Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Henry Busse Sr. was born on May 19, 1894 in Magdeburg, Germany to a generational German Band family. He studied violin and then trumpet after a broken finger was set incorrectly. In 1912 at age 18 he ran away from the family farm outside of Magdeburg, where he had been forced to play trumpet in his uncle’s band.

Initially jumping ship in New York City and landing in the German ghettos there, unable to speak English, he found a job on a boat heading to California. He acquired some English on his trip in 1916 that found him in Hollywood working as an extra in Keystone Cop films and playing trumpet in a movie theater pit band.

In 1917, he played the trumpet with the Frisco Jass Band before forming his own band, Busse’s Buzzards which was the nucleus of the Paul Whiteman orchestra of the mid-1920s, and featuring Henry they made four sides in total. Being the subject of discrimination because of his German accent caused concern among those living in post-World War I America.

At one point, eight out of the top ten sheet music sales spots belonged to the band. During his peak with them, Busse was earning $350 weekly, while fellow band member Bing Crosby was earning just $150. Busse co-composed several of the band’s early hit songs, including Hot Lips with Gussie Mueller and Wang Wang Blues. The latter sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc in 1920.

Throughout the 1920s he was concertmaster for the Whiteman Band, played alongside the Dorsey brothers, Ray Bolger, and formed the Shuffle Rhythm Band, which went on to enjoy great success in the 1930s and ’40s. A later group, The Henry Busse Orchestra. This group was more of a dance band than a jazz band and had a successful career.

Hitting his peak in 1930-45 playing dance music before the war, and swing during the war. He and his band appeared in two MGM color movies in 1935 called Starlit Days at the Lido, filmed at the Ambassador Hotel, along with Clark Gable and the studio’s stable of stars and in the movie Lady Let’s Dance.

Trumpeter Henry Busse and his Orchestra continued to record and perform up until his death on April 23,1955. at an undertaker’s convention at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was playing with the Shuffle Rhythm Band.

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