Sentimental Journey - Les Brown

Tenderly

Sentimental Journey
Les Brown and his Orchestra
Columbia CL 649
1955

From the back cover: Les Brown began his musical training when he was eight. His father, a baker with musical leanings of his own, started the boys off with piano studies, but Les never felt the keys come alive. He switched to the saxophone soon thereafter, inspired by, of all things, an amateur sax quartet, consisting of his father and three uncles. At odd moments he experimented with his father's sax, and was soon proficient enough to sit in with small orchestras around his home town. Progressing still further, he won a miscall scholarship to Ithaca Conservatory, where he studied harmony, arranging and related subjects, moving on to the New York Military Academy and Duke University.

At Duke he joined a campus group known as The Blue Devils, serving as arranger and sax man. The group loathed a summer engagement in New Jersey, and at is conclusion everyone went back to school except Les, who instead crossed the Hudson into New York City to break into the music business. For a year he scraped together a living making arrangements for publishers and orchestras, keeping foremost in this mind the idea of forming his own orchestra. At length he felt he knew enough about the business to take the great steep, the Band of Renown came into existence.

It was not an easy existence for a long time, but the band slowly and surely built its technique and along with it a growing list of fans. A four-week engagement in Chicago broke the ice, and the group began to be talked about and listened to as something more than just another good orchestra. Singed to record for Columbia Records, the orchestra increased its audience and was shortly on its way into the big time. When there was just one step left to the top, Les recorded Sentimental Journey, and that did it. The orchestra topped all the polls of the year, his records were thenceforth best sellers, and he moved into the select category where he has remained ever since.

Sentimental Journey
Twilight Time
Bizet Had His Day
A Good Man Is Hard To Find
Mexican Hat Dance
Leap Frog
Out Of Nowhere
Daybreak Serenade
Blue Danube
Floatin'
Carioca
Tenderly