The Syncopating Five

The Syncopating Five – Dance band. The Syncopating Five began when Claude Collins, a pianist living in Tampa, Florida, posted an ad for musicians in Billboard in 1920. With a penchant for Hoosier musicians, Collins made arrangements to form a group with five young players from Indiana—some of whom were playing together at Lake Manitou. Shortly after arriving, the five Midwesterners—pianist Russell Stubbs, singer/banjoist Herb Hayworth, violinist Fritz Morris, drummer/vocalist Dusty Rhoades, and saxophonist Otto Boone—left Collins and form the Syncopating Five. Following a winter booking at the Golden Dragon (a new dance hall in St. Petersburg, Florida), the group gigged the following year in Ohio and Indiana with Hayworth acting as the manager. After making a promotional record recorded at Gennett in late 1921, they played at the Tokio Dance Hall in South Bend and then returned to Florida. After a couple months, the group was nearly broke and eventually resumed activity in Indiana, where they had a substantial run at Indy’s Casino Gardens in the summer of 1922. At the end of the summer, Syncopating Five became a septet with the loss of Morris and the addition of trombonist Chuck Campbell, saxophonist Ray Stillson from Muncie, and a young violinist/trumpet player named Loring “Red” Nichols from Ogden, Utah. Nichols, who would later appear on over 4,000 records in the 1920s alone, had been playing jobs at Lake James in Northern Indiana after getting kicked out of the Culver Military Academy. In November of 1922, the new Syncopating Seven recorded a few Gennett sides, the first of many for Nichols. Around the same time, the band got a taste of playing in Chicago and became awestruck there, especially Nichols, by the playing of Bix Beiderbecke. Another winter in Florida followed, and later in 1923, the group succeeded Paul Whiteman’s band at the Ambassador Hotel in Atlantic City. Then known as the Royal Palms Orchestra, the old Syncopating Seven paled in comparison to its predecessor in Atlantic City and disbanded by the end of the summer. While some of the members found other work in Indiana, Red Nichols moved to New York City to work with trombonist Miff Mole.