Symphony Sid
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Sid Torin (born Sidney Tarnopol on December 14, 1909- died September 14, 1984) was a long-time jazz disk jockey in the United States.
Born on New York's Lower East Side, he grew up in Brooklyn. The nickname "Symphony" Sid came from working at the Symphony record store where he introduced R&B records. The predominantly black customers told their friends that they bought the records from Symphony Sid. When he started as a disk jockey at WBNX in the Bronx, the name stuck. He worked at many New York radio stations, such as WMCA and most famously WJZ. He was famous for his hipster lingo and his knowledge about jazz and had a large and loyal following. The reference to "the dial set right there close to eighty on the dot" in the song Jumpin' With Symphony Sid, written by Lester Young with lyrics by King Pleasure, is a reference to the position on the radio dial where Symphony Sid's Friday night show could be found. Additional lyrics were written by Buddy Feyne. He would broadcast live from legendary 52nd Street jazz clubs such as The Three Deuces, The Royal Roost, Bop City and Birdland.
He was fired from WJZ after a marijuana bust and couldn't get a job in New York for more than a year, so he made his way to Boston's WBMS, where in addition to continuing with Jazz, he started playing the Rhythm and Blues records that would eventually evolve into Rock and Roll. He also had a Gospel program and even filled in some shifts at country station WCOP.
He returned to New York working on WEVD AM & FM--an ex-socialist station whose call letters came from Eugene V. Debs. His show featured Latin Music (Salsa), for which, as Donald Fagen recalled in a recent letter to Countermoon Zine, Torin was dubbed by some the "Jazz Traitor". Then in the late 70's, instigated by his engineer, Marty Wilson, he again started to play jazz in the last hour of his show. When he retired, he gave Marty his record collection and the jazz show continued on the weekends.
He retired to Florida in the 1960s, where he enjoyed fishing.
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He is probably the greatest middleman jazz has ever known. A broadcaster for 35 years, once billed as "the all-night, all-frantic one," he was the man to listen to in the forties, fifties and sixties if you wanted to know what was happening in jazz. -- Leslie Gourse, New York Times, August 8, 1971 In 1948 & 1951, he became the father of two boys: Stephen Torin [now Steve Jolis], an Artist and a Tour Manager with Tauck World Discovery and Marc Torin [now Marc Jolis], who teaches Culinary Arts in Atlanta, Georgia.
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In Boston, Symphony Sid broadcast many, if not all, weeknights from The High Hat, a nightclub "on the corner of Columbus and Mass Avenues" starting at 10 PM on WCOP. His other station was the sunrise-to-sunset WBMS. He began in the early afternoon and quit at sunset, revealing his real name only during the required shut-down procedure. On this show, he divided his music among Gospel, Jazz, R&B and Afro-Cuban. On days when the sun set late, "Chi-Chi," a lady did a longer Afro-Cuban segment.
When Sid came to Boston, the top DJ for the Boston area youths was Bob Clayton of WHDH. Clayton had a group of students from various high schools on his show to list their favorite songs, according to polls at the schools. Also included was revealing the favorite DJ. Clayton won this consistently.
Then the results were not always given and we "knew" that Sid had reached the top!
Reflecting his first work selling classical music records, Sid once said that those who like jazz will probably also be fans of symphonic music later in life.
