Buddy Moreno

Buddy Moreno (born July 14, 1912 in Los Angeles , California - † November 29, 2015 ) was an American singer, guitarist and big band leader in the field of swing and popular music as well as radio presenter .

Life

Buddy Moreno had first appearances on weekends in 1929 at the Olympic Club in Lakeside near San Francisco; In 1932 he became a member of the Anson Weeks Orchestra , which performed at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco. He then moved to the Griff Williams Band, which had an engagement at San Francisco's Edgewater Beach Hotel , as a band singer and guitarist . In the late 1930s, the Williams Orchestra went to Chicago, where it performed at the Mark Hopkins Hotel. In the late 1930s he became a member of Dick Jurgens' dance orchestra and participated in numerous recordings of the band for Okeh Records , which were made in the early 1940s.

In March 1943 he moved as the main band singer to the orchestra of Harry James , which appeared in the Hollywood Palladium and in New York in the Paramount Theater and the Hotel Astor; Moreno has also appeared in a number of MGM films, as well as the Chesterfield- sponsored radio show that featured the James Orchestra. Moreno's singing could also be heard on some of the then released V-Discs from 1943 ("Oh, What A Beautiful Morning!", "Better Give Me Lots Of Lovin '," "Honey and Mexico City") and three radio recordings, "Remember" (1943), " Nice Work If You Can Get It " and "Always" (1944).

During his time in the US Army, he met arranger Bill Finegan , who was then leading a military band in Nyack , NY. Through Finegan he came in contact with Eddie Sauter , with whom he was to lead a short-lived band in the 1950s. After his discharge from the army and a few months in which he appeared as a soloist, Moreno founded his own band in 1947, in which twelve musicians regularly played. They made their debut at the Casa Loma Ballroom in St. Louis and played mostly in the Midwest , where they became a popular Territory band that also recorded records for RCA Victor . She played mostly jazz standards from Cole Porter and George Gershwin ; The theme song was "It's That Time Again", one of the band singers was Perri Mitchell , who then became Moreno's wife. In 1948 they appeared at the Paramount Theater in New York ; later they toured the south and played in hotels in New Orleans , later in St. Louis, where Moreno and his wife settled in 1950.

There Moreno's band had a longer engagement as the house orchestra in the Chase ; Moreno was also a disc jockey on the local channel KMOX for the Buddy Moreno Show . In 1957 he reduced his activities as a band leader and only played at local events and the local television station in St. Louis, but appeared regularly as a radio presenter, first at KWK, then at WEW, where he was henceforth program director. He also served as musical director for the orchestras at Fox Theater and St. Louis Municipal Opera. In the 1990s, Moreno still moderated a nostalgic jazz big band program on National Public Radio in old age . In his later years he lived in Florissant, Missouri.

literature

• Leo Walker: The Big Band Almanac . Ward Ritchie Press, Pasadena. 1978

Web links

• Buddy Moreno in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Obituary on stlpublicradio.org