Above: The Rhythm Doctors during a 1958 performance at the Hotel du Pont’s Gold Ballroom.
By Ken Mammarella
Photos courtesy Rhythm Doctors
Peter Witherell loves swing music, and he loves the people he’s met playing that music, particularly fellow members of the Rhythm Doctors — a group he’s played trombone with for an amazing 64 years.
That’s not even the record for being a Doc. Tom Ford, one of six DuPont Co. chemists and engineers who came up with the idea for the group in 1942, played alto saxophone with it for 76 years.
“It’s like a family,” says Jim Yurasek, president of the group and a relative newcomer with 35 years as a trombone player. “People stay in the family forever.”
Members and substitutes considered for membership gather weekly for two hours to practice and to stay sharp for improvised solos. And after the rehearsal at Peniel United Methodist in Newport, some head across the street to the James Street Tavern for additional bonding.
The band lists 18 members in four sections: trumpet; sax; trombone; and vocal and rhythm. Members are mostly retired, and their professional background has gone far beyond its doctoral origins.
Early bookings included corporate events, fundraisers and weddings, recalls Witherell, 91, a retired engineer who lives in North Wilmington. At the start, they also often played at meetings of chemical societies and dances run by community service groups.
“But as the audience matured, the kids weren’t into swing, and older people weren’t into rap or whatever,” he says. “So we moved a lot into retirement homes, where there’s an audience who grew up in that swing era.”
In 2025, their calendar includes four gigs at retirement homes and one at the Veterans Hospital patient carnival in Elsmere. For those events, they like to pick songs to “tap into pleasant memories of their younger days,” Yurasek says, “but always in the big band style.” So, the VA set list starts with “Sing a Song,” a 1971 Sesame Street song, along with Stevie Wonder’s “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” from 1973 and the “Love Boat Theme” from the 1977 television series.
At left: Rhythm Doctors trombonists Jim Yurasek (l) and Pete Witherell. At right: Gary Letts (music director), Suzette Burgess (vocals) and Jim Beverly (trumpet).
Swing emerged out of jazz in the late 1920s, with one pioneer being Cab Calloway. “By the end of the 1940s, swing no longer dominated the popular music charts, and the era of the big bands was over,” according to a St. Louis Public Library blog. Swing experienced a revival in 1989 (bands formed that year include Royal Crown Revue, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Cherry Poppin’ Daddies), but that fervor has died down.
“Ever since the ’60s we’ve been hearing that the big bands are back,” Ford told the Cecil Whig in 2006. “The fact is, they never really went away.”
The Rhythm Doctors have about 250 songs in their active repertoire, starting chronologically with an 1885 march called “American Patrol” and as recent as “Joanne’s Other Mood,” a 1997 piece by band member Warren Keyser, who created swing-style arrangements for the band. “We prefer doing the Keyser arrangements as they are uniquely ours,” Yurasek says.
In developing his arrangements for the nonprofit, Keyser followed a big-band tradition of labeling parts by the band member’s name, not their part in the band. “Instead of writing ‘first trombone,’ he would write someone’s name,” says Yurasek, a Wilmington resident. “The part was written with one person in mind. So it’ll say ‘Pete.’ It wouldn’t even say the last name.”
Many modern hits are unlikely to get a swing treatment by the Docs. “A lot of songs from today are highly rhythmic,” Yurasek says. “That would not transfer very well to the big band sound. There has to be more of a melody.”
— The Rhythm Doctors have scheduled a public performance at 6 p.m. on June 28 at Hart’s Amphitheater, 3203 Turkey Point Road, North East, Md. They are looking for saxophonists, trumpeters, trombonists, drummers, pianists and bassists to play with them, Yurasek says. Details at Rhythm-Doctors.com.
