Harmon’s Histories: The tragic, yet triumphant, tale of Missoula’s Sheridan brothers

By Jim Harmon

As I was reading the day’s headlines in the local paper the other day, I came across a curious headline: “The Flapper Wife, Sheridans' Orchestra will feature latest hit.” Intrigued, I read on.

Granted, the headlines were from the Wednesday evening edition of the Missoula Sentinel, April 22, 1925, but what’s a hundred years, give or take, among friends.

It turns out “The Flapper Wife” was the latest “fox trot hit song” of the season, played recently on the newly minted campus radio station in Missoula, KUOM.

The station was created by Professor Garvin Dennis (G.D.) Shallenberger, chair of the University’s Physics Department, although the term “department” is a bit misleading since it consisted of the professor and one assistant.

Lest I endlessly continue on a series of tangents, which is my lifelong failing, my wife gently reminds me, “Get on with the story, already!” Yes, dear... yes, dear.

The Sheridan Orchestra began with toddler-brothers, Tom and Phil Sheridan. Tom would play the harmonica.

Phil would provide the beat, by pounding his knuckles on an old door panel.

By age four, Tom taught himself to play the piano and soon took formal piano lessons.

Later, nationally known band leader Harry Long, a cousin of the Sheridan brothers, asked Phil to join one of his juvenile bands as a drummer. That led to Phil’s early job as a picture-show musician in Missoula (no “talkies” yet). Brother Tom soon joined him, each making $6 per week!

In 1913, Phil enrolled at MSU (now, UM) while his younger brother was finishing high school in Missoula.

Phil was reported to be “a fine athlete, a football player, a track team member and a basketball star, and a member of Sigma Nu fraternity.”

The pair organized the state’s first jazz band, the “Rizz Razz Jazz Band,” in 1917, festooning themselves in black-and-white striped suits with dunce-like, peaked white hats.

That fall, they added saxophonists Al LeClair and Claude Kiff to their band, which played nightly for the dinner crowd at the Florence hotel.

By 1923, the brothers had become well-known throughout the region, adding many more members to their group. Phil led one band playing a season at Greenough park in Missoula, while Tom took another orchestra to play in Anaconda.

Late that fall, the brothers reunited for the Winter Garden season at Union Hall in Missoula.

In the summer of 1924, they took a seven-piece orchestra on a statewide tour including performances in Butte, Anaconda, Helena, Bozeman, and a number of small towns near Missoula.

By then, they were promoting themselves as having the “oldest organized dance orchestra in the Northwest.”

In the early 1930s, Phil Sheridan moved to Spokane, where his orchestra played extended engagements at the Davenport hotel.

He returned briefly in 1936, to play at the Western Montana Fair, where the brothers had been the featured entertainment for the fair dances more than a decade before.

Both brothers suffered tragic deaths. Tom Sheridan died May 14, 1929 at his home at 502 West Spruce street, after a short, weeklong struggle with pneumonia.

Brother Phil, in a fit of depression, jumped to his death from the fourth floor of a Spokane hospital in 1937.

So sad an ending for such a talented pair.