Red Nichols and His Five Pennies

Born of May 8, Ernest Loring “Red” Nichols (1905-1965), not to be confused with Red McKenzie. Hot jazz buffs know the name well as one of the pivotal figures of the musical form’s early years; classic film fans know the bio-pic The Five Pennies (1959), one of Danny Kaye’s last starring films.

Nichols was the son of an Ogden, Utah college music professor. Obviously, musical instruction came at his father’s knee. He began playing the cornet in childhood, and could read musical notation from a young age. The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, Isham Jones, and Bix Beiderbecke were among his early influences. At age 17 Nichols joined the Syncopating Seven (1922) and began his professional career. By the following year he was in New York City, where he began collaborating with trombonist Miff Mole, who seems to have been written out of Nichols’ history in the film. Among their many projects over the next decade, they backed Sophie Tucker on several of her records. The many bands Nichols played with during these years include Red and Miff’s Stompers, Miff Mole and His Little Molers, the Arkansas Travelers, the California Red Heads, the Louisiana Rhythm Kings, and The Charleston Chasers. His own band was The Five Pennies, which, amusingly seldom if ever had only five members. Many of its members went on to become major figures in in jazz themselves, including  Jimmy Dorsey,Benny Goodman,Gene Krupa,Eddie Lang, Glenn Miller, Pee Wee Russell, Jack Teagarden, and Joe Venuti.

In addition to his many popular recordings, Nichols appeared in some movie shorts, including Vitaphone’sRed Nichols and His Five Pennies (1929), Paramount’s The Happiness Remedy (1931) with Ted Lewis, The Parade of the Maestros (1935), and Red Nichols and His World Famous Pennies (1936). But by the big band era, Nichols style of music fell out of fashion, and he became a jobbing musician. For a time he led Bob Hope’s orchestra on his radio program. He married Willa STustman, a former dancer with George White’s Scandals. Records of his music continued to come out through the 1940s’ and ’50s; and he made the sporadic film and television appearance throughout his last years. In 1959 he appeared in his own bio-pic, and was also in The Gene Krupa Story. Nichols, and his band were performing with his band in Las Vegas at the time of his death by heart attack at age 60.

To learn more about show biz history please see my book No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous. And stay tuned for Vaudeville in Your Living Room: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.