Black Jazz - Casa Loma Orchestra (Brunswick)1931

Recorded December 18,1931. While a young boy, Glen Gray had learned to play the piccolo, clarinet, flute, and, by the age of 11, the saxophone. His father was a lifelong railroad employee, so, after Gray finished high school, he, too, worked for the railroad, first as a freight handler and then as a station manager and cashier but he had continued to play the sax in his spare time. As leader of the Casa Loma band, he was a personable and stabilizing influence. Their booking agency, Rockwell-O'Keefe, sent them on one-night stands for 101 consecutive weeks and, by mid-1931, with their precise playing and versatility, they began catching on with the public, particularly young students at college and prep-school prom dates. The Casa Loma Orchestra did good business at venues such as the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, the Roseland Ballroom in New York City, and Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle, NY, and, beginning December 5, 1933, were selected to provide music on the "Camel Caravan" radio program. The musicians easily shifted gears from uptempo jazz numbers (San Sue Strut, Alexander's Ragtime Band, Casa Loma Stomp, Put On Your Old Grey Bonnet, White Jazz, Black Jazz, Maniac's Ball) to smooth ballads (Smoke Rings, For You, Time On My Hands, and It's the Talk of the Town), a variety which made for good listening or dancing. On Christmas Day 1935, when the Paramount Theatre in New York City began its new policy of having a live, famous orchestra play onstage between film showings, the Casa Loma Orchestra was their first choice. They were invited back to the Paramount each holiday season for several years in a row. Besides Gray, members of the band included, at various times, Joe Hostetter, Sonny Dunham, and Grady Watts (trumpets), Pee Wee Hunt, Billy Rauch, and Murray McEachern (trombones), Clarence Hutchenrider (clarinet), Gene Gifford (guitar-arranger), Tony Briglia (drums), and Kenny Sargent (vocals). It was Gifford, with his hot originals, who set much of the musical flavor of the band. The band had first recorded for Okeh in 1929, but in 1931 switched to Brunswick and in 1934 to Decca, where they remained for 13 years and made some 275 sides (not counting transcriptions). Several star guests recorded with the Casa Loma Orchestra during February 1939: Frankie Carle played piano on his composition Sunrise Serenade on the 17th; Louis Armstrong blew trumpet and shared the vocal with Pee Wee Hunt on both Rockin' Chair and Lazybones, made on the 20th; and Hoagy Carmichael sang Washboard Blues and Little Old Lady, cut on the 25th