Tex Beneke

Gordon Lee " Tex" Beneke ( born February 12, 1914 in Fort Worth, Texas; † 30 May 2000 Costa Mesa, California ) was an American jazz saxophonist and singer, known as a member of Glenn Miller 's big band and after whose death conductor of his own bands, who used Miller's music.

Life and work

From 1935 to 1937 he played with the orchestra of Ben Young and from 1938 in the big band of Glenn Miller, where he was one of the most famous soloists and as a singer occurred ( " Chattanooga Choo Choo ", " I've got a girl in Kalamazoo "). He plays with the Glenn Miller Orchestra in the films " Sun Valley Serenade" (1941 ) and " Orchestra Wives" (1942 ). When Glenn Miller 1942, his band broke up, to go on with his Army Air Force band, he played with Horace Heidt initially and Jan Savitt and then headed to a 1945 Navy Band in Oklahoma. 1946 asked him the widow of Glenn Miller to take over the management of the still very popular band ( 19 musicians and until 1948 also an additional string section ). His deliberate search for an own profile meant that Beneke band, however, further and further from the musical conception of the heirs Miller. In particular, the installation of new arrangements, inter alia, by Henry Mancini and Neal Hefti, which were based closely on the Bebop, caused conflicts.

In 1950, escalated the dispute between Beneke and the Miller heirs and led to a separation. The Miller heirs also that he was not included in the Hollywood movie The Glenn Miller Story (1954 ) claimed. Beneke then founded his own orchestra, with which he played Glenn Miller's music or music in the style of Glenn Miller. He also played in the 1960s with various Glenn Miller Reunions (for example, with the former Miller singers Ray Eberle and Paula Kelly ) and sometimes in Disneyland. With a new orchestra, he resigned from the 1970s to the 1990s. Mid-1990s, he had a stroke and was on the saxophone, but was further bandleader and singer.

He was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1996. He died in 2000 in his home in Costa Mesa.