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Glen Gray & The Casa Loma Orchestra
Biography
Looked at today, Glen Gray seems a strange, almost otherworldly musical figure -- the photographs of a slim, elegant-looking gentleman with a mustache, in white tie and black dinner jacket, baton held awkwardly in his right hand, evoke another time and place, not only from our own age but also from any setting and image that we normally associate with jazz. He wasn't much of a bandleader, barely able to look like he was keeping time; and as a musician -- specifically a reedman -- he was adequate, but no threat to Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, or Jimmy Dorsey.

And yet, Gray and the band he led, called the Casa Loma Orchestra, ran with the best of them. In the years before Benny Goodman came to define swing music, Gray and his orchestra were among the top swing outfits in the country, and even after the ascent of Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Harry James, and others, Gray still had the allegiance of a major part of the listening public, and the members of his group could hold their heads up in any of that company. And Gray's reputation lasted well past the big-band era, so that in the late '50s he was still fulfilling a lingering demand for the Casa Loma Orchestra's work.
Selected Discography