[Dixielandjazz] Guy Lombardp's First Band Was a Jazz Band

[Steve barbone]

Ah, my mate Bill Haesler agrees that Lombardo was hep. As he knows, GL's
first band was a JAZZ BAND. But, Lombardo, your average violinist, was also
a practical man. See below from the band's story: The "London" they left
from is in Canada.

BEGIN SNIP "The odds against success were tremendous. Then, as now, the
American music business was fiercely competitive in 1924. Lombardo's band
didn't even have a distinctive style. Its earliest recordings - made four
months after the departure from London - reveal a competent but unremarkable
jazz group with none of the traces of the famed Lombardo sound. As things
stood, the band was on the road to oblivion."

"Then the three brothers remembered their father's advice: "Music is easy to
play and easy to listen to if you don't forget the melody and choose songs
people can sing, hum, or whistle." Gradually the Lombardo style - which was
really no style at all - developed. The band began to offer dancers a song's
melody, unadorned by arrangement or improvisation. It was a hard sell a
bunch of would-be jazz men." END SNIP

Lombardo was somewhat like Louis Prima, the extraordinary New Orleans Jazz
trumpeter, turned entertainer. Most folks today don't realize how GREAT a
JAZZ MUSICIAN Prima was.

Lombardo, and his brothers were journeyman Jazz men who figured out at age
24 or so, that there was also another pathway to musical fulfillment. To
date, the band has sold over 100,000,000 records. Still 1st among all dance
bands.

Hep? Absolutely. There are MANY Armstrong and other jazz musician quotes
that bear this out, so we should not single out the one that mentions be-bop
as an aside remark and focus on that remark as if it were the point.
Armstrong's point was simple; that Lombardo knew how to make "pretty" music
which would outlast the rest of the mundane stuff around those days.

Including all of the mundane obscure tunes that OKOM bands beat to death one
more time, today. :-) VBG

Ella Fitzgerald was also a huge Guy Lombardo fan. I suppose jazz fans (not
jazz musicians) will always be tormented by the fact that so many jazz
musicians loved and still love the music of Guy Lombardo.

There is also the PROOF. If you LISTEN to Armstrong BIG BANDS of the 1930s.
even the most tin eared among us will HEAR the Lombardo influence there.
Hint: Especially the Sax Sections.

Better yet, listen to Lombardo between 1924 & 1928 and you'll likely hear
jazz. And if you check out the name of his first band, formed in 1924 you
will find. "Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadian Jazz Band."

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

PS. Lombardo's Hydroplanes were named TEMPO. The most famous was probably
Tempo VI in which he won the Gold Cup Race shortly after WW2. It was
originally built for Simmons, of Mattress fame in 1938 at a cost of around
$100,000. Lombardo bought it, modified it with a V16 Allison engine and went
on the boat racing fame, as well as musical fame. It was the first 3 point
hydroplane to win that race, defeating the step hydroplanes, and forever
rendering them obsolete. WHAT A GUY!