Coon-Sanders' Original Nighthawk Orchestra

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Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk Orchestra was the first Kansas City jazz band to achieve national recognition, which it acquired through national radio broadcasts. It was founded in 1919, as the Coon-Sanders Novelty Orchestra, by drummer Carleton Coon and pianist Joe Sanders. Coon was born in Rochester, Minnesota in 1893 and his family moved to Lexington, Missouri shortly after his birth. Sanders was born in Kansas in 1896. Sanders was known as "The Old Left Hander" because of his skills at baseball. He gave the game up in the early 1920s to make dance music his career. The orchestra began broadcasting in 1922 on clear channel station WDAF, which could be received throughout the United States. They were broadcast in performance at the Muehlbach Hotel in Kansas City. They took the name Nighthawks because they broadcast late at night (11:30pm to 1:00am). By 1924 their fan club had 37,000 members. Fans were encouraged to send in requests for songs by letter, telephone or telegram. That move became so popular that Western Union set up a ticker tape between Sanders' piano and Coon's drums so the telegrams could be acknowledged during the broadcasts. Their song "Nighthawk Blues" includes the lines: "Tune right in on the radio/Grab a telegram and say 'Hello'." The group left Kansas City for the first time in 1924 for a three-month engagement in a roadhouse in Chicago. The orchestra moved to Chicago the same year, where Jules Stein used the profits from a tour he booked for them t

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albums

100 Roaring Classics Of The 1920s

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The Charleston

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Roaring '20s Jazz

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Speakeasy Music of the 1920's

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Great 1920's Classics

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Roaring 20's Revue Vol. 1

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Great Gatsby 1920's Summer Swing

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The Great 1920s & Swingin' Gatsby 20s Classics - 100 Classic Speakeasy Jazz Hits from the Gatsby Inspired Roaring Twenties

Radio's Aces

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Collection 1921-32

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Original Charleston

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Archive Of American Popular Music 1895-1927

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