The Phantom Dancer, presented by 1920s-1930s singer and band leader, Greg Poppleton, since 1985, is your non-stop two hour mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s – 1960s radio and TV.

See this week’s play list and video of the week below…

Hear this week’s The Phantom Dancer live-streamed here from 30 January, then afterwards streamed online, on the Radio 2SER website.

CLARINET
Benny Goodman may have been ‘The King of Swing’, Artie Shaw may have been the ‘King of the Clarinet’ but the most interesting clarinet player of the 1920s-60s for me is Pee Wee Russell.

The butt of jokes on Eddie Condon’s Town Hall Concert radio shows, accused of playing wrong notes, the drunk clarinettist’s excuse, “I’m going to play like Pee Wee tonight”, Pee Wee Russell has always stood out like a music beacon to me. An individual, whose unique sound will stand the test of time.

PEE WEE RUSSELL

Charles Ellsworth ‘Pee Wee’ Russell (March 27, 1906 – February 15, 1969), was a jazz reeds player.

He played saxophones but is known most for his unique clarinet playing. The clarinet was the instrument he mostly played. He has been described as playing with a mournful look on his face, which touches a chord with me, because I’m told I look the same way when I sing.

And he played with the greats of jazz. He preferred playing in small groups, mostly Dixieland, though he wasn’t a strictly Dixie player and he did broaden his range in modern groups. For example,  Russell recorded with Thelonius Monk and even recorded songs by Coltrane and Ornette Coleman in the 1960s.

On The Phantom Dancer, Russell is mostly heard on one of the 45 broadcasts of the Blue Network Eddie Condon Town Hall Jazz series. Russell would play in Condon groups from 1937 till his death just weeks after playing for Richard Nixon’s presidential inauguration.

On this week’s Phantom Dancer we hear him with Mary Lou Williams at the piano on a 1948 ‘Eddie Condon’s Floor Show’ TV program. See the full play list below…

BULLYING
Phantom Dancer listeners would have heard Russell being the butt of jokes. Even his nickname ‘Pee Wee’ was belittling. Russell himself said,
“Those guys [at Nick’s and Condon’s] made a joke, of me, a clown, and I let myself be treated that way because I was afraid. I didn’t know where else to go, where to take refuge.”

ALCHOHOLISM
In 1951, following years of heavy drinking and not taking care of himself, Russell fell ill with pancreatitis. Near death, a benefit concert was held in his honour. He spent weeks in the hospital, receiving several blood transfusions. But within a year he was playing again, this time in modern settings with Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, and others

“I lived on brandy milkshakes and scrambled-egg sandwiches. And on whiskey … I had to drink half a pint of whiskey in the morning before I could get out of bed.”

FUNNY NOTES
Coleman Hawkins was quoted in the sleeve notes for ‘Pee Wee Russell / Coleman Hawkins, Jazz Reunion’ (Candid 9020) as saying, “For thirty years, I’ve been listening to him play those funny notes. He used to think they were wrong, but they weren’t. He’s always been way out, but they didn’t have a name for it then.”

POST-SWING
Charles Ellworth Russell expanded the vocabulary of the clarinet. He was the pioneering post-swing modernist on the instrument.

He was also something of a natural comic actor, too. See him in this 1937 Louis Prima short, ‘Swing It’. It’s your Phantom Dancer Video of the Week.