South Shore Syncopators Bring Real Oldies to Vail-Leavitt

On Sunday, the Vail-Leavitt Music Hall will host jazz legends Paul Whiteman, Fletcher Henderson and many more. Well, not really, but it will sound like they're there.

The South Shore Syncopators, a jazz band that specializes in playing authentic music from 1925-1935, will play a concert at the Vail starting at 3 p.m., featuring the works of Whiteman and Henderson, as well as many other forgotten classics from the era.

Ray Osnato, a trombonist and arranger for the band, said the group started at a fundraiser for the local Gilbert and Sullivan Light Opera Company, but quickly grew in popularity into its own act.

"The band kind of became the monster that turned on its master," Osnato said in an interview on Thursday.

The Syncopators are an ensemble of 10 instrumentalists, five vocalists (three women and two men) and a "radio announcer" to emulate the popular radio shows of the 1920s and 30s. Osnato said the music they play is often forgotten by modern performers, compared to popular styles of Dixieland jazz of the early 1920s and the big band music of the late 1930s.

"I call it the forgotten stepchild of American popular music," Osnato said. "I can count on my hand the number of bands that play this type of music." Still, Osnato called the time period a "fertile time" for popular music, an era of great financial hardship where music offered not a reflection of life's struggles but an escape from them.

The music doesn't reflect the difficult times in the United States. They did acknowledge something was going on with the country's financial crisis, but there was a sense of optimism, that we'll get through it."

One popular song from the time period contains the upbeat lyrics, "I don't have a lot/I don't need a lot/coffee's only a dime/Living in the sunlight/Loving in the moonlight/Having a wonderful time."

Osnato said the band will recreate one of the popular radio shows of the era, the "meat and potatoes of radio at the time," he said.

The band is also unique for the arrangements they play, a collection of original tunes straight from the period. For the songs for which no original sheet music exists, Osnato said he transcribes the songs from original records by hand. 

Osnato said the Vail-Leavitt offers the band a unique environment to play, one they love to come back to.

"The ambiance is unbeatable for a band like us," he said. "We were a rock star last year. A young woman walked up to me and asked 'can you do this every Sunday?'"

Tickets to the show cost $25 per person, and are $20 for seniors. For more info on the Syncopators, see their Facebok page here.