‘Lopez Speaking.’ Band leader Vincent Lopez is your feature artist on this week’s Phantom Dancer with Greg Poppleton.

One of the early stars of radio, you’ll hear the piano playing, wisecracking band leader from live 1945-59 radio.

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

PHANTOM DANCER

This week’s Phantom Dancer will be online right after the 9 April 2SER live mix at 2ser.com.
Hear the show live every Tuesday 12:04-2pm on 107.3 2SER Sydney

LOPEZ

Vincent Lopez was born in Brooklyn, New York, to parents who had immigrated from Portugal. At age 22 in 1917 he was leading his own dance band in New York City.

RADIO

On November 27, 1921 The Lopez band began broadcasting on radio. The band’s weekly 90-minute show on the Newark, New Jersey, station WJZ boosted the popularity of both himself and of radio. He became one of America’s most popular bandleaders, and would retain that status through the 1940s.

He began his radio programs by announcing “Lopez speaking!”. His theme song was “Nola”, Felix Arndt’s novelty ragtime piece of 1915, and Lopez became so identified with it that he occasionally satirized it. (His 1939 movie short for Vitaphone, Vincent Lopez and his Orchestra, features the entire band singing “Down with Nola”.)

Lopez worked occasionally in feature films, notably The Big Broadcast (1932) and as a live-action feature in the Max Fleischer cartoon “I Don’t Want to Make History” (1936). In 1940, he was one of the very first bandleaders to work in Soundies movie musicals. He made additional Soundies in 1944.

INFLUENCED

Noted musicians who played in his band included Artie Shaw, Xavier Cugat, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Mike Mosiello, Fred Lowery, and Glenn Miller. He also featured singers Keller Sisters and Lynch, Betty Hutton, and Marion Hutton. Lopez’s longtime drummer was the irreverent Mike Riley, who popularized the novelty hit “The Music Goes Round and Round”.

Lopez’s flamboyant style of piano playing influenced such later musicians as Eddy Duchin and Liberace.

In 1941 Lopez’s Orchestra began a residency at the Taft Hotel in Manhattan that would last 20 years.

In the early 1950s, Lopez along with Gloria Parker hosted a radio program broadcast from the Taft Hotel called Shake the Maracas in which audience members competed for small prizes by playing maracas with the orchestra.

TV

He also broadcast the TV show “Dinner Date” from the Hotel Taft in 1950.

The Vincent Lopez Show was a popular TV series which ran from 1949 to 1957.

VIDEO

This week’s Phantom Dancer video of the week is from 1932 – the Lopez Orchestra in a Paramount short, “Those Blues”. The song is WC Handy’s St Louis Blues.

9 APRIL PLAY LIST