Boyd Raeburn

Boyd Raeburn, circa June 1946.
Photograph by William P. Gottlieb .

Boyd Albert Raeburn (born October 27, 1913 in Faith , South Dakota , † August 2, 1966 in Lafayette , Louisiana ) was an American big band leader and tenor, later also bass saxophonist .

After he had already led dance bands in the 1930s (including a college orchestra at the University of Chicago , where he had also studied, they also performed at the 1933 World's Fair), with which he had mainly performed in the Midwest , he decided in the early 1940s to found a jazz big band and in 1942 had a repertoire written by Marge Gibson; radio broadcasts of his performances at Chez Paree in Chicago quickly made his band popular. From 1944, Raeburn led a big band that, thanks to new and advanced arrangements by George Handy (who also played piano), attracted attention due to partly avant-garde dissonances (e.g. in Boyd meets Stravinsky ), similar to the bands of Woody Herman and Stan Kenton , which were active at the same time .

With his new band Raeburn had an engagement at the Lincoln Hotel in New York; in his band played u. a. Dodo Marmarosa , Oscar Pettiford , Shelly Manne , Budd Johnson , Serge Chaloff , Johnny Mandel , Roy Eldridge , Trummy Young , Sonny Berman , Al Cohn , Britt Woodman , Harry Klee and once even Dizzy Gillespie (January 1945 during a one-week guest performance at the Apollo in Harlem) - the band was the first to play its classic A Night in Tunisia . Ginny Powell (his future wife), June Christy (as Sharon Leslie), Don and Johnny Darcy and David Allen sing against a partially dissonant background . Otherwise the band was more Count Basie - oriented.

In July 1945 Raeburn moved with his big band to the west coast of the USA because they were broadcast on the radio in New York, but did not get a record deal. In 1946 she had a cool orientation with French horn , harp and double woodwinds . This year members were u. a. Lucky Thompson , Buddy DeFranco , Marmarosa, Ray Linn and Pete Candoli . In 1947 Johnny Richards arranged for the band, whose contribution to jazz history ended in the same year - the time for concert jazz was not yet ripe, they were back to the ordinary dance band (e.g. 1956–1957 recordings for Columbia). The time 1946/47 is z. B. documented on Savoy. Since he could no longer build on his old successes, he finally left the music business entirely in the early 1950s and temporarily moved to the Bahamas . In the late 1950s he tried unsuccessfully to lead a dance band. Raeburn died of a heart attack in 1966. His son Bruce Raeburn heads the renowned Hogan Jazz Archive in New Orleans.

Web links

• Biography, english
• Discography and biography of HEP Records

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Other arrangers who worked for Raeburn during this time were Eddie Finckel , Ralph Flanagan , Milt Kleeb , Johnny Mandel , George Melanchrino , Juan Tizol and Dickie Wells . See Tom Lord : Jazz Discography (online)