George Spink Los Angeles Read My Bio

I hope you are enjoying your visit to Tuxedo Junction. As you already know, there is much to read and even more to hear and view on this web site.

When I rebuilt Tuxedo Junction in April and May 2008, one of my goals was to share with you the fine articles written my members of my two blogs, The Palomar and George's Blog. Most of these articles pertain to big band music. A few do not, but I have enjoyed them and I hope you will, too.

I've also included some of my own articles about big band music that I wrote for the former Chicago Daily News, the Chicago Sun-Times, and Chicago Magazine between 1977 and 1985. I have edited and updated them for Tuxedo Junction. These were on the original version of Tuxedo Junction. Moreover, I am including a number of other articles that I wrote for Tuxedo Junction between the time I launched it in October 2000 and when I began rebuilding it in April 2008.

I will add future articles by members of The Palomar and George's Blog and by myself from time to time in the future. Click any of the blue buttons on the left to read articles by others.

Click any of the links below to read my own articles. You will be taken to a new web page for each article. Click on the button in the sidebar to return to this web page (or use your browser's Back button).

To return to the rest of Tuxedo Junction, simply click on the "Welcome" button at the top of the sidebar of this and the other Author pages.

Cordially,

.

George Spink
Los Angeles
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Yesterday's Gardenias - This article about my love of big band music appeared in the November 1977 issue of Chicago Magazine. Enjoy the beautiful graphics by Ross and Harvey Graphics.

A Tale of Two Collectors - A look back at my early years in the 1940's when I listened to big band remotes on my bedside Hallicrafter shortwave radio and to my Aunt Ruth's big band records when she played them on her RCA Victor radio-phonograph console in our living room.

Count Basie (Book Review) - During the last decade of his life, Count Basie managed to tape his recollections while swingin’ with his band, maintaining—as always—a hectic schedule of international touring. Albert Murray had Basie's taped recollections transcribed and used them in his book, Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie.As told to Albert Murray. Random House.

Blues for Big John's - In the mid-1960's, Chicago blues club Big John's was the crucible for the urban blues scene across America and beyond. The list of artists who performed at Big John's reads like a blues Who's Who? during the last third of the 20th Century: Paul Butterfield and Mike Bloomfield, Muddy Waters, Barry Goldberg and Steve Miller, Howlin' Wolf, Corky Siegel and Jim Schwall, Otis Rush, Charlie Musselwhite, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, and others. Big John's was one joint that was always jumpin'.... And, fresh out of college, I had the good fortune to work there from late 1964 until it was closed by the powers that be in Sepember 1966.

Les Brown and His Band of Renown - Les Brown (1912-2001) knew how to play great music and entertain those who came to hear his terrific orchestra. That he did this longer than anyone else was a wonderful achievement. Fortunately, his son, Les Brown, Jr., is continuing this fine tradition.

Benny Carter - A Musician's Musician - Benny Carter died in Los Angeles on July 12, 2003. He would have turned 96 the following month. For seven decades, he was the best, playing alto saxophone and trumpet. Carter was highly regarded as a musician, composer, arranger, and orchestra leader. He was indeed a musician's musician.

Chicago - Jazz continues to thrive in my hometown, Chicago, where it has flourished since the 1920's. Read about the 1979 Chicago Jazz Festival, which launched an annual celebration of Chicago jazz that continues to this day. Read about my best friend, jazz musician and jazz writer Don DeMicheal, who died before his time a quarter of a century ago. Read my reviews of two books about Louis Armstrong in Chicago in the 1920's and what he and other black musicians endured in Chicago during the 1920's and 1930's.This page also has recent color photos of the greatest city in America -- Chicago, my hometown!

