Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss
Les Brown
0 views
Skip to first unread message
Steve Voce
Jan 8, 2001, 7:29:12 AM1/8/01
to
LES BROWN This piece appeared in The Independent today.
"A healthy personality and an honest character don't make a great leader by
themselves," someone wrote of bandleader Les Brown in 1940. The clean-cut
Brown referred to his band as "The Malted Milk Band" because of the
teen-agers that it appealed to. Of her time as the band's girl singer the
well-scrubbed 16-year-old Doris Day was able to say "The happiest time of my
life was when I was travelling with Les." Day had changed her name from Von
Kappelhoff to join the Bob Crosby Band, one of whose hard-swearing
hard-drinking musicians had, according to a writer of the time "made some
pretty serious passes at the very young lady, which frightened her so that
she gave in her notice." She left to join Brown. "The musicians in the band
treated me like a younger sister. They softened things up for me when
everything could have disillusioned and soured me."
The polished arrangements that Brown's band played reflected the
immaculate skills of his musicians and were much admired by everyone in the
music business. The lightly swinging music had perfect poise and was perfect
for dancers. The soloists were skilled and eloquent and there was only one
element missing from the band's work. Passion.
Brown's father was a baker who played the soprano sax. Brown and his
three brothers learned music at home.
"Music to me was a way out of the bakery," said Brown. "My dad had me
working before school and after wrapping the bread, cleaning the pans and
turning the doughnuts."
Throughout his career Brown rarely soloed, although he was a good
clarinet and saxophone player. He formed his first band in 1936 and
subsequently never had any other job but band leading. The Guinness Book of
Records acknowledges him as the leader of the longest lasting musical
organisation in the history of popular music.
After learning music composition and harmony at Ithaca College and at the
New York Military Academy, Brown joined enrolled at Duke University in 1932
and joined the college's dance band. He soon took it over and, as the Duke
Blue Devils, the band played summer seasons at the Budd Lake resort during
the university holidays. The whole band left the university together in 1936
and turned professional. It broke up when Brown decided to leave for New
York in 1937 to work as an arranger for other bands including those of Jimmy
Dorsey and Isham Jones. The next year he formed another band in New York and
signed a recording contract with Decca. He returned that year for another
season at Budd Lake.
From the very start Brown chose musicians who shared his preoccupation
with musical precision and perfection, and as a consequence the band was
more admired by other musicians than it was besieged by the bobbysoxers who
preferred the glamour of Tommy Dorsey or Benny Goodman. On the other hand
that precision reflected a similarity between Brown's band and that of Jimmy
Lunceford, the most technically gifted jazz orchestra of the period. Live
recordings made in later years also show the band on occasion letting its
hair down and blowing potently in the jazz vein.
Eli Oberstein of RCA Victor thought the band showed promise and persuaded
Brown to move from Decca to his label. He arranged a season for the band at
New York's Edison Hotel where it came to the notice of the booker Joe
Glaser. Glaser put money into the band to bring it to the front rank, and
looked after its interests for the next 25 years.
In 1940 the band played at the New York World's Fair. Doris Day joined in
August and recorded a few sides with the band before leaving a year later.
During a broadcast in 1942 an announcer referred to "Les Brown And His Band
Of Renown". The tag stuck, and Brown used it in his publicity for the rest
of his long career.
Brown's first hit record came in 1942 with "Joltin' Joe DiMaggio",
celebrating the baseball player's 56-game hitting run that had excited the
nation that year. Brown always hired exceptionally good arrangers to write
for the band and did quite a bit of the work himself. Like other
bandleaders, he was bedevilled by his musicians being called into the
services. "It got so you wouldn't hire a guy unless you were sure he was
4-F," said Brown. He managed better than most in keeping his band's image
intact, and amongst the fine musicians that worked for him during this
period were trumpeter Billy Butterfield, drummers Shelly Manne and Alvin
Stoller and saxophone players Ted Nash. They were the first of a great
procession over the years, and many of Brown's sidemen became highly rated
jazz soloists.
In 1943 Brown managed to persuade Doris Day to return by arranging for
her to bring her baby son with her to the band. In 1944 she was given a new
song, "Sentimental Journey", to sing. She recalled an early performance of
the song. "I started to sing the lyrics and by the end of the first eight
bars the couples had stopped dancing and were just standing there, arms
around, listening to me. They just stood there, wildly applauding, until we
played it again - and again." Brown's recording of the song spent 23 weeks
in the Top Ten, 17 of them at No. 1.
