The recent death of Doris Day resulted in many articles that celebrated her life as a singer, movie star and humanitarian.

A great entertainer, she was worthy of all the praise. However, in most of the articles I read it was never mentioned how she got her start except one which said she had started out as a band singer in the early 1940s. None of the stories I saw mentioned that she was one of the great band singers of the period ranking with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Helen Forrest and Bob Eberle. None mentioned that she enjoyed two stints singing with Les Brown and His Band of Renown and was the vocalist on that band’s 1945 mega hit recording, a tune which still occupies a page in the “Great American Songbook,” Sentimental Journey.

It saddened me to find that Day’s beginnings as a band singer were barely mentioned in these stories following her death because while I was born as the swing era was ending, I have been a fan for many years beginning when my parents took me to see the “Glenn Miller Story” in 1955. Doris made some great movies but for me she will always be that girl from Cincinnati who sang with Les Brown.

The swing era hit its stride in 1935 when Benny Goodman and his orchestra caught the musical attention of young America playing a style of jazz called swing. Swing had its beginnings in the late 1920s and early 1930s with the bands of African American musicians like Duke Ellington, Jimmy Lunceford, Earl Hines and Fletcher Henderson. In fact, when Goodman became the “King of Swing” much of his band’s book was made up of music from the Fletcher Henderson band’s book that Henderson, in need of cash, had sold to Goodman. Because Black bands were rarely heard on the radio and the few recordings they made seldom came to the attention of white audiences, the Goodman band’s swing was totally new to white America.

Within a short time, jazz in the form of swing became America’s popular music. Soon bands playing swing could be heard on the radio at all hours of the day on sponsored programs or on sustaining broadcasts which were unsponsored broadcasts, usually late at night, which the major radio networks produced to provide programing for their affiliates. Big Band swing also dominated the recording industry where most records sold were big band swing.

The Big Band played in hotels ballrooms, dance halls like the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles, the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, the Meadowbrook in New Jersey and the Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle, New York. They were also featured in movie theaters in major cities and newsreels of the period showing teenagers dancing in the aisles to the music of Benny Goodman and his orchestra at New York’s Paramount Theater in 1937 are illustrative of the hold swing had on America in the late 1930s.

It was great while it lasted but when America entered World War II, the decline began as the draft began decimating bands as musicians were drafted and some like 38-year-old Glenn Miller, who was married with two children, volunteered. Another major cause of decline was the recording ban instigated by the American Federation of Musicians that began in July 1942 aimed at forcing record companies to pay record royalties to the musicians.

Decca and Capitol Records settled in the fall of 1943 but RCA and Columbia held out until November 1944. Also, a 30% wartime entertainment tax on the gross receipts of entertainment venues that presented live music and dancing made going to see a band more expensive and also forced ballrooms and hotels to feature smaller, less expensive groups.

By the time the bands began recording again, musical tastes were changing and singers like Sinatra, who had continued to record, had eclipsed the bands in popularity. By 1945 the bands no longer dominated radio, the recording industry or the live entrainment business. In 1946 several major bands disbanded including the Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman, and Gene Krupa bands and while Dorsey, Basie and Herman would be back it would be a different world.

Thankfully the big bands never disappeared completely. The Glenn Miller Band has been on the road playing three-hundred dates a year since 1956 and the “ghost” bands of Artie Shaw, Sammy Kaye, Harry James and others still appear. The music of the bands is still available on vinyl, cd’s and for download and I admit to currently owning between 400 and 500 CDs, vinyl LPs and 78s myself.

Now with Doris Day’s passing nearly all the personalities of the big band era are gone. But the next time you read about Doris Day or see one of her movies on TV, remember that she started as a band singer who hit the big time with Les Brown’s band and that all the fame she later aattained came because of her success as a band singer.

Thomas Kirkpatrick Sr. is a Silver Creek resident.