Tommy Dorsey - Tommy and his band turned out one hit after another, often rivaling and sometimes surpassing Glenn Miller's on Your Hit Parade. Among Tommy's biggest hits were Sy Oliver's originals, "Well, Git It!" and "Yes, Indeed!" and Sy's arrangements of "Swanee River" and "Deep River," plus many of Frank Sinatra's numbers, including "I'll Never Smile Again," "This Love Of Mine," 'There Are Such Things," and "Without A Song," Jo Stafford's "Embraceable You" and "For You," and a string of hits by Jo Stafford and The Pied Pipers.

Duke Ellington (Book Review) - Duke Ellington’s private life might be none of our business, but our curiosity about him is insatiable. It seems that the more we know about a great artist, the better we understand why we ordinary folk are different. Now we can see the Duke through the eyes of his only child, Mercer, with a little help from Stanley Dance, Duke’s friend and confidant for some four decades. Dance undoubtedly helped Mercer reconstruct portions of Duke’s career, but this is really Mercer’s book because what leaps off almost every page is his endless devotion to his father.

Benny Goodman Launches Swing Era in Chicago - Benny Goodman was not the King of Swing when he brought his big band to the Urban Room in the Congress Hotel in Chicago on Nov. 6, 1935. But by the end of that engagement six months later, the 26-year-old, Chicago-born bandleader had ascended to the throne. There was little doubt that something momentous had happened in the Urban Room.

Lionel Hampton (1908 - 2002) - Hamp was one of the last big band leaders from the Swing Era still in our midst. He led one of the most exciting big bands around for decades. Everyone admired Hamp's incredible talent and musicianship. He also was admired for being such a fine person. He died on Saturday, Aug. 31, 2002 in New York City. He was 94. Throughout his life, Hamp entertained jazz and big band fans all over the world. He was one in a million.

Jive Humor - There is no form of humor more sardonic, nitrous, or hep than musicians' humor. Enjoy dozens of musicians' jokes. Examples:

• Never recommend anyone who plays better than you.

• Always suck up. (Leaders, bartenders, bride and/or groom, management, etc.)

• If you don't know it, play harmony.

• Double book, then choose.

Injun Summer - On the Sunday before Halloween, the Chicago Tribune always ran "Injun Summer" by John T. McCutcheon on the front cover of their Magazine section. Every year. The Trib began doing so in 1907. Many other newspapers around the company ran Injun Summer as well. My father read "Injun Summer" to me every autumn when I was a boy, just as his father had read it to him when he was a boy growing up in the next town over, Riverside. I have posted "Injun Summer" here for you to enjoy and to share with your loved ones, wherever you live.... But, the Trib stopped doing so a few years ago. Why? One Tribune Magazine staff member told me that they did not want to offend Native Americans. Even so, the Trib will be happy to sell you a poster of it from the Tribune Store.

Spike Jones - During the 1940's and into the 1950's, Spike Jones led a band of first-rate musicians, dressed them in brightly colored suits with large plaid squares or stripes, gave them derbies and other hats, and had them play some of the funniest music ever recorded or broadcast. Everyone loved them! Normally romantic ballads and classical works were skewered with cowbells, gunshots, whistles, and hysterically funny vocals.

Stan Kenton: Artistry in Rhythm - It is hard for me to believe that 30 years have passed since I last saw the Kenton band in person -- and even harder, because I often listen to his albums and recall how wonderful this band was in person. Some of my favorite Kenton albums are the ones he recorded in the early 1940's. But I've liked Kenton from other decades, too, because in the best tradition of jazz, he was always changing his arrangements to dovetail with the musicians in his band at any given time. Like Woody Herman, Kenton attracted the finest young musicians around. In the 1960's and 1970's, these musicians were throroughly schooled in music at North Texas State University, Julliard, the Eastman School of Music, and a few other fine instiutions.

Syd Lawrence: The Legend Lives On - I have been following Syd Lawrence and His Orchestra since the early 1970s, when I read about them in a Glenn Miller fan magazine published in the United Kingdom. Whether they are playing music in the Miller mood, arrangements of other big band hits, or songs arranged specifically for their orchestra, this is not only "the best big band in the land," as their announcer likes to say, but one of the best big bands in the world.

Henry Mancini/Peter Gunn - Do you remember Peter Gunn? It was a film-noir television detective series in black-and-white that ran from 1958 to 1961 -- a half-hour show that carried a lot of punch. Actor Craig Stevens played Peter Gunn, a debonair private investigator who wore Brooks Brothers suits. He hung out at a jazz club named Mother's where his girlfriend, Edie Hart (played by the beautiful actress Lola Albright) sang with a small jazz group. Produced by Blake Edwards, Peter Gunn featured jazz from the beginning to the end of each show, or as we would later say, "wall-to-wall jazz.". The music was written and arranged by Henry Mancini, whose two Peter Gunn soundtrack albums earned him Grammy Awards. The music from Peter Gunn sounds as fresh and exciting to me today as it did a half century ago.

The Johnny Mann Singers - Do you know the name Johnny Mann? Have you heard of the Johnny Mann Singers? I bet you have, even though the name might not ring a bell. Visit our Johnny Mann Singers web page to learn about them and enjoy their great music!

Glenn Miller: Music in the Miller Mood - This article is based on a series that I wrote for the Show section of The Chicago Sun-Times. The series ran over a four-day period spanning Christmas 1984, commemorating the 40th anniversary of Glenn Miller's tragic disappearance. New paragraphs were added to this web page in December 2000 to inform visitors about music in the Miller mood as we entered the 21st Century. Playlists and videos were added in May 2008.

"New York, New York" - Confetti blankets the cheering crowds along the streets of Manhattan on V-J Day while Jimmy Doyle (Robert De Niro) slowly makes his way. Glenn Miller's Pennsylvania 6-5000 becomes barely audible above the victory cries, paper horns and noisemakers. Jimmy pauses underneath a large, slanting, reddish-pink neon arrow pointing down at him as the camera zooms and focuses on him....

George Shearing - One evening in the autumn of 1977, George Shearing reminisced with me about his early days in New York, where he emigrated from his native London in 1947. The two creators of bebop, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, dominated the jazz scene. Shearing made nightly visits to all the jazz clubs on 52d Street and in Harlem. Before long, he was working with house trios at the Three Deuces, eventually with Oscar Pettiford and J.C. Heard. In 1949, Shearing formed his first quintet, which took the jazz world by surprise and brought him to national attention. The Shearing sound is easily identifiable, emphasizing clear melodic lines, rich harmonies and strong bebop influences. George Shearing and His Quintet performed around the United States and abroad for the next quarter century, developing loyal fans wherever he appeared. For the past three decades, however, Shearing has preferred to perform either solo or with a bassist, sometimes with vocalists such as Mel Tormé or Joe Williams, and sometimes with The Boston Pops or other orchestras.

I am a writer from Chicago now living in Los Angeles. I left Chicago in 1986 for California, settling in Los Angeles in November 1990, but I still think of Chicago as my home.

Is that silly? I don't know. I was born and raised in Berwyn, Illinois, a suburb seven miles west of downtown Chicago. That was my home until 1962, when my mother and I sold our house to reduce our monthly expenses. My father died in January 1957 from Hodgkins Disease; he was only 46 years old. When we sold our house, I was in college. My mother moved to Santa Barbara in late 1963 to live near her brothers and sisters, most of whom moved there in the 1950's. In late 1964, after I finished college, I settled in the Old Town Neighborhood two miles north of downtown Chicago. I lived in Old Town for most of the next two decades until I left for California in 1986.

I returned to Chicago for a week in September 2003 and for a weekend in June 2004 for the 50th Reunion of my eighth grade class at St. Leonard's in Berwyn. It was great to see my grammar school classmates again! In 2003, I even visited our old family home, thanks to the kindness of its current owner. Like my own father did in the late 1940's and 1950's, the current owner renovated and remodeled it, making our old home look better than ever! My dad would have admired his craftsmanship.... Read more