Earl Burtnett, was a U.S bandleader, jazz standards writer, and pianist. He appeared in two Hollywood movies you can watch on this blog. Earl’s your Phantom Dancer feature artist this week.

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 3 September) and weeks of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/

EARL

Earl Burtnett’s first published song, the standard, ‘Canadian Capers’, went to print and record when he was 19 in 1915.

The next year he followed that hit with ‘Down Honolulu Way’.

In 1918 , he joined Art Hickman’s touring band.

Promoter Florenz Ziegfeld heard the band in San Francisco, and featured them on Broadway in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1920.

After they moved back to California, Burtnett continued as lead arranger and writer for the Hickman orchestra.

His successful songs include the standard, ‘Sleep’, as well as ‘Leave Me With A Smile’ (1921), ‘Mandalay’ (1924), and ‘If I Should Lose You’ (1927).

On Art Hickman’s retirement in 1929, he took over as band leader and had a residency at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. They recorded for Brunswick Records backing the Biltmore Trio.

The Ear Burtnett Orchestra appeared in three films, The Flying Fool (1929), The Great Gabbo (with Eric von Stroheim)(1929), and The Party Girl (1930), billed as “Earl Burtnett and his Hotel Biltmore Orchestra and Trio”.

They played across the U.S in the early and mid 1930s, with periods at both the Rice Hotel in Houston (from 1933), and later at the Drake Hotel and other venues in Chicago, where their concerts were often broadcast on WGN radio.

Burtnett recorded for Columbia from 1926 – 1928 when he signed with Brunswick and recorded prolifically through mid-1931. There was a further session in Chicago in May, 1934 for Columbia. In between he recorded radio transcription which you’ll hear on this week’s Phantom Dancer.

On Christmas Eve, 1935, Burtnett underwent an appendectomy at Illinois Central Hospital in Chicago. However, peritonitis set in after the operation, and he died on January 2, 1936, at the age of 39.

In ‘The Flying Fool’ (1929) you’ll see and hear Earl Burtnett from the ‘Kit Kat Kafe’ in a simulated radio broadcast…