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

[Len Nielsen]

Today June the 19th is apparently the 103rd anniverary of Guy Lombardo's 
birth and only nice things should be said about someone on their birthdate.

I believe that Guy Lombardo could very easily have been crowned the King 
of elevator music had there been music in elevators in those days. :)

Len Nielsen

Charles Suhor wrote:
> 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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> 
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