Harry Haag James (March 15, 1916 - July 5, 1983) was an American musician best known as a trumpet player leader who led the big band from 1939 to 1946. He destroyed his band for a short time in the year 1947 but shortly after he was reorganized and reactivated with his band from then until his death in 1983. He was especially well known among musicians for his astonishing technical skills and superior tone, and was especially influential on trumpet players coming from the late 1930s until the 1940s. He is also an actor in a number of films that usually showcase his band.
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Harry James was born in Albany, Georgia, son of Myrtle Maybelle (Stewart), an acrobat and rider, and Everett Robert James, a band leader in Circus Mighty Haag. According to Bill Sterns Sports Newsreel which aired on 12 September 1942, where James appeared, he was saved from being trampled, at the age of 6, by his mother's horse after performing with horses. At the age of 10 he took a trumpet lesson from his father, who put him on a strict daily exercise schedule. Each day, James is given a page to learn from Arban's book and is not allowed to follow other entertainment until he studies the page.
Maps Harry James
Careers
In 1924, his family settled in Beaumont, Texas. It was here in the early 1930s that James began playing in local dance bands when only 15 years old. James plays regularly with the band Herman Waldman, and at one appearance is known by the popular Ben Pollack nationally. In 1935 he joined the band Pollack, but in early 1937 left to join the orchestra of Benny Goodman, where he lived in 1938. He was nicknamed "The Hawk" early in his career for his ability to read visions. The common joke is that if a fly landed on his written music, Harry James will play it. Its low reach has a warmth associated with cornet and even flugelhorn, but this voice is not recorded to support James's high intelligent list.
With financial support from Goodman, in January 1939 James debuted his own big band in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but was not clicked until 1941 when he added the string section. This great band is known as Harry James and his Musical Maker. His hit "You Made Me Love You" was in the Top 10 for the week of 7 December 1941. He and his band featured in three movies, Private Buckaroo , Two Girls and a Sailor and < i> Spring in the Rockies . He toured with the band into the 1980s, and to this day Harry James Orchestra still exists, now headed by Fred Radke.
Bandleader
He was the first "band name" to employ Frank Sinatra's vocalist, in 1939, for $ 75 a week. James signed Sinatra for a one-year contract, where Sinatra worked seven months before heading off to sing for Tommy Dorsey. He wanted to change the name Sinatra to 'Frankie Satin' but Sinatra refused. Subsequent bands include drummer Buddy Rich. The main vocalist is Helen Forrest. Johnny MacAfee is featured on saxophone and vocals and Corky Corcoran is a talented young hero.
Radio
The orchestra replaced Glenn Miller in a program sponsored by Chesterfield Cigarettes in 1942, when Miller dispersed his orchestra to enter the Army. In 1945, James and his orchestra had a summer reimbursement program for Danny Kaye on CBS. He also led the orchestra for Call for Music, which was broadcast on CBS February 13, 1948 - April 16, 1948, and on NBC April 20, 1948 - June 29, 1948.
Movies
He plays a trumpet in the 1950 movie Young Man with a Horn, dubbed Kirk Douglas. In the album of the film, he supports Doris Day and the album is mapped in # 1. James's "I'm Beginning See the Light" record appears in the movie My Dog Skip (2000). The music is also featured in the film Woody Allen Hannah and His Sisters . James recorded many popular records and appeared in many Hollywood movies.
Style and music image
Influences
With James's childhood spent as a musician in a traveling circus, he takes on a flamboyant style that utilizes techniques such as heavy vibrato, half valve and lip glissandi, valves and lip trills, and valve tremolos. These techniques were very popular at the time where some people called it the "hot" jazz style, with the idol James Louis Armstrong giving examples of people using this technique, but then disliked in 1950 with the advent of "cool" jazz. instituted a strict training regime for James as a child, and this enabled James to achieve exceptional technical expertise in more classic techniques of reach, fingering and tonguing.Growing in the south, James also exposed blues music, which had an influence on his style. As James explained, "I grew up in Texas with blues - when I was eleven or twelve years old down in what they call 'barbecue rows' I used to sit in with people who have broken barriers on their guitars, playing blues; that's all we know. "Louis Armstrong, after hearing Harry James perform solo on several numbers, while at Benny Goodman, a fighter with his friend Lionel Hampton, called out to Hampton in colloquial," The white boy - he's playing like a jig! "
Move toward pop
After James left the band Benny Goodman in 1939 to form his own band, he soon discovered that leading a viable commercial music group requires a broader skill than is needed to become a talented musician playing in other people's bands. James's band was in financial trouble, and it was getting harder for James to make paychecks and keep the band together. In 1940, James lost his contract with Columbia Records (he returned in 1941), and Frank Sinatra left the band in January. Not long after that, James made an important decision: he would adopt a "sweet" style that added strings to the band, and the band would give the tone more of a "pop" vein and less true to his jazz. root. From a commercial standpoint, the decision was paying off - James soon enjoyed a string of topping charts that gave him commercial success for his band. Indeed, the US Treasury report released in 1945 listed Harry James and Betty Grable as the highest paid pairs in the country.
What works well commercially with the public, however, has the opposite effect on those who are in the circle of jazz critics. And Morgenstern, a respected critic and Director of the Institute for Jazz Studies, called the 1941 release "You Made Me Love You" "notes that jazz critics never forgave Harry James for recording." With James continuing to use his "hot" jazz style on pop hits throughout the 1940s, his game is often labeled as "schmaltzy" and dissolved by critics, although the radio discs of this period demonstrate James's constant commitment to jazz. Modern arrangements of Neal Hefti, Frank Devenport, Johnny Richards, and Jimmy Mundy often inspired the musicians, and when the swing passed through the swing in the late 1940s, James was surprisingly open to his influence.
