Moonlight Serenade - Tex Beneke

 

Poinciana

Moonlight Serenade

Tex Beneke and His Orchestra 

RCA Tandem CAL-491

1959

From the back cover: "Tex Beneke is the band leader who doesn't walk alone," a Down Beat reviewer wrote in the late Forties. Those were the days when Tex had been entrusted with the invaluable musical library of Glenn Miller and was attempting to carry on in the Miller tradition.

"At every step he is both aided and hemmed in by the shadow of Glenn Miller," the Down Beat commentator continued. "The Miller library and reputation gave him a boost such as few new leaders can hope for. But at the same time his audiences expect him to stay in the Miller tradition which so far as they are concerned wis completely minded several years ago and they've got the wax to prove it."

Thi spas a problem that continued to plague Beneke as long as he led the Miller orchestra. No matter what he did, he was almost bound to be second-guessed by self-confident Glenn Miller fans. One of Tex's innovation was the addition of a penman sting section to the band in 1946 – this was an innovation in terms of the Miller tradition although at the time almost every big band was carrying a string section of some sort. After three years, however, he dropped the section.

"People kept telling me to get back to Miller," Tex said when he did this. "What they meant was, 'Get rid of the strings.' Actually Glenn would have had strings. He planned to use them (he actually did use them in his Air Force Band) and that's why I used them. Besides, nobody can say what Glenn would have ben doing today. He might have been playing bop."

Tex finally solved this vexing problem by dropping theMiller library and style completely and stringing out on his own. The Beneke performances gathered her are from the period just before he declared his independence from the Miller school. You'll notice the billing of the band shows him edging away from Miller – some of the selections (the earlier ones) are by "Tex Beneke with the Miller Orchestra" when the later ones are simply by "Tex Beneke and his Orchestra." (See the labels on this disc).

The amiable Beneke singing and saxophone styles which brought him his first fame with Glenn Miller's orchestra are, as his nickname suggest, a genuine product of a Texas boyhood. When he was born in Forth Worth he was equipped with a set of perfectly ousel given names (Gordon Lee) but his down-home qualities soon had him tabbed as "Tex" and Gordon and Lee were forgotten by all but close relatives. He started playing professionally when he was a teenager, touring with a local band. In 1937, when Miller was struggling to keep together his fist band, Tex was playing with Ben Young's band which worked primarily in the Midwest, Glenn gave up on this first band after a year of effort and in 1938, keeping only three men from the old group, he set out to build a new band.

Day by day, Glenn went through a talent-screening process, listening and asking question wherever musicians gathered together. Gene Krupa, who had just left Benny Goodman, was also putting a new band together at that time and Glenn dropped in at a Krupa rehearsal to see if anybody had any suggestions for musicians he might use. Two of Krupa's men, Dave Schultz an d Claude Lakey, urged him to hear a saxophonist who was in Detroit with Ben Young's band. This was Miller's introducton to Beneke. He immediately phone Tex and within a couple of weeks Tex was in New York for his first meeting with Glenn. Leonard Feather has reported what happened at this encounter:

"Glenn told Tex he could oknlyoay the men $50 a week. With a straight face, Tex said, 'I want to be the highest paid man in the band. Give me $52.50.' Glenn went along with the gag, little dreaming that later it would be taken serious and resented  by some of the other men.

Tex soon proved he was worth the extra $2.50 for he provided the new Miller band with novelty vocals and a swinging tenor saxophone which helped balance the rich, smooth-voiced approach of much of the Miller material.

 Within short order Tex became, next to Glenn, the best-known personality in the most popular band in the country – a band whose popularity never flagged over all the passing years.

When Miller broke up his civilian band and enlisted in the Air Force, Tex toured for a while with his vocal colleagues in the Miller band, Marion Hutton and the Modernizes. But soon he enlisted in the Navy where he was in charge of a pair of service bands. Tex, who has been on the road living out of an automobile almost constantly for more than twenty years, remembers this as "a short, blissful period... stations in one place."

Since he left the service, Tex has gone back to steady touring, first with the Miller-based band and in recent years with a band that is completely Beneki-oriented. In this collection there are direct reflection of the old Glenn Miller band (in both Moonlight Serenade and Sunrise Serenade) and Bill Finegan's arrangement of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Tex recalls his days as a Millerite on Give Me Five Minuets More while the rest of the sections show Tex's approach to the preservation of the Miller style with such successors to Ray Eberle and the Modernaires as deep-voiced Glenn Douglas, Gary Stevens, The Mello Larks and The Moonlight Serenaders. It's a serenading style that seem destine to last as long as there's moonlight – Notes by Frank Talmadge

From Billboard - May 18, 1959: Here's a solid sales item for the low-priced market. Tex Beneke offers a group of standards – some in the Glenn Miller tradition – "Sunrise Serenade," "Moonlight Serenade" – others in a more personalized "Beneke manner." Vocals by Beneke, Garry Stevens and the Mello Larks.

Sunrise Serenade

Give Me Five Minutes More

Stormy Weather

Anniversary Song

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

They Can't Take That Away From Me

Look For The Sliver Lining

Poinciana (Song Of The Tree)

My Young Foolish Heart

Moonlight Serenade