Musicians stayed with Brown indefinitely and his brother Clyde, known as
"Stumpy" played trombone and sang in the band for more than 50 years.
Baritone sax player Butch Stone joined in 1940 and stayed until the end.
In 1946 Brown decided to quit the band business. "I wanted to settle in
Los Angeles, where the weather would be nice and I could relax. It rained
steadily for the first twelve days." Brown had forgotten that he had a
contract to play at the Hollywood Palladium in March of that year. Despite
the fact that he no longer had a band, the management held him to the
contract and he had to re-form his band. They broadcast twice nightly from
the Palladium and he was back in business. Bob Hope heard the broadcasts and
in 1947 hired Brown as the back up band for his NBC radio show. It began
another lifelong association and Brown appeared on all Hope's radio and
television shows and on each of the comedian's 18 annual Christmas overseas
tours, seven of them in Vietnam. It was only when Hope retired through
failing health in the early Nineties that they stopped working together.
Brown and his band also worked on The Dean Martin Show from 1965 to 1974.
"The world has lost a great musician," said Hope this week. "I have lost my
music man, my sideman, my straight man and a very special friend."
After "Sentimental Journey", the band's other big hit was "I've Got My
Love To Keep Me Warm", recorded in 1944. "It wasn't released until almost
five years later," said Brown. "Then, one night when we were running out of
tunes, we played it as a band number on one of our Bob Hope shows. The
reaction was terrific. Right away we got a wire from Columbia telling us to
get in the studio the next day and record it. I wired back 'Look in your
files'."
Brown was one of those responsible for setting up the Grammy Awards
events, ensuring their success on television by persuading Bob Hope, Bing
Crosby and Frank Sinatra to participate.
His band played at several presidential inaugurations and played at the
opening day of Disneyland in 1955, working there annually until well into
the Nineties. In 2000 Brown was still touring, playing about 60 concerts a
year. When he was unable to front the band, his son Les Brown Jnr. did.
Steve Voce
Lester Raymond "Les" Brown, saxophonist and bandleader: born Reinerton,
Pennsylvania, 14 March 1912; died Pacific Palisades, California, 4 January
2001.
"A healthy personality and an honest character don't make a great leader by
themselves," someone wrote of bandleader Les Brown in 1940. The clean-cut
Brown referred to his band as "The Malted Milk Band" because of the
teen-agers that it appealed to. Of her time as the band's girl singer the
well-scrubbed 16-year-old Doris Day was able to say "The happiest time of my
life was when I was travelling with Les." Day had changed her name from Von
Kappelhoff to join the Bob Crosby Band, one of whose hard-swearing
hard-drinking musicians had, according to a writer of the time "made some
pretty serious passes at the very young lady, which frightened her so that
she gave in her notice." She left to join Brown. "The musicians in the band
treated me like a younger sister. They softened things up for me when
everything could have disillusioned and soured me."
The polished arrangements that Brown's band played reflected the
immaculate skills of his musicians and were much admired by everyone in the
music business. The lightly swinging music had perfect poise and was perfect
for dancers. The soloists were skilled and eloquent and there was only one
element missing from the band's work. Passion.
Brown's father was a baker who played the soprano sax. Brown and his
three brothers learned music at home.
"Music to me was a way out of the bakery," said Brown. "My dad had me
working before school and after wrapping the bread, cleaning the pans and
turning the doughnuts."
Throughout his career Brown rarely soloed, although he was a good
clarinet and saxophone player. He formed his first band in 1936 and
subsequently never had any other job but band leading. The Guinness Book of
Records acknowledges him as the leader of the longest lasting musical
organisation in the history of popular music.
After learning music composition and harmony at Ithaca College and at the
New York Military Academy, Brown joined enrolled at Duke University in 1932
and joined the college's dance band. He soon took it over and, as the Duke
Blue Devils, the band played summer seasons at the Budd Lake resort during
the university holidays. The whole band left the university together in 1936
and turned professional. It broke up when Brown decided to leave for New
York in 1937 to work as an arranger for other bands including those of Jimmy
Dorsey and Isham Jones. The next year he formed another band in New York and
signed a recording contract with Decca. He returned that year for another
season at Budd Lake.
From the very start Brown chose musicians who shared his preoccupation
with musical precision and perfection, and as a consequence the band was
more admired by other musicians than it was besieged by the bobbysoxers who
preferred the glamour of Tommy Dorsey or Benny Goodman. On the other hand
that precision reflected a similarity between Brown's band and that of Jimmy
Lunceford, the most technically gifted jazz orchestra of the period. Live
recordings made in later years also show the band on occasion letting its
hair down and blowing potently in the jazz vein.
