition, to be an electronics engineer, and I just applied the amplification of that to the guitar and string instruments.”
It brought a whole new sound to music.
“That was . . . before it was ever done, I believe. As far as I know, it was the first application to a string instrument,” he noted.
Ironically, some link it to rock and roll.
“Well, it got out of hand with a lot of the big rock groups who make so much racket with it. I didn’t intend it to be used with such volume. I used the idea just to be heard in a band, where the guitar — up until that time — was a soft, romantic background accompanying a singer. And after that, it became sort of an integral part of an orchestra.”

BIG BAND

In August 1939, Rey formed his first swing band with his amplified pedal steel guitar as the featured instrument.

An off-stage vocal microphone plugged into it with a Sonovox made it seem as though the guitar could talk.

That’s ‘Stringy the Guitar’, which you can see below in this week’s Phantom Dancer Video of the Week.

In 1942, Alvino was voted by music critics to be part of the Metronome All-Star Band as the top guitarist in the U.S.

He played in small groups from 1949, backing Elvis Presley in 1961 on Blue Hawaii.

He continued to perform on radio and TV and release albums into the 1980s.

VIDEO

This week’s Phantom Dancer video of the week is a 1940s soundy of ‘String the Guitar’ with Alvino Rey’s Orchestra.

29 JANUARY PLAY LIST