26 October 2021

Coon-Sanders Nighthawks – Phantom Dancer 26 Oct 2021

Greg Poppleton's Phantom Dancer swing jazz radio show

Coon-Sanders Nighthawks, from 1925-29 radio and recordings, is this week’s Phantom Dancer feature. Started in 1918, as the Coon-Sanders Novelty Orchestra, this leading dancing orchestra and foundational member of the MCA agency was lead by drummer Carleton Coon and pianist Joe Sanders.

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I’m Greg Poppleton, and I’ve brought you The Phantom Dancer every week on 107.3 2SER radio Sydney since 1985

TICKER TAPE MACHINE

The orchestra began broadcasting in 1922 on clear channel station WDAF, which could be received throughout the United States. They were broadcast in performance at the Muehlebach Hotel in Kansas City.

They took the name Nighthawks because they broadcast late at night (11:30pm to 1:00am). By 1924, their fan club had 37,000 members. Fans were encouraged to send in requests for songs by letter, telephone, or telegram. That move became so popular that Western Union set up a ticker tape between Sanders’s piano and Coon’s drums so the telegrams could be acknowledged during the broadcasts. Their song “Nighthawk Blues” includes the lines: “Tune right in on the radio/Grab a telegram and say ‘Hello’…”

BLACKHAWK

The group left Kansas City for the first time in 1924 for a three-month engagement in a roadhouse in Chicago, Illinois. The orchestra moved to Chicago the same year, where Jules Stein used the profits from a tour he booked for them to establish the Music Corporation of America (MCA), with the orchestra as its first client.

In 1925, they recorded the Paul Whiteman and Fred Rose composition “Flamin’ Mamie” which you’ll hear on this week’s Phantom Dancer.

The orchestra moved into the Blackhawk in Chicago in 1926. The members of the orchestra at that time were Joe Richolson and Bob Pope, trumpets; Rex Downing, trombone; Harold Thiell, John Thiell and Floyd Estep, saxophones; Joe Sanders, piano; Russ Stout, banjo and guitar; “Pop” Estep, tuba; Carleton Coon, drums. Teddy Roy also played with the group in the late 1920s.

In the following years, the Nighthawks performed at the Blackhawk every winter, doing remote broadcasts over radio station WGN. Their reputation spread coast-to-coast through these broadcasts and the many records they made for Victor Records. They also undertook successful road tours.

MEL TORME

Singer, and child prodigy, Mel Torme, first performed professionally at age four with the Coon-Sanders Orchestra, singing “You’re Driving Me Crazy” at Chicago’s Blackhawk restaurant.^[

In 1931, the orchestra moved to New York City, for an 11-month broadcast engagement at the Hotel New Yorker arranged by William S. Paley, who needed a star attraction to induce radio stations to join the Columbia Broadcasting System.

At the peak of the band’s success, the musicians owned identical Cord automobiles, each in a different color with the name of the Orchestra and the owner embossed on the rear. The Orchestra’s popularity showed no signs of abating, and their contract with MCA had another 15 years to run in the spring of 1932 when Carleton Coon came down with a jaw infection and he died on May 4 that year.

Sanders attempted to keep the organization going; however, without Coon, the public did not support them. In 1935, he formed his own group and played until the early 1940s, when he became a part-time orchestra leader and studio musician.

26 OCTOBER PLAY LIST