Eli Oberstein of RCA Victor thought the band showed promise and persuaded
Brown to move from Decca to his label. He arranged a season for the band at
New York's Edison Hotel where it came to the notice of the booker Joe
Glaser. Glaser put money into the band to bring it to the front rank, and
looked after its interests for the next 25 years.
In 1940 the band played at the New York World's Fair. Doris Day joined in
August and recorded a few sides with the band before leaving a year later.
During a broadcast in 1942 an announcer referred to "Les Brown And His Band
Of Renown". The tag stuck, and Brown used it in his publicity for the rest
of his long career.
Brown's first hit record came in 1942 with "Joltin' Joe DiMaggio",
celebrating the baseball player's 56-game hitting run that had excited the
nation that year. Brown always hired exceptionally good arrangers to write
for the band and did quite a bit of the work himself. Like other
bandleaders, he was bedevilled by his musicians being called into the
services. "It got so you wouldn't hire a guy unless you were sure he was
4-F," said Brown. He managed better than most in keeping his band's image
intact, and amongst the fine musicians that worked for him during this
period were trumpeter Billy Butterfield, drummers Shelly Manne and Alvin
Stoller and saxophone players Ted Nash. They were the first of a great
procession over the years, and many of Brown's sidemen became highly rated
jazz soloists.
In 1943 Brown managed to persuade Doris Day to return by arranging for
her to bring her baby son with her to the band. In 1944 she was given a new
song, "Sentimental Journey", to sing. She recalled an early performance of
the song. "I started to sing the lyrics and by the end of the first eight
bars the couples had stopped dancing and were just standing there, arms
around, listening to me. They just stood there, wildly applauding, until we
played it again - and again." Brown's recording of the song spent 23 weeks
in the Top Ten, 17 of them at No. 1.
Musicians stayed with Brown indefinitely and his brother Clyde, known as
"Stumpy" played trombone and sang in the band for more than 50 years.
Baritone sax player Butch Stone joined in 1940 and stayed until the end.
In 1946 Brown decided to quit the band business. "I wanted to settle in
Los Angeles, where the weather would be nice and I could relax. It rained
steadily for the first twelve days." Brown had forgotten that he had a
contract to play at the Hollywood Palladium in March of that year. Despite
the fact that he no longer had a band, the management held him to the
contract and he had to re-form his band. They broadcast twice nightly from
the Palladium and he was back in business. Bob Hope heard the broadcasts and
in 1947 hired Brown as the back up band for his NBC radio show. It began
another lifelong association and Brown appeared on all Hope's radio and
television shows and on each of the comedian's 18 annual Christmas overseas
tours, seven of them in Vietnam. It was only when Hope retired through
failing health in the early Nineties that they stopped working together.
Brown and his band also worked on The Dean Martin Show from 1965 to 1974.
"The world has lost a great musician," said Hope this week. "I have lost my
music man, my sideman, my straight man and a very special friend."
After "Sentimental Journey", the band's other big hit was "I've Got My
Love To Keep Me Warm", recorded in 1944. "It wasn't released until almost
five years later," said Brown. "Then, one night when we were running out of
tunes, we played it as a band number on one of our Bob Hope shows. The
reaction was terrific. Right away we got a wire from Columbia telling us to
get in the studio the next day and record it. I wired back 'Look in your
files'."
Brown was one of those responsible for setting up the Grammy Awards
events, ensuring their success on television by persuading Bob Hope, Bing
Crosby and Frank Sinatra to participate.
His band played at several presidential inaugurations and played at the
opening day of Disneyland in 1955, working there annually until well into
the Nineties. In 2000 Brown was still touring, playing about 60 concerts a
year. When he was unable to front the band, his son Les Brown Jnr. did.
Steve Voce
Lester Raymond "Les" Brown, saxophonist and bandleader: born Reinerton,
Pennsylvania, 14 March 1912; died Pacific Palisades, California, 4 January
2001.
DENNIS JONES
Jan 9, 2001, 2:48:18 PM1/9/01
to
I would like to add that Les Browns last recording date with the band took place
in March 2000 at Capitol studios in L.A. The CD will be released in the next
month or
so on Unijake(Universal) Music. Info on this session including photos and a
complete
bio can be accessed at www.bandsof renown.com
0 new messages