16 July 2024

Crooning and The Original Amateur Hour – Phantom Dancer

Greg Poppleton's Phantom Dancer swing jazz radio show

CROONING, originated by female singer, Vaughn De Leath, for her first weekly broadcast on New York City Station, 2XG, in 1920, is a smooth, intimate, singing style tailored to the dynamic range of 1920s – 30s microphones.  It’s your Phantom Dancer feature 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 16 July) and weeks of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/

VAUGHN DE LEATH

Vaughn De Leath was “The Original Radio Girl” and the “First Lady of Radio.” She is often credited as the inventor of crooning. One of her hit songs, “Are You Lonesome Tonight?,” recorded in 1927, became a hit for Elvis Presley in 1960.

In January 1920, inventor and radio pioneer Lee DeForest brought Vaughn De Leath to the cramped studio of his station, 2XG, located in New York City’s World’s Tower, where De Leath broadcast “Swanee River”.

De Forest later noted: “She was an instant success. Her voice and her cordial, unassuming microphone presence were ideally suited to the novel task. Without instruction she seemed to sense exactly what was necessary in song and patter to successfully put herself across”.

By some historical accounts of this incident, having been advised that high notes sung in her natural soprano might shatter the fragile vacuum tubes of her carbon microphone’s amplifier, De Leath switched to a deep contralto and in the process invented “crooning”,which became the dominant pop vocal styling for the next three decades.

CROONERS

Before microphones, popular singers had to project to the rear seats of a theatre. The microphone made possible the more personal style.

Al Bowlly, Bing Crosby, Gene Austin, Annette Hanshaw, and the pioneer, Vaughn De Leath, were all crooners, but Rudy Vallée had the earliest, strongest association with the style in the public mind

There were press warnings of the “Vallee Peril”: this “punk from Maine” with the “dripping voice” required mounted police to “beat back crowds of screaming and swooning females” at his vaudeville shows.

By the early 1930s, the term “crooner” had taken on a pejorative connotation. Cardinal William O’Connell of Boston and the New York Singing Teachers Association (NYSTA) both publicly denounced the vocal form.

O’Connell called it “base”, “degenerate”, “defiling” and un-American. The NYSTA called it “corrupt”.[

The New York Times predicted that crooning would be a passing fad. The newspaper wrote, “They sing like that because they can’t help it. Their style is begging to go out of fashion…. Crooners will soon go the way of tandem bicycles, mah jongg and midget golf.”

Voice range shifted from tenor (Vallée) to baritone (Russ Columbo, Bing Crosby).

THE ORIGINAL AMATEUR HOUR

On this week’s Phantom Dancer you’ll also hear the talent amateurs on Major Bowes’ Origianl Amateur Hour in 1939.

Edward Bowes’ father died when he was six years old, and young Edward worked as he could to augment the family income.

After leaving grammar school he worked as an office boy, and then went into the real estate business, until the cataclysmic 1906 San Francisco earthquake wiped out his fortune.

He then moved to New York City in search of other opportunities, soon realizing that the theatrical world was lucrative, and he worked busily in New York as a musical conductor, composer, and arranger. He also produced Broadway shows such as Kindling in 1911–12 and The Bridal Path in 1913. He was married to Kindling star Margaret Illington from 1910 until her death in 1934.

He became managing director of New York’s Capitol Theatre, which he ran with military efficiency. He insisted on being addressed as “Major Bowes,” a nickname that sprang from his earlier military rank, though historians are divided on whether he was an active duty officer in World War I or held the rank as a member of the Officer Reserve Corps. [citation needed]

Bowes brought his best-known creation to New York radio station WHN in 1934. He had actually hosted scattered amateur nights on smaller stations while manager of the Capitol. Within a year of its WHN premiere, The Original Amateur Hour—its original name, according to historian Gerald Nachman, was Major Bowes and His Capitol Family—began earning its creator and host as much as $1 million a year, according to Variety. [citation needed]

The rapid popularity of The Original Amateur Hour made him better known than most of the talent he featured. Some of his discoveries became stars, including opera stars Lily Pons, Robert Merrill, and Beverly Sills; comedian Jack Carter; pop singer Teresa Brewer; and Frank Sinatra, fronting a quartet known as the Hoboken Four when they appeared on the show in 1935.

The show consistently ranked among radio’s top ten programs throughout its run. Bowes’ familiar catchphrase “Round and round she goes, and where she stops nobody knows,” was spoken in the familiar avuncular tones for which he was renowned, whenever it was time to spin the “wheel of fortune,” the device by which some contestants were called to perform. In the early days of the show, whenever a performer was simply too terrible to continue, Bowes would stop the act by striking a gong (a device that would be revived in the 1970s by Chuck Barris’s The Gong Show).

Bowes heard from thousands of listeners who objected to his terminating these acts prematurely, so he abandoned the gong in 1936. Nachman recorded that Bowes, “a businesslike fellow with a mirthless chuckle who, unlike most emcees, had a gift for nongab,” went out of his way to make contestants feel at ease, often taking them to dinner before their appearances. Nachman credits Bowes for featuring more black entertainers than many network shows of the time.