Book Review of Fred W. Edmiston's The Coon–Sanders Nighthawks

The Coon–Sanders Nighthawks characterized the popular bands that developed between World War I and the Depression. The band started in Kansas City, Missouri, and according to Edmiston, “Its music was gay, saucy, and bustling; its musicians were carefree and extravagant” (p. 1). The band started when Carleton Coon and Joe Sanders organized a jazz orchestra to play hotels and dances in Kansas City after World War I, eventually becoming the Coon–Sanders Novelty Singing Orchestra. In 1922 they started playing regularly on WDAF, a radio station owned by the Kansas City Star. Their program started about midnight with little guarantee of an audience. While on the radio Carleton Coon said, “Anybody idiotic enough to stay up late to hear radio must be a real nighthawk” (p. 84). The comment drew a number of responses from listeners, and the name “nighthawk” was adopted as the new name of the Coon–Sanders orchestra. In addition, the listeners of the program called themselves nighthawks and began to organize into an informal club. By 1923 the program was heard across a large part of the nation, including Hawaii, and there were over 35,000 members of the Nighthawk Club. The book is organized chronologically to follow the lives of Coon and Sanders through a relative short period of time. Chapter 1 presents their early childhood lives, whereas the remaining six chapters concentrate on the band’s success beginning in 1919 through the death of Coon in 1932. This book does not center radio in the story; it is about the Coon–Sanders musical experience. However, de-centering radio does not diminish the significance it held in establishing a nationwide interest in the Coon–Sanders Nighthawks. At one point Leo Fitzpatrick, the announcer for the Coon–Sanders show, appeared on WSB radio owned by the Atlanta Journal. The night Fitzpatrick appeared, WDAF broadcast its regular Coon–Sanders show then switched off its transmitters so Kansas City listeners could tune into WSB and listen to Fitzpatrick initiate an Atlanta audience into the Nighthawk Club. This is an example of the interesting insights about radio that the book provides, in this case about how early radio stations cooperated to promote each other’s talent as well as to promote the larger importance of broadcasting as a new medium. Later the Coon–Sanders Nighthawks enjoyed a popular tour that included stops in Georgia and Chicago; in Chicago, where the group was featured on Westinghouse’s KYW radio. Eventually the Nighthawks became one of the top bands in Chicago and played on WGN. This book would appeal to those scholars interested in the relationship between radio, popular music, and the music industry. The time period is at the beginning of radio broadcasting, and the book provides a unique view of early broadcasting. What is of particular interest to radio scholars is how the band’s story and success is so closely tied to its appearance and popularity on radio. Because the primary story is about the