Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Robert Sherwood Haggart was born March 13, 1914 in New York City, New York. He became a member of the Bob Crosby Band in 1935 and composed and arranged Big Noise from Winnetka, My Inspiration, What’s New?, and South Rampart Street Parade. He remained with the band until its 1942 dissolution. He went on to work as a session musician, with much of his time spent at Decca Records.

He recorded with Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Ella Fitzgerald and his arrangements can be heard on Fitzgerald’s album Lullabies of Birdland. Haggart also starred in several commercials for L&M cigarettes on the radio program Gunsmoke.

He and Yank Lawson formed the Lawson~Haggart Band, and together led the World’s Greatest Jazz Band from 1968 until 1978. Over the next two decades he appeared at jazz festivals. Double bassist, composer and arranger Bob Haggart, who was associated with dixieland and swing, transitioned on December 2, 1998 in Venice, Florida.

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