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Jerry “Buck” Jerome was born on June 19, 1912 in Brooklyn, New York and began playing the saxophone in high school in Plainfield, New Jersey. In 1936 he was part of a national tour with bandleader Harry Reser and his Clicquot Club Eskimos.
He joined Glenn Miller’s original orchestra in 1937 and was a member until it broke up in 1938. He played on the Miller recording Doin’ the Jive in which in soloed. He then joined the Red Norvo band followed by taking a chair in the Benny Goodman Orchestra in 1938.
When Goodman broke up his band in 1940, Buck joined the Artie Shaw Orchestra. While with Shaw he appeared in the 1940 film Second Chorus starring Fred Astaire and Burgess Meredith.
Tenor saxophonist Jerry Jerome, who was a mainstay during the big band era and led four recording sessions, passed away on November 17, 2001.
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Ray McKinley was born on June 18, 1910 in Fort Worth, Texas. He got his start at age 9 working with local bands in the Dallas–Fort Worth area. Leaving home when he was 15, he played with Milt Shaw’s Detroiters and the Smith Ballew and Duncan-Marin bands. It was with the Smith Ballew band in 1929 that McKinley met Glenn Miller. The two formed a friendship that lasted from 1929 until Miller’s death in 1944. McKinley and Miller joined the Dorsey Brothers in 1934.
The Dorsey brothers split in 1935 and Ray remained with Jimmy Dorsey until 1939, when he joined Will Bradley, becoming co-leader. His biggest hit with Bradley, as a singer, was Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar, which he recorded in 1940 and got a partial songwriting credit. Known also as Eight Beat Mack, taken from the lyrics to Down the Road a Piece, he recorded the song a trio with Will Bradley and Freddie Slack.
Splitting with Bradley in 1942, McKinley formed his own band and recorded for Capitol Records. The band was short-lived and he joined Glenn Miller’s Army Air Force Band, which he co-led with arranger Jerry Gray after Miller’s disappearance in December 1944. Upon discharge he formed a modern big band that featuring original material by legendary arranger Eddie Sauter and vocals by the leader. However, with business declining, by 1950 that band was history and his interest turned towards becoming a part-time leader and radio and TV personality.
In 1956, capitalizing on the popularity of The Glenn Miller Story movie with James Stewart, McKinley was chosen to be the leader of the revived Glenn Miller band, which he led until 1966. He co-hosted, with former Air Force band vocalist Johnny Desmond, a 13-week CBS-TV summer replacement series with the band called Glenn Miller Time in 1961. He also wrote the lyrics to the 1945 wartime song My Guy’s Come Back with music by Mel Powell and recorded by Benny Goodman with vocals by Liza Morrow on Columbia Records. His final recording session was in 1977 for Chiaroscuro Records. Drummer, singer, and bandleader Ray McKinley passed away on May 7, 1995.
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Les Paul was born Lester William Polsfuss on June 9, 1915 in Waukesha, Wisconsin. At the age of eight, he began playing the harmonica and after trying to learn the piano, he switched to the guitar, teaching himself how to play. It was during this time that he invented a neck-worn harmonica holder, allowing him to play both sides of the harmonica hands-free while accompanying himself on the guitar. By age thirteen, he was performing semi-professionally as a country music singer, guitarist, and harmonica player.
He began his first experiment with sound wanting to make himself heard by more people at the local venues, so he wired a phonograph needle to his guitar and connected it to a radio speaker, using that to amplify his acoustic guitar. As a teen Les created his first solid body electric guitar using a 2-foot piece of rail from a nearby train line. By age seventeen, he was playing with Rube Tronson’s Texas Cowboys and soon after he dropped out of high school and joined Sunny Joe Wolverton’s Radio Band in St. Louis, Missouri on KMOX.
Moving to Chicago in 1934 he continued to perform on radio, met pianist Art Tatum, whose playing influenced him. Paul formed a trio in 1937 with singer/rhythm guitarist Jim Atkins and bassist/percussionist Ernie “Darius” Newton. Four years later he was in New York in 1938 with a featured spot on Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians radio show. Drafted into the Army working on the Armed Forces Radio Network, he backed Bing Crosby, The Andrews Sisters and performed as a leader. His guitar style was strongly influenced by the music of Django Reinhardt, whom he greatly admired, met and befriended after World War II and paid part of the funeral cost when Django died in 1953.
