Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Ron and I come from the USA. I have a background in English and history and love Big Band music very, very much.
* Ray Anthony * Count Basie * Larry Elgart * Les Elgart * Duke Ellington * Pete Fountain * Stan Getz * Benny Goodman * Woody Herman * Harry James * Dick Johnson * Stan Kenton * Gene Krupa * Murray McEachern * Ray McKinley * Buddy Morrow * Anita O'Day * Boots Randolph * Artie Shaw * Si Zentner
また、私はこれらのオーケストラと共に働くすばらしいsidemenの多くを満たしました。
I have also met many of the great players who performed with these orchestras. Sadly, most of these great people died when I was a child and I never fully appreciated who were until later on in life.
From time-to-time, I would like to review some of the current Big Band releases on CD. I have thousands of records and CDs in my collection, and I know the recordings very well.
In late 1955, Capitol Records producer Dave Cavanaugh asked Big Band leader Glen Gray to come out of retirement and lead a studio orchestra that would recreate some of the great recordings by the famous bands of the 1930s and 1940s.
The Casa Loma Orchestra reached its peak of fame in the mid-1930s and was very popular among college students. The band played hot rhythms and tunes that were more common with Black orchestras, but delivered them to an all-white audience.
By 1950, the Casa Loma Orchestra, like so many other Big bands were forced by Post-war economics to disband. and Glen Gray went into retirement at the age of 50 at his home in Plymouth, Massachusetts, mostly due to health problems.
Vast technological improvements were made in the recording industry during the 1950s. Likewise, consumer electronics at this time was a major industry, which promoted modern Hi-Fi and later on stereophonic playback equipment for home use.
Many of the major American recording companies decided to bring Big Bands back into the studio to not only rerecord their greatest hits in modern high-fidelity, but to also create new and exciting record albums.
This was the case in 1957, when Glen Gray and Casa Loma Orchestra recorded two albums entitled "Sound of the Great Bands" and "Sounds of the Great Bands, Volume 2." both in full stereophonic sound.
Both albums were so well received that several more editions of the series were produced by Capitol Records until 1964. They are considered some of the very best modern big band recordings ever made.
Glen Gray's "Sounds of Great Bands" series by Capitol Records are my favorite albums. Many LP albums of recreations of hits of the Swing Era were released in 1950's and '60s, but Glen Gray's series are the BEST.