[Dixielandjazz] Empire City Six

[Murray Jackson]

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If you're still looking for info on this band, see this article, about half way down.  Johnny Varro (piano),  plus

 "Actually it was made up of the same guys who played with Pee Wee and Phil - Kenny Davern, Harry DeVito, Phil Failla, and Pete Rogers - but with a different trumpet player, Tony Spare. Tony was from New Jersey and he was influenced a lot by Phil Napoleon - had the style down so things worked out pretty good. We called ourselves The Empire City Six, and we made several albums. One was for ABC-Paramount, and instead of letting us play our own things they wanted us to make an album of college songs. I did the research. 'Went to the library and looked up some of those adaptable songs like 'Anchors Aweigh,' and 'On Wisconsin,' 'I'm a Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech,' 'Roar, Lion, Roar,' and arranged them for the band. It was my first attempt at arranging anything that would be as long lasting as a recording. And we did that, and in regard to names being spelled wrong on albums, Kenny Davern's name on that first album was listed as 'Lavern,' which shattered him. You can imagine!
     "Then we did a second album for Hallmark Records, a rather obscure label, but we were able to do some of the songs we usually played. The album was called The Empire City Six In Dixie. The first one was The Empire City Six Salutes the Colleges. The cover had college flags all over it. ABC-Paramount was a pretty good label, and at first the album sold so well that they were giving us monthly reports on the sales. 'Oh, it's selling like hot cakes,' But when they came to realize that they might have to pay us residuals on the date, the sales reports fell off drastically. We didn't sell this, we didn't sell that.' And there was nothing we could do about it. They knew we were incapable of checking on them. Putting it politely, I think they shortchanged us.


http://johnnyvarro.tripod.com/vachearticlea.htm