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| Gene Krupa, American Drum... |
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Glenn Miller (Coronet Magazine, 1954)
Ten years after the death of Big Band legend Glenn Miller (1904 – 1944), it was found that his record sales were going through the roof at 16,000,000 per annum, and Hollywood had attempted to cash-in on his memory by releasing a (bland) Technicolor bio-pic, appropriately titled, The Glenn Miller Story(Universal) - with Jimmy Stewart starring in the title roll. The band leader's popularity was obvious to everyone in 1944, when he was killed in the war, but no one could have predicted this.
Miller had been called the "Cinderella of the Music World", the "Horatio Alger with a Trombone" and this five page account of his life was written so that his followers would know that it wasn't all mink for this musician. As he is remembered to have said to a reporter:
"It wasn't luck or anything else. I have worked hard."
Contrary to popular thought, his career was just taking off when the United States entered the Second World War, an event that triggered his sense of obligation and instilled in him the belief that it was time to pay his country back now that he was most sorely needed.
In 1942 Glenn Miller left the unsigned recording contracts on the table and enlisted.
| The Big Band Scene (Yank Magazine, 1945)
In this article,YANK MAGAZINE correspondent Al Hine summed-up all the assorted happenings on the 1945 Big Band landscape:"The leading big bands now are Woody Herman's, Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton's. Benny Goodman, who broke up his own band for the umpteenth time, is a featured performer in Billy Rose's super revue, 'The Seven Lively Arts', but the maestro is said to be thinking of turning over his Rose job to Raymond Scott and making another stab at the band business."
| Benny Goodman, The King of Swing, on Park Avenue (Stage Magazine, 1938)
To mark the momentous occasion of Benny Goodman and his Band performing for the 'corsage clique' on Park Avenue in 1938, 'the King of Swing' wrote this short essay concerning all his good work and the enjoyment that it brought to the Jitterbuggers of the world:"A band swinging on a dais is like Babe Ruth swinging at home plate. It levels all the bumps of wealth and birth and makes all people free and equal. Maybe that's why Hitler and Mussolini and all the rest of the boys won't give it elbow room..." *Watch Benny Goodman Swing It in this Short Clip*
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| Big Band Happenings in 1944 (Yank Magazine, 1944)
One of the most popular portions of YANK MAGAZINE was a that small corner devoted to the happenings within the Big Band world titled "Band Beat". Attached herein is the Big Band news from that department for the Spring of 1944 which kept the far-flung Americans up to date as to what was going on with Vaughan Monroe, Lina Romay, Duke Ellington, Charlie Powell, Jon Arthur, Jimmy Cook, Red Norvo and Bob Strong's orchestra.
| Lena Horne (Collier's Magazine, 1943)
Widely seen mid-way through the year 1943 was this COLLIER'S MAGAZINE profile of singer Lena Horne (1917 – 2010) who impressed the the West-coast press corps in the same way she did the ink-stained wretches of the East:"A local journalist wrote of Miss Horne in terms that had hereto been reserved for Madame Récamier and Theda Bera."..."What charm, what grace, what beauty!" sighed another [journalist], blowing his nose hard to keep back the tears." "When she was sixteen she was in the chorus at the Cotton Club in Harlem, getting that job through her mother who was then playing in-stock at the old Lafayette Theater on Lenox Avenue...Her name up to then was Helena Horne, but Barney [Josephson] ruthlessly dropped the added letters. He also taught her a great deal about using her personality in her songs." *Watch the 1943 Movie Clip Featuring Lena Horne*
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