The Eskimo Pie Orchestra is one of a number of US orchestras named for commercial products in the 1920s. These include the B. F. Goodrich Silvertown Tyre Orchestra, The Ipana Troubadours, Michelin Tyre Orchestra, and The Studebaker Champions. The Eskimo Pie Orchestra is 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 6 February) and weeks of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/

ESKIMO

The announcer names the director for the orchestra as Harold Stokes.

Harold Stokes directed some of the orchestras of Jean Goldkette, including the radio orchestra which broadcast twice nightly over WGN Chicago in 1929. That radio dance orchestra was known as Jean Goldkette and his W-G-N Dance Orchestra

PIE

Jean Goldkette spent his childhood in Greece and Russia, where he studied piano at the Moscow Conservatory as a child prodigy.

The family emigrated to the United States in 1911.

He performed in a classical ensemble in Chicago at the age of 18, later joining one of Edgar Benson’s dance orchestras.

He leased a ballroom in Detroit and formed a band which grew to success, and was the foundation for a business empire acting as an agency for twenty orchestras and owning many dance halls

Goldkette led many jazz and dance bands. The most popular was his Victor Recording Orchestra of 1924–1929.

The band defeated Fletcher Henderson in a battle of the bands contest. The head arranger was Bill Challis and the musicians included Bix Beiderbecke, Steve Brown, Hoagy Carmichael, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Eddie Lang, Chauncey Morehouse, Don Murray, Bill Rank, and Spiegle Willcox.

Rex Stewart, a member of Henderson’s band, wrote that “It was, without any question, the greatest in the world…the original predecessor to any large white dance orchestra that followed, up to Benny Goodman.”

Goldkette was music director for the Detroit Athletic Club for over 20 years and co-owned the Graystone Ballroom in Detroit with Charles Horvath, who performed with the Goldkette Victor Band in its early years.

He owned his own entertainment company, Jean Goldkette’s Orchestras and Attractions, working out of the Book-Cadillac Hotel in Detroit. 

In 1927, Paul Whiteman hired most of Goldkette’s better players due to Goldkette’s inability to meet payroll for his top-notch musicians.

Goldkette helped organize McKinney’s Cotton Pickers and Glen Gray’s Orange Blossoms, which became popular as the Casa Loma Orchestra.

In the 1930s, he left jazz to work as a booking agent and classical pianist.

In 1939, he organized the American Symphony Orchestra which debuted at Carnegie Hall.

Singer, Frankie Laine, worked as Goldkette’s librarian

6 February PLAY LIST