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

[Charles Suhor]

I didn't know that Guy Lombardo started out with a jazz group. Earnest 
thanks for the good instruction.

Beyond that, it's a hard sell indeed to think that GL's deliberate 
change to what became a pioneering and definitive Mickey/tenor/hotel 
band style was resonant with a hip jazz conception. The GL sax section 
sound, in fact, evolved from the somewhat whiney sound of saxes in 
pre-jazz dance bands and early jazz. This was rejected by swing era 
bands, which went to the rich 5-player sound with a distinctive 
projection, range of vibratos, jazz phrasing, etc. (And when Woody went 
to four  tenors, no one said, Hey that's the Lombaro influence!) I'm 
happy that many jazz musicians and fans enjoy Lombardo's music. 
Parallel: I enjoy old fashioned Westerns without apology and can find 
in them archetypes that appear in Shakespeare and Greek tragedy, but I 
wouldn't say that Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour are as insightful as 
Sophocles and Shakespeare.

Charlie Suhor


On Jun 19, 2005, at 9:06 AM, Steve barbone wrote:

> 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!
>
>
>
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