NEWSLETTER

INTERVIEW BY ANDY BUTLER, PHOTOS BY STACEY MARK



Our photographer friend Stacey Mark’s dad is really famous in Philadelphia. We know, to some of you that’s like saying he’s sexy to blind chicks. But Sid Mark is more than just a Philly radio icon. He’s also one of the last of an endangered species: guys with lots and lots of class. He’s a classy, classy guy. He is one of the preeminent Frank Sinatra experts in the world, he used to know Billie Holiday and many other jazz legends, and he even basically discovered Nina Simone. Come on! What did your dad do? Clean the wet leaves out of the gutter once a year?

Stacey was too nervous to interview her own dad because it probably addressed some strange Freudian intimacy issues she has, so she asked her buddy Andy to do it instead. He went to Sarah Lawrence with Stacey. And he’s in that band Hercules and Love Affair, didn’t ya know?

Vice: How many years have you been on the radio?
Sid Mark: In November it’ll be 54 years. On the air from day one. Prior to that, I worked in a nightclub for three or four years, so I got to meet every major jazz performer there was.

Stacey was telling me about Billie Holiday, that you met her one night.
It wasn’t just one night. The week that Billie Holiday came in she was very, very fragile. We decided, if she would agree to it, that she could stay in an apartment in the next building, above the club. We said, “Would you like to stay there?” And she said that yes, she and her husband would stay there. My assignment that week was to be at her beck and call, even at 3 AM, when she would call and say, “Sidney, do you think you could go out and get me some orange juice?” So at 3 AM, I would go out and get her orange juice. And on Friday evening before the performance, my mother cooked her chicken noodle soup. I remember sitting at the table with her and she was so thrilled. And however she was at the time, when it came time to get onstage, she put the makeup on and the gardenia in her hair and she was Billie Holiday.

She of course was notorious for having her own demons and drug problems. So I imagine being in the music industry back then was no different from today.
Andy, the difference between the artists of today and the ones that I dealt with is that all those people paid their dues before they enjoyed any degree of success. Today you have one record and you’re in. These people knocked around forever. I know you have a fondness for Nina Simone and I heard Nina when she was just a piano player in a little nightclub in Philadelphia. She wasn’t even singing, she was a Juilliard-trained pianist, and she was playing with a trio. Eventually she got around to vocalizing, and our station, the folks there were responsible for her first major hit, which was “I Loves You Porgy.”

Do you still listen to a lot of jazz music?
Oh yes, absolutely. Sinatra and jazz.

When did you get hooked on Sinatra?
When I was in the service, really. My sister was a bigger Sinatra fan than I when we were younger. When I was in the service, on those lonely nights when you’re in Louisiana, you’d go back to the barracks and you’d turn on the radio and listen to whatever was on. Somehow his voice got to me and I realized he knew exactly what he was singing about. If he was singing about lonely, he knew what lonely was. If he was singing about love, he knew what love was about. When he was up-tempo and swinging, he was singing about the up-tempo swinging things he enjoyed in his life.

When did you actually start having the Sinatra show? Were you putting him into the programming of your other shows?
I started off doing strictly a jazz program. It was called Sounds in the Night, because I didn’t go on until two in the morning. The show that followed me, which was an all-night show, was called the Rock and Roll Kingdom. This was 1956. And one night the all-night guy didn’t come in. I got a call, “I can’t make it.” And the manager called and said, “You’re on the rest of the night. Would that be OK?” And I got on the air, and I said, “I’m gonna be here the rest of the night.” And not being unlike you, Andy, at that age, I said, “But I’m gonna do exactly what I want to do, I’m not gonna do what I’m told to do.” I got on the air, “Here’s what I have with me. It’s not going to be the Rock and Roll Kingdom. I got some Basie and some Ellington and some Brubeck, and I’ve got a bunch of Sinatra recordings too.” This was three o’clock in the morning, and a window trimmer called who was trimming a Christmas window in a men’s shop and said, “Why don’t you do an hour of Sinatra?” And this was a Friday night, and I said, “Yeah, I’ll call it Friday With Frank.” And I did! And at three o’clock in the morning the phones lit up, people saying, “My God, this is phenomenal.” On Monday of that week, I got a call from the manager of the station saying, “If you’d like, you can have the all-night show because the all-night guy’s been fired for not coming in. You’ll do your jazz program and then you’ll do the Rock and Roll Kingdom.” And I said fine, totally realizing that I was not about to do the Rock and Roll Kingdom. I figured in the middle of the night, management wasn’t listening anyhow. So I put Sinatra in on Friday, I put Ella Fitzgerald in on Thursday. I put in Nina Simone and Nat King Cole, I did what was called “block programming.” Six months later they caught on and called me in. I thought I was being fired. They called to tell me that all the college students in Philadelphia had fallen in love with the show and they said to me, “Would you like to move that show up? We’re going on FM.” They said, “Would you like to try FM?” I thought it was a drug so I said yes. Who knew what FM was in ’55? So we went on and became the first full-time jazz station in the United States, and we hired a complete staff. There was born the Sinatra show. I moved it out of the all-night show and moved it up to six o’clock, and it went six to eight, six to nine, six to ten. And it started to fly.

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Comments

Anonymous, on Aug 12, 2009 wrote: Frank Sinatra had a great voice; you can’t argue that. But didn’t he have ties to the mafia and didn’t he band Marilyn Monroe on the side? Oh wait, those are both things I wish I could do. He’s awesome.
Anonymous, on Aug 12, 2009 wrote: that is one ginormous schnozz. he could give daryl strawberry a run for his money.
	skidmarx, on Aug 11, 2009 wrote: ps - and even more never make it at all. i bet the percentage of artists making it has actually decreased since the time of billie holliday and the others mentioned.
	skidmarx, on Aug 11, 2009 wrote: one record and you’re in? tell that to the black lips. i know what he means but that is the case maybe ten percent of the time. most bands still have to pay their dues playing local bars and tiny tours before their careers take off.
Anonymous, on Aug 11, 2009 wrote: Okay, I guess I’ll be the one to break the ice, but GODDAMN this man has a giant nose!
Anonymous, on Aug 10, 2009 wrote: this guy is quintessential grandpa. i could listen to his stories about the "good ole days" forever
Anonymous, on Aug 10, 2009 wrote: Frank Sinatra expert...what a useless expertise. maybe come in handy every once in a while during trivia games though
Anonymous, on Aug 10, 2009 wrote: If his radio personality is anywhere near how he is here then I understand his success. I don’t know if I’ve seen a three-word question lead to a page-long answer.