George Frayne (a/k/a Commander Cody) - RIP

When I was in my teens, tooling around town in my Plymouth Superbird one day, I was startled to hear an updated version of an old boogie-woogie standard (and favorite of mine) called "Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar" on the radio.  As a fan of big band music, boogie-woogie and rock and roll, it is difficult to convey how exciting this was to me, to encounter a tune which embodied elements of all three. Turned out it was by a group called Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, and the guy doing the growling vocals was a man named George Frayne, who headed up the band. I was saddened to hear today that George Frayne has died at age 77. Rock on, Commander, rock on...