Kenny Sargent

Kenneth (Kenny) Sargent (1906 – 1969) was an American saxophone player, singer and disc jockey. Sargent was the Casa Loma Orchestra's primary vocalist. He also played the saxophone with the band. He left the orchestra band in 1943 to begin a career as a disc jockey. He was a well known radio personality in the Dallas, Texas area at radio stations KLIF and WRR in the 1950s and 1960s....(read more at Wikipedia)

With the increasing interest in pop music history, particularly in the USA, Kenny Sargent's music (and that of Glen Gray's Casa Loma Orchestra) can be heard today on CD reissue collections and radio shows such as The Big Broadcast (WFUV, New York) as well as internet radio stations such as Radio Dismuke (Fort Worth, Texas) and Cladrite Radio ("Vintageville, USA"). He had a smooth, straightforward singing style, free from the dated mannerisms which make some 1920s and 1930s male pop singers difficult listening for modern audiences.

Links to Peel
There was an unlikely crossing of paths in Dallas in 1961, with Kenny Sargent, who had turned to disc jockeying when the big band swing era in which he had made his name went into decline, was hosting an all-night radio programme sponsored by American Airlines on station WRR in Dallas. On Monday evenings he was preceded by a young newcomer, John Ravenscroft, who had been hired by the station's Jim Lowe (a good friend of Sargent's) to present the second half of the R&B show Kat's Karavan.

In Margrave of the Marshes Peel states that he did not listen to anything on WRR apart from Kat's Karavan, as he found the station's output "old-fashioned" [ref]. Even if he did feature big band and swing music selections in the Pig's Big 78 feature of his later shows, he is not known to have played any tracks by Kenny Sargent or the Casa Loma Orchestra. However, he did play a very brief "cover" version of Glen Gray's Casa hit "For You" (with Sargent on vocal) which was parodied by the Mothers of Invention on their 1967 album Absolutely Free.

Kenny Sargent was not the only singer-turned-DJ Peel would encounter; in Britain, Sam Costa and Jack Jackson were both ex-big band singers (Jackson was also a bandleader) who took to radio work when the swing era gave way to rock and roll, and were active on Radio Luxembourg and the BBC in the 1960s. One of Peel's early Radio 1 colleagues, Jimmy Young, was also a former singer - although one with a much less distinguished career than Kenny Sargent.

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Other Shows Played
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