Si hundredweight

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Simon H. "Si" Zentner (* 13. June 1917 in New York City ; † 1. January 2000 in Las Vegas , Nevada ) was an American jazz and pop - trombonist and bandleader.

Live and act

Simon "Si" Zentner played the piano as a four year old and switched to the trombone a few years later. He studied music in college and initially intended to pursue a career in the field of classical music, but after recordings with Andre Kostelanetz decided to pursue popular music. Zentner then played in the bands of Les Brown , Harry James , Jimmy Dorsey and Boyd Raeburn in the 1940s , then moved to Los Angeles , where he worked as a studio musician and in the orchestras of Charlie Barnet (1954), Conrad Gozzo and Billy May (1955) played. From 1949 to 1955 he recorded for MGM and made film scores, a. a. for the films Singin 'in the Rain and A Star Is Born . He also appeared as a member of the Woody Herman Orchestra in 1959 at the Monterey Jazz Festival ; In 1961 he played in Glen Gray's reactivated Casa Loma Orchestra .

In 1959, Zentner put together his own big band (including Don Fagerquist and Vern Friley in Swing Fever ) and signed a contract with the Liberty Records label , on which he recorded a long series of successful pop albums in the early 1960s. Zentner's ensemble was selected by jazz magazine Down Beat for 13 years in the "Best Big Band" category; Zentner himself received the award "Best Trombonist" from Playboy Reader's Poll in 1962 . His album Up a Lazy River (Big Band Plays the Big Hits, Vol. 2) won the Grammy Award for best pop instrumental performance.

In the mid-1960s the success of the hundredweight big band waned; finally he broke up the band in 1965 and moved to Las Vegas, where he accompanied Mel Tormé in the Blue Room . In 1968 he became musical director of the Vegas show Folies Bergère . In the early 1990s, Zentner founded a big band again and recorded several albums. Eventually he got leukemia , but it continued until 1999. During his career, Zentner also worked on recordings of Louis Armstrong , Anita O'Day , Artie Shaw , Lucky Thompson (around 1945). As an early representative of easy listening or smooth jazz, Zentner's style of playing was hardly influenced by improvisational play; he preferred a legato tone and pronounced vibrato effects.

The authors Richard Cook and Brian Morton described Si Zentner's band from 1959 as an "excellent dance band, which in some pieces also left enough room for excellent solo performances".

Discographic notes

  • Swing Fever ( Fresh Sound Records , 1959)
  • A Thinking Man's Band (1959).
  • Suddenly It's Swing (1960).
  • The Swingin 'Eye !!!!!!!! (1960).
  • Big Band Plays the Big Hits (1961).
  • Up a Lazy River (Big Band Plays the Hits, Vol. 2) (1962).
  • The Stripper and Other Big Band Hits (1962).
  • Desafinado (1963).
  • Waltz in Jazz Time (1963).
  • Great Band with Great Voices
  • Si Zentner & His Orchestra, Alive in Las Vegas (1992).
  • Road Band (1996).
  • Country Blues (1996).
  • Blue Eyes Plays Ol 'Blue Eyes (1998).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Si hundredweight in the All music Guide
  2. ^ Grammy Awards
  3. ^ Cook and Morton, 6th edition, p. 1594.
personal data
SURNAME Hundredweight, Si
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zentner, Simon H.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz trombonist and band leader
DATE OF BIRTH June 13, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH January 1, 2000
Place of death Las Vegas , Nevada