Bobby Byrne and His New Orchestra - Movie Parade (1947)

"How Many Times" by Bobby Byrne and His Orchestra

From radio to television, Steve Allen hosted a version of The Steve Allen Show. His first namesake show on television was an 11 a.m. CBS program that premiered in 1950 and only lasted a couple of years. After cancellation, Steve Allen took the rest of 1952 and 1953 to further build his national reputation, jumping between networks, with other television hosting gigs and guest appearances. NBC finally gave him another shot at his The Steve Allen Show: this time as a comedy-driven talk show, Monday through Friday at 11:15 p.m. and only New York local. Bobby Byrne and His Orchestra performed as The Steve Allen Show's resident band.

Bobby Byrne formed his first orchestra at the young age of 21 under the mentorship of clarinetist and Big Band leader Jimmy Dorsey. As a teenager, Byrne's impressive trombone play got him his first professional work with the feuding Dorsey Brothers, filling in for Tommy Dorsey when he refused to perform with Jimmy. Bobby continued to play with Jimmy Dorsey after the two brothers finally split and formed their own competing Swing orchestras. Byrne would soon do the same and form his own orchestra with the Dorsey Brothers formula: danceable and brass-heavy arrangements, pleasant singers and with either the trombone or clarinet taking up solos.

Although the respective Dorseys and Glenn Miller would have greater success with popular Big Band (thanks to better arrangements, hotter jazz or more popular singers depending on who you listen to,) Bobby Byrne and His Orchestra is worth listening to simply for Bobby Byrne. His solos, often opening any particular recording, are catching in their precision and smooth timbre.

The Orchestra wouldn't make it through World War II as band members kept getting drafted and Bobby himself would join the Army Air Corps in 1943. He would reform the band in 1945 and record a handful more singles with Cosmo Records, but the lagging call for Big Bands (as smaller units became more popular and financially practical) saw Byrne have to rethink his model. He zagged by forming a bigger New Orchestra!—the difference being the addition of a string section. Bobby Byrne and His New Orchestra recorded a couple of singles and Byrne's debut album Movie Parade, a collection of movie themes, released in 1947 on Rainbow Records.

The arrangements are string forward and not too different from their original arrangements but for the odd presence of a trombone, either soloing the melody or overlaying the composition as an apparent afterthought.

Bobby Byrne would go back to the Big Band format in 1949 but this time in a lineup favoring woodwinds and the French Horn. He was finally out of the shadows of the Dorseys. It was Bobby Byrne and His Orchestra at their best and most unique! That is...according to the critics of the time; the best version of Bobby's Orchestra didn't record.

Here is the discography surrounding Bobby Byrne and His Orchestra:

How Many Times (1939 single)

One Cigarette for Two (1939 single)

Speaking of Heaven (1939 single)

Two Little Doodle Bugs (1939 single)

Barnyard Cakewalk (1940 single)

Busy as a Bee (I'm Buzz, Buzz, Buzzin') (1940 single)

'Deed I Do (1940 single)

Easy Does It (1940 single)

Maria Elena (1940 single)

Maybe (1940 single)

Orchids for Remembrance (1940 single)

The Right Time (1940 single)

Slow Freight (1940 single)

That's for Me (1940 single)

Trade Winds (1940 single)

When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano (1940 single)

Brazilian Nuts (1941 single)

Do I Worry? (1941 single)

Down, Down, Down (What a Song) (1941 single)

I Found a Million Dollar Baby (In a Five and Ten Cent Store) (1941 single)

I Guess I'll Have to Dream the Rest (1941 single)

If It's True (1941 single)

It's You Again (1941 single)

Music Makers (1941 single)

Two Hearts That Pass in the Night (1941 single)

You Walk By (1941 single)

The Angelus Rings Again (1942 single)

Now and Forever (1942 single)

Hymn to the Sun (1946 single)

Ridin' on a Summer Afternoon (1946 single)

Take Me Back to Little Rock, Arkansas (1946 single)

This Is Always (1946 single)

Take It Slow, Taste the Vanilla (1946 single)

Buttered Roll (1947 single with His New Orchestra)

Movie Parade

Upper Fifth Avenue (1947 single with His New Orchestra)

Movie Parade by Bobby Byrne and His New Orchestra

"Hey Bobby!" by Bobby Byrne and His Orchestra

"I Guess I'll Have to Dream the Rest" by Bobby Byrne and His Orchestra

Pass the Headphones!!

Steve Allen - Steve Allen at the Piano (1951)

"Where or When" by Steve Allen

Steve Allen on the piano accompanied Jack Kerouac's first recorded poetry. They first performed the material together at the Village Vanguard two years earlier, and they only seemed to impress Kerouac who liked how his poetry sounded overtop Allen's improvisations.

Steve Allen made a career of improvisations overtop the structure of his own hard work. Although well-settled in radio by the late forties, he took any job he could in the new medium of television. In the early fifties, his popular reputation grew in large part to the familiar manner and quick wit he'd use as a wrestling announcer, as a guest host on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts and as a regular panelist on What's My Line? Besides being a television personality, he was a songwriter and musician. He released his debut album Steve Allen at the Piano in 1951 on Columbia Records.

The album, made up of highly embellished popular tunes, shows off his skill and only occasionally his wit.

Here is the discography surrounding Steve Allen's debut album:

Steve Allen at the Piano

Cinderella (Bebop's Fable) (1953 single)

Jack and the Beanstalk (Bebop's Fable) (1953 single)

Bebop's Fables (1953 EP)

But Officer (1953 single)

Piano Tonight! (1956 EP)

Tonight! Starring Steve Allen - The First Episode

"Cinderella" and "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" by Steve Allen

Pass the Headphones!!

Jack Kerouac - Poetry for the Beat Generation (1959)

"October in the Railroad Earth" by Jack Kerouac with Steve Allen

Columbia University dropout Jack Kerouac was also there in the friendships that made up the Beat Generation. Despite the movement's diversity of style, experimentation and subject matter, Kerouac's auto-fictional book On the Road, with its jazz-inspired language and improvisatory writing style, became a testament to and textbook for the fifties subcultural and defined the Beats in the public imagination for generations. Accompanied by Steve Allen on the piano, Kerouac released Poetry for the Beat Generation in 1959 on Hanover Records.

Here is the discography surrounding Jack Kerouac's debut album:

Poetry for the Beat Generation

Jack Kerouac on The Steve Allen Show

"Charlie Parker" by Jack Kerouac with Steve Allen

Pass the Headphones!!