Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Enoch Henry Light was born August 18, 1905, in Canton, Ohio and became a classically trained violinist. The leader of various dance bands that recorded as early as 1927 and continued to 1940. For a time in 1928 he also led a band in Paris and in the 1930s studied conducting in Paris with French conductor Maurice Frigara.

Throughout the 1930s, Light was steadily employed in the generally more upscale hotel restaurants and ballrooms in New York mixing current popular songs with jazz. At some point his band was tagged “The Light Brigade”, often broadcasting over radio live from the Hotel Taft in New York where they had a long residency.

The 1940s saw Enoch recording for Brunswick, ARC, Vocalion and Bluebird, going on to become A&R (Artists and Repertoire) chief and vice-president of Grand Award Records, and then founded his own label Command Records in 1959. His name was prominent on many albums both as musician and producer. He revolutionized the creation of high-quality recordings in the late 1950s and early 1960s, particularly stereo effects that bounced the sounds between the right and left channels, often described as ping-pong recording. This technique had huge influence on the whole concept of multi-track recording that would become commonplace in the ensuing years.

The first of the albums produced on his record label was Persuasive Percussion, that became one of the first big-hit LP discs based solely on retail sales with little or no radio airplay because AM radio was monaural and had very poor fidelity. He did however,record several successful big band albums with an ace-group of New York studio musicians of the Swing Era.

His album covers were generally designed with abstract, minimalist artwork that stood out boldly from other album covers. Light developed the “gatefold” sleeve to fit his lengthy descriptions of the sleeve, enabling it to fold like a book, thus popularizing the gatefold packaging format. The gatefold sleeve became extremely popular in later decades, and was used on albums produced by CTI.

He would go on to work with The Free Design, The Critters, Rain, Doc Severinsen, Tony Mottola, Dick Hyman, organist Virgil Fox and arranger, Lew Davies, was one of the label’s most important contributors.

Violinist, bandleader and recording engineer Enoch Light retired from music entirely in 1974 and passed away four years later on July 31, 1978 in Redding, Connecticut.

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