From the Record Shelves #310

Little Did I Know

LP Hep 1010

Under the leadership of saxophone player Glenn Gray and with the aid of good management, the Casa Loma Orchestra had success in the 30’s. Here, around the turn of the decade from the 20s, they appear as a mixture of a dance band and an early swing orchestra with riff-based tunes.

I have chosen a sentimental dance number. This is the way the band sounded when the arranger Bill Challis made an attempt to make his friend Bix Beiderbecke work again. Unfortunately, the band couldn’t afford to have a cornet solo player that was not able to play a part in the arranged sections. There is some solo space after the vocal, filled out by trumpet player Dub Shoffner, who admired Bix, and it’s intriguing to think that there could have been a couple of records with the legendary man himself.

In the Bix Beiderbecke story with its unhappy ending, Shoffner became infamous for sharing a jug or two with his idol and thus definitely putting an end to the cooperation between a man who once again had fallen off the wagon and an orchestra in need of discipline.

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