Refocus
After sliding in the mid-1950s, James made a full re-evaluation of where he was headed for his musical career. Count Basie gave a boost by making a significant comeback with the newly formed "16 Men Swinging" band, and James wanted a band with a determined Basie spice. James signed a contract with Capitol Records in 1955, and two years later, after releasing a new studio version of many previously released songs from Columbia, James recorded ten new songs for an album titled Wild About Harry! . The album was the first in a series released on Capitol, and continued later on MGM, a Basie style representative adopted by James during this period, with some arrangements provided by former Basie saxophone and arranger Ernie Wilkins, whom James leased for his own band.
Even after he returned to a more jazz-oriented release in the late 1950s and entered the 1960s, James never fully gained support with jazz critics during his lifetime. However, more recent reissues, such as the Capitol Vaults Jazz Series disc: Gene Krupa and Harry James in 2012, have encouraged a more favorable new analysis of James's work. In 2014, Marc Myers of JazzWax commented, "[James] the mid-1940s band was more modern than most majors, and in 1949 he led one of the best bands of the year." And on James's release from 1958-1961, Myers noted, "The James bands during this period have been defeated by bands led by Basie, Maynard Ferguson and Stan Kenton.While each presented its own brand of grandeur, James produced the songs brilliant that is more consistent than the others... almost everything James records during this period is an uncompromising and swinging gem. "
Response to criticism
While in London, Harry James conducted an interview with British jazz critic Steve Voce. When Voce asks him if the biggest audience is for the commercial number he has recorded, he looks rough. James replied, "It depends on who you are playing in. If you're playing for jazz audiences, I'm pretty sure that some of the jazz stuff we do will be much more popular than 'Sleepy Lagoon', and if we play in the country club or Vegas, where we have many, many kinds of people, then I am sure that 'Sleepy Lagoon' will be more popular at any given time.But I am really confused about this people talking about commercial songs, because for me, if you are going to be commercial, you'll stand in your head and make funny noises and do silly things I do not think we ever recorded or played one song I do not really like to play or else I will not play it. "
Personal life
James married three times. She married singer Louise Tobin on May 4, 1935, and they had two children, Harry James and Tim James. They divorced in 1943. That same year, she married actress Betty Grable. They had two daughters, Victoria Elizabeth (born 1944) and Jessica (born 1947), before divorcing in 1965. James married for the third time on December 27, 1967, to Las Vegas's Las Vegas viewer Joan Boyd, who was to be divorced in March 1970. Contrary to some statements, she is not married for the fourth time. He has five children (two by Tobin, two by Grable, one by Boyd) and (at his death) 16 grandchildren.
James has several racehorse racing winners such as the California Breeders' Champion Stakes (1951) and San Vicente Stakes (1954). He is also a founding investor at Atlantic City Race Course. His knowledge of horse racing was shown during his 1958 performance at The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour titled "Lucy Wins A Racehorse".
Last year
In 1983, James, a heavy smoker, was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer, but he continued to work, playing his last professional job on June 26, 1983, in Los Angeles, just nine days before his death in Las Vegas, Nevada. The work became his last appearance with Harry James Orchestra. Harry James died July 5, 1983 at the age of 67.
He died exactly 40 years after his marriage to Betty Grable (July 5, 1943), which was buried exactly 30 years after that date (July 5, 1973). Frank Sinatra gave a speech at his funeral, held in Las Vegas.
Movieography
Discography
Harry James's discography includes 30 studio albums, 47 EPs, three soundtracks/stage and screen albums, and numerous live albums and compilation albums, along with contributions as sideman and performances with other musicians. James released over 200 singles during his career, with nine songs reaching number one, 32 in the top ten, and 70 in the top 100 on the US pop charts, as well as seven charts on the US R & B.
- Notes
Selected singles
Selected albums
Awards
Grammy Hall of Fame
In 2016, two recordings of Harry James have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, a special Grammy award founded in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old, and who have "qualitative or historical significance."
Reader poll
Metronome magazine conducts an annual reader's poll for its readers to choose who they consider to be top jazz musicians on every instrument for this year. The winners are invited to join the ensemble known as the Metronome All-Stars collected for studio recording. The studio sessions were held in 1939-42, 1946-53, and 1956, and typically produced two tracks that allowed each participant to have a solo career for a choir. Harry James was chosen to play the trumpet with the Metronome All-Stars for 1939, 1940 and 1941.
In a similar annual poll conducted by Downbeat magazine, James was chosen by Downbeat readers as the best trumpet instrumentalist for 1937, 1938 and 1939, and as a favorite soloist for 1942.
Awards and inductions
For his contribution to the film industry, on February 8, 1960 Harry James was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6683 Hollywood Blvd.
In 1983, James was inducted into the Big Band and the Jazz Hall of Fame.
Pedagogical writing
- Harry James Studies & amp; Improvisation for Trumpet, Harry James, ed. Elmer F. Gottschalk, New York: Robbins Music, 1939
- Harry James Trumpet Method, Harry James, Everett James, ed. Jay Arnold, New York: Robbins Music, 1941
See also
- Al Lerner (composer)
- Dick Haymes
- Jack Gardner
References
External links
- The Harry James Orchestra - Official Site
- Harry James in IMDb
- Harry James in the Search of the Mausoleum
- Harry James and his big band
- Solid! - Harry James
- - The Man With The Horn - A Harry James Biography
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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