Tex Beneke & His Orchestra - Stardust

Styles: Jazz, Big Band
Year: 1956/2010
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 40:12
Size: 93,0 MB
Art: Front

(4:16)  1. Stardust
(3:15)  2. Georgia On My Mind
(3:09)  3. Lazy River
(3:09)  4. Rockin' Chair
(3:18)  5. Lazy Bones
(3:07)  6. Riverboat Shuffle
(3:17)  7. East Of The Sun
(3:22)  8. Blue Champagne
(3:36)  9. St. Louis Blues March
(2:59) 10. Bye Bye Blues
(3:37) 11. Meadowlands
(3:01) 12. Blues In The Night March

The name Tex Beneke is inevitably linked to that of Glenn Miller, despite the fact that Beneke outlived Miller by over a half-century. As the most popular member of Miller's pre-World War II orchestra, featured on songs such as "Chattanooga Choo Choo" and "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree," Beneke became a major fixture in the popular culture of the period, and following Miller's death in December of 1944, and the re-formation of the Glenn Miller Orchestra after World War II, he accepted the offer to lead the new band. Beneke, however, had a lot to offer the music world beyond his vocals on some fondly remembered hit songs. He began playing the saxophone at age nine, first the alto and then the tenor, and played in local and regional bands in Oklahoma and Texas during the early and mid-'30s. A gig playing with a band led by Ben Young brought him to Detroit, where he was spotted by Sam Donahue, then a saxman in Gene Krupa's band Krupa was unable to hire Beneke but informed a friend of his in New York of this promising new player. The friend was Glenn Miller, who'd recently begun forming a band of his own, and Beneke was hired, joining the orchestra in the spring of 1938 it was with Miller's band that Beneke picked up the nickname "Tex." The Miller orchestra struggled until the summer of 1939, when an engagement at the Glen Island Casino and a series of radio broadcasts made it a national sensation. Beneke played and sang with the orchestra, and became a star in his own right. He stayed until 1942, when Miller broke up the band to join the U.S. Army Air Force as a bandleader. Beneke was drafted into the navy and led a military dance outfit at a base in Oklahoma.

After the end of the war, when a new Glenn Miller Orchestra was formed, Beneke took on the leadership, debuting in January of 1946 at the Capitol Theater in New York City. The orchestra, formed under the auspices of Miller's widow and his estate, was intended to emulate the sounds of the pre-war Miller band and his Army Air Force band this included the presence of 13 string players in the 31 piece outfit, making it, along with Harry James' orchestra, one of the few big bands to include strings. They were an immediate success, compiling an enviable array of hits for five years. One gig in particular stood out in December of 1947, a year after the near-collapse of the big-band business, at the Hollywood Palladium, Tex Beneke and the Glenn Miller Orchestra played to a record-breaking crowd of 6,750 dancers. Despite this extraordinary popularity, however, Beneke wasn't entirely happy with the restrictions placed by the estate on the band's music they were required to stick entirely to the familiar reed-centered sound that Glenn Miller had practically trademarked. Although a reed player himself, Beneke saw other possibilities, but was never allowed to experiment, despite his protests that Miller himself had always been open to the idea of experimentation, and had expressed his intention to move away from his familiar reed sound after the war, having gone as far with it as he felt he could. Finally, at the end of 1950, Beneke left the band and also parted company with Miller's estate. He later organized his own band which, like similar reconstituted big bands led by '40s music icons such as Harry James, managed to thrive amid the rock & roll, folk-rock, psychedelia, disco, and punk eras, right to the present day. More than 60 years after he became a professional musician, he continued to lead big bands, doing the music that he helped popularized two generations ago. Beneke died May 30, 2000 from respiratory failure at the age of 86. https://www.allmusic.com/artist/tex-beneke-mn0000030664/biography

Stardust

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Tex Beneke - 1946 Live In Hi-Fi At The Hollywood Palladium

Styles: Jazz, Big Band
Year: 1946/2006
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 54:06
Size: 126,1 MB
Art: Front

(4:02)  1. Introduction / Jeep Jockey Jump
(3:30)  2. Falling Leaves
(3:13)  3. A String Of Pearls
(2:44)  4. Here We Go Again
(2:37)  5. Sun Valley Jump
(2:43)  6. Troop Movement
(3:22)  7. Juke Box Saturday Night
(3:53)  8. Anvil Chorus
(3:08)  9. The Volga Boatmen
(3:13) 10. Serenade In Blue
(5:02) 11. Meadowlands
(3:17) 12. Tuxedo Junction
(3:17) 13. St. Louis Blues
(3:20) 14. American Patrol
(3:00) 15. Texas Tex
(3:36) 16. I Hear You Screamin' / Closing

1946 Live in Hi-Fi at the Hollywood Palladium features some fine broadcast remotes from the post-war Glenn Miller Orchestra when it was being fronted by Tex Beneke. Tex was not the first leader to pilot the Miller organization after the major disappeared forever over the English Channel; Jerry Gray performed the unenviable task of filling the big man's shoes in Miller's AEF Band while it was still overseas. When Gray obtained his honorary discharge in November 1945 he decided to take a well-deserved break from the strain of being Glenn Miller's stand-in. Miller's widow, Helen, contacted Beneke, himself only recently discharged from a stint leading a Navy dance band at the unlikely location of Norman, OK, and asked him to take up the job of leading a new Miller "civilian" orchestra. Beneke was an interesting choice; Miller himself had fired him from the civilian orchestra on July 12, 1942. But of all the star soloists and singers who'd appeared with Miller over the years, it was clear that Beneke was the one the public recognized and cherished the most. So in January 1946, the new Glenn Miller Orchestra opened with Beneke at its head, and he would stay in this job through the end of 1949 when he finally decided he was fed up with the Miller Orchestra's management and their policy not to update or change anything about the band's sound. The Hollywood Palladium was one of the Beneke-Miller band's friendliest venues; they first played there on September 5, 1946. In what may have been the last blast of the big-band era, a December 1947 Beneke-Miller show at the Palladium drew a record crowd of more than 6,000 souls. Many of Beneke's appearances with the new Glenn Miller Orchestras of the late '40s were broadcast as remotes on the CBS network. 

These broadcasts have never been properly accounted for or identified, but they seem to survive in great numbers, and have been parceled out in bits and pieces over the years on LPs and through dissemination on tapes in the Old Time Radio underground. This disc claims to represent "the band's first engagement at the Hollywood Palladium in 1946," but it is obviously drawn from at least six or seven remotes, and it is impossible to tell if they are all from the Hollywood Palladium or even all from the year 1946. If some are, then the pianist in the band was 22-year-old Henry Mancini, although the only evidence of his presence is a little piano tinkling heard here and there in quiet passages. Nonetheless this is a choice selection of Beneke-Miller goodies, most played with real verve and fire with only a couple of exceptions, for example a tentative reading of "Tuxedo Junction." Standout tracks include great, swinging performances of "St. Louis Blues March" and rarities such as "Jeep Jockey Jump" and "Troop Movement." The broadcasts used here probably are pretty early due to the heavy reliance on numbers written for the band's book by Jerry Gray. "Meadowlands" is identical to the piece recorded as "Russian Patrol" on the last-known broadcast done by the Miller AEF Band during Miller's own lifetime, on that occasion led by Gray. The sound here varies from source to source, but generally is very good for broadcasts of the period, though not quite "Hi-Fi" as promised on the front cover. There are little bits and pieces missing here and there from certain tracks, perhaps due to imperfections in the sources, but just as likely the result of over-eager "tic" removal. The whole ending of "Falling Leaves" is swallowed up for some reason. About a minute's worth of "Moonlight Serenade" is heard at the end of the disc, but mention of it appears nowhere in the notes. Despite these admittedly minor complaints, 1946 Live in Hi-Fi at the Hollywood Palladium is well worth seeking out, and is a pleasing general representation of the live sound of the immediate post-war Glenn Miller band. ~ Uncle Dave Lewis https://www.allmusic.com/album/1946-live-in-hi-fi-at-the-hollywood-palladium-mw0000055438

1946 Live In Hi-Fi At The Hollywood Palladium

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