Thursday, May 2, 2019

Happy Feet Friday

Here's the Will Bradley/Ray McKinley band with a jumpin' little rug-cutter entitled "Call Me a Taxi". The gravel-voiced gent singing the lyrics is co-leader Ray McKinley, who went on to become drummer and vocalist for Glenn Miller's Army Air force band. After the war, he headed up his own group for several years. In 1956, he became the leader of the revived Glenn Miller orchestra and led it until 1966.

3 comments:

Jonah said...

Those guys moved around more than present day baseball players. How is one supposed to know who's on first?

Paco said...

I guess one would have had to pick up a copy of Downbeat or Metronome every once in a while to find out who was playing for whom.

bruce said...

I used to read Downbeat from our town library and loved the blindfold tests where say they'd get Charlie Mingus and play him a bunch of records blindfolded and he'd identify the players and comment on their styles. I learned a lot from that and just lots of listening.

It was very competitive and only a few players rose to the very top by the 1950s, and they were always looking over their shoulder. I read Ronnie Scott said when he heard the young Tubby Hayes it was 'terrfying' because this kid was too good.