Casa Loma Orchestra
The Casa Loma Orchestra was an American swing band and was active between 1927 and 1963. The orchestra stopped performing publicly after 1950 and limited its work to studio recordings.
Band history
According to journalist George T. Simon , the Casa Loma Orchestra paved the way for the big band era more than any other musical group . The band was founded in 1927 as one of the many Jean Goldkette bands under the direction of Henry Biagini with the alto saxophonist Glen Gray under the name Orange Blossoms in Detroit . The name "Casa Loma Orchestra" was used in 1929 when they first recorded with Okeh . At that time they had an engagement in the Roseland Ballroom in New York - in Detroit after the stock market crash they were no longer able to perform. They named themselves after the Casa Loma Hotel in Toronto , Canada , for which they were booked in 1927 in a new nightclub that was to be opened, but which never opened. Around 1929 the band separated from Biagini and became a cooperative band with Gray as president (who was still not the front man at the time, but continued to play the saxophone) and Francis O'Keefe as manager.
The band quickly became popular and in the early years of its existence played arrangements with a jazz influence, which came from the pen of Gene Gifford . They had their first success in the Billboard Top 30 in September 1931 with Do the New York, which was to be followed by around 60 other hits. The unusual line-up (with five instead of three brass and four instead of three woodwinds) and precisely arranged, fast swing tracks led the ensemble to success and, even before Benny Goodman, to sold-out concerts in New York City . Typical were the alternation of up-tempo pieces and slow ballads, with which they were particularly successful with college audiences. Between 1929 and 1935 (before the actual swing era) the orchestra was considered one of the leading North American dance bands and recorded records for Victor (without Casa Loma under Gray's name) and Brunswick , and from 1934 for Decca Records . These included the classic Richard Rodgers / Lorenz Hart composition Blue Moon , recorded on November 16, 1934 and published in December 1934, which reached number 1 on the pop hit parade. In 1933/34 they were the first swing band to have their own radio commercial (Camel Caravan) and played in the Glen Island Casino that summer . With the orchestra at that time u. a. trombonists Pee Wee Hunt and Billy Rauch , trumpeters Frank L. Ryerson and Sonny Dunham, and clarinetist Clarence Hutchenrider . The trumpeter Joe Hostetter was often the singer before the saxophonist Kenny Sargent joined the band in 1931 .
Singers like Mildred Bailey , Connee Boswell , Lee Wiley and later Louis Armstrong and Hoagy Carmichael made recordings with the band. Arranger Larry Clinton joined the band after Gifford's departure in 1935; they performed in New York's Paramount Theater and established the famous live band tradition on this stage. In 1937 Gray decided to take over the line himself as a front man; the band was now called Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra . He recruited trombonist Murray McEachern from Benny Goodman ; Arranger Dick Jones came from Tommy Dorsey's band . As recently as 1940, they were particularly impressive as a sweet band than in the swing category ; in the sweet poll of Metronome magazine it rose to second place and in the swing category to sixth place. In 1943 Rausch and Sargent left the band. Instead, Eugenie Baird joined the band as the first female singer. From 1943 guitarist Herb Ellis , for a short time trumpeter Bobby Hackett and in 1944 cornet player Red Nichols joined the band. The orchestra's heyday was over at the end of the 1940s.
The Casa Loma Orchestra experienced another brief comeback in the 1950s with studio recordings for Capitol .
The signature melody of Casa Loma was Smoke Rings.
Other bands with the same name
The Casa Loma Jazz Band, founded in Basel in 1994, with musicians from Switzerland and the neighboring Alsace joins them by name, but also cultivates New Orleans jazz in a much smaller septet line-up in addition to early swing .
Discographic notes
- Casa Loma Stomp ( Hep Records , 1929-30)
- Maniac's Ball (Hep, 1931-37)
literature
- John Jörgensen & Erik Wiedemann: Jazz Lexicon. Mosaik Verlag, Munich.
- George T. Simon : The Golden Era of Big Bands. Hannibal, Höfen 2004, ISBN 3-854-45243-8 .
swell
- ↑ p. 117
- ↑ p. 118, see also Casa Loma Orchestra History on Bigband Database
- ↑ p. 122