String of Pearls - rants & raves - craigslist (2024)

Bobby Hackett

"A String Of Pearls ... and Other Great Songs Made Great by The Glenn Miller Orchestra in a Setting of Wall-To-Wall Strings And Brass"

https://youtu.be/5QojL5xc5bM

In the summer of 1941, a handsome young musician with a thin
mustache, carrying both a cornet case and a guitar case, climbed aboard
the Glenn Miller band bus. It was, of course, Bobby Hackett. He was
joining the band to succeed Modernaires singer Bill Conway in the
guitar chair of the Miller rhythm section.
Hackett stayed with the Miller band until Glenn broke it up in the fall
of 1942 to become a major in the Special Services section of the U.S.
Army Air Corps.
It was a wonderful treat for listeners and dancers whenever Bobby
laid down his guitar, picked up his cornet, and stood up in the rhythm
section to play one of his shimmering solos. Two of the selections on
this recording, in fact, were recorded by Bobby with the Miller band.
His solo on A String of Pearls became a Swing-Era classic. And his
solo on the original recording of Rhapsody in Blue was the highlight of
that Miller disc.
Both of those Miller favorites are in this album, performed by Bobby
with Wall-to-Wall Strings and Brass. A String of Pearls, however,
features Bobby literally turning around his famous solo. Instead of the
ascending figures so familiar to two decades of Miller fans, Bobby plays
a pixie-ish (Bix-ish) variation with descending figures.
And even though the arrangements used here were by another Miller
alumnus, George Williams, they are not duplicates of the originals. But
a remarkable flavor of the Miller style remains. There's been no attempt
to re-create that high-blown reed sound of the Miller sax section, but
the combination of Bobby's horn and the Wall-to-Wall Strings and
Brass captures the essence of the Miller style.
The recording was a happy circ*mstance. Bobby was in London in
April of 1965 appearing with Tony Bennett at the Palladium. Williams
was available for the arranging chores. And conductor Johnnie Spence
was able to assume the conducting role. More than forty of London's
finest musicians were summoned for the recording sessions at quaint
old Olympia Sound Studios. On hand were thirteen top brass players,
divided into three choirs: four trumpets, four trombones, four French
horns-with a tuba thrown in for bottom. Fanned out across the studio
floor were six string players, also divided into three choirs, including
violins, violas, cellos and basses. A rhythm section and Mr. Hackett
rounded out the players.
The material chosen for the date was, with one exception, quite
closely identified with Glenn Miller. The exception was Poor Butterfly,
which Bobby had liked for a long time and which he had a yen to record.
It's performed with the Wall-to-Wall-String-and-Brass sound here, and
see for yourself if there isn't a touch of the Miller about it.
Some of the program included tunes that Miller never recorded but
that were in his dance book. Like all of the most popular band leaders
of the 1930's and 1940's, Glenn Miller had a book of material that was
his own; that is, the tunes were identified with his band, like In the
Mood and A String of Pearls and Moonlight Serenade, among others.
But he also had arrangements of current pop tunes that other bands
or singers had made popular, and longtime standards and show tunes.
Bobby shuffles them and deals them with that ringing, bell-like sound
so characteristically his own. Indeed, there are moments, such as those
on Adios and on A String of Pearls, when his cornet produces a sound
much like what you'd expect if a brawny smith of taste were working
on a silver anvil. The notes he plays seem to be tapped out firmly, and
they shimmer with a life of their own before they fade away.
Bobby Hackett has always been among the most tasteful of musicians,
jazz or non-jazz. This album is a lovely demonstration of his
taste as a soloist and is, in turn, a tribute to the taste of Glenn Miller. It
was Miller, after all, who hired Bobby to play rhythm guitar until those
moments when a sound of extraordinary beauty was needed.
That's when Bobby stood up. Like right here.

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Robert Leo Hackett (January 31, 1915 – June 7, 1976) was a versatile American jazz musician who played swing music, Dixieland jazz and mood music, now called easy listening, on trumpet, cornet, and guitar. He played Swing with the bands of Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he played Dixieland music from the 1930s into the 1970s in a variety of groups with many of the major figures in the field, and he was a featured soloist on the first ten of the numerous Jackie Gleason mood music albums during the 1950s.

Bobby Hackett was born in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. his father was a blacksmith, his mother a housewife. Because his family was poor, with nine children, he quit school at 14 to play guitar and violin in a band in a local Chinese restaurant. After he saw Louis Armstrong perform, he learned to play the cornet and trumpet. "I've never been the same since," he told long-time New Yorker jazz critic Whitney Balliett in 1969. ... -- Wikipedia

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And there's even MORE More more Great Instrumental Music (for you to use to live your best life):

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Great Instrumental Music? Why post about G.I.M.? ... To share the JOY. Here's the story. Now, I do listen to songs with words sung by singers, sometimes. But I often find that words in song lyrics can be distracting. And most of the lyrics are dispensable; it's no great loss if you don't hear them. So, I prefer real musical instruments over electronic instruments, for the most part. Electronic keyboards and drum machines just don't sound good. They're like food out of a vending machine compared with real food made in a real kitchen. I think autotune and digital editing are more likely to make music worse than make it better. And so, therefore, I find the recordings of the LP era (basically the mid- to late-1900s) are just right. Great melodies, played by real musicians on real instruments, in real time and space. Music that actually existed as real sound, not just files in an electronic data base. Very little electronics or digital manipulation. I like to listen to them as I'm working (less distracting than singers singing songs), I like to listen to them in the evening when I'm relaxing. It's great. It's instrumental. It's music. Great Instrumental Music ... I invite you to share the joy, the pleasure, the rewards ... Won't you join me? (It's for everybody.)

Thank you for your attention to Great Instrumental Music.