He would go on to play with Nat King Cole at the inaugural Jazz At The Philharmonic in 1944, record with Crosby and the Andrews Sisters and then nearly lose his career after his right arm was shattered in a near fatal car crash. Los Angeles doctors set his arm just under a ninety degree angle, giving him the ability to cradle and pick the guitar after a year and a half recovery.
Paul performed in the genres of jazz, country and blues, was also a songwriter, luthier, inventor and pioneer of the solid body electric guitar, utilized multi-tracking, overdubbing, tape delay and phasing effects in his recordings aided in his innovative playing style of licks, trills, chording sequences and fretting techniques that set him apart from his contemporaries and inspired many guitarists of the present day. With his wife Mary Ford he recorded in the 1950s, and together they sold millions of records.
Guitarist Les Paul has been honored with induction into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame, the National Inventors Hall of Fame, won several Grammy Awards, Grammy Trustees Award, with Mary Ford their How High The Moon was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, National Medal of Arts, was inducted into the Big Band Hall of Fame and the Jazz Hall of Fame, received an Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award in Engineering, the Lifetime Achievement in Music Education from the Wisconsin Foundation for School Music, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, among numerous other honors.
Suffering from arthritis in the mid-1960s his condition worsened over his career and in his final years he lost the use of his right hand except for two fingers. On August 12, 2009 guitarist Les Paul passed away from complications from pneumonia at White Plains Hospital in New York.
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Kenneth Clare was born on June 8, 1929 in Leytonstone, London, England and played with Oscar Rabin on English radio in his early 20s. Following this, he played with Jack Parnell and then with Johnny Dankworth for an extended period in the 1950s and early 1960s. In the latter decade he played with Ted Heath and Ronnie Stephenson as well as playing in the studios as a member of Sounds Orchestral.
Clare played drums for the Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band in 1963 to 1966 when Clarke was unavailable. But from 1967 through 1971, when the band folded, he was a regular paired with Clarke in what became a two-drummer band for performances, concerts, and at least 15 recordings issued by various labels.
He accompanied singers including Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett and Cleo Laine. On December 5, 1971 he performed in concert at Queen Elizabeth Hall with fellow drummers Buddy Rich and Louie Bellson. Drummer Kenny Clare, who also did extensive work for radio, television, film, and commercials, passed away December 21, 1984.
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Peter Erskine was born on June 5, 1954 in Somers Point, New Jersey and began playing the drums at the age of four. He graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, then studied percussion at Indiana University.
He began playing professionally in 1972 when he joined the Stan Kenton Orchestra. After three years with Kenton he spent two years with Maynard Ferguson and in 1978 Erskine joined Weather Report along Jaco Pastorius in the rhythm section. After four years and five albums with Weather Report and the Jaco Pastorius big band Word of Mouth, he joined Steps Ahead.
Over the course of his prolific career Peter has recorded 20 albums as a leader and to date has been a sideman on over ninety-five albums working with John Abercrombie, Diana Krall, Eliane Elias, Queen Latifah, Linda Ronstadt, Eberhard Weber, Kate Bush, Gary Burton, Randy and Michael Brecker, George Cables, Pino Daniele, Eddie Daniels, Al Di Meola, Marty Ehrlich, Joe Farrell, Jan Garbarek, Giorgio, Gordon Goodwin, Joe Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson, Marc Johnson, Rickie Lee Jones, Gary Peacock, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan, Rod Stewart, Ralph Towner, Joe Zawinul, Kenny Wheeler and many more.
Drummer Peter Erskine currently splits his time between performing and teaching. He ss a professor at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California. His big band recordings with the Bob Mintzer Big Band are modern big band jazz/funk performances studied by many students of drums and drumming. He has published five books on drumming and has one DVD titled The Erskine Method of Drumming.
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