Happy Birthday, Ray Anthony!

The Trumpet Superstar at 102

Just a short “post” today about a remarkable man and musician who is hitting a major birthday this weekend.  The trumpeter and bandleader Ray Anthony was born January 20, 1922 in Bentleyville, Pennsylvania; thus, this Saturday he turns 102.  

Ray’s wiki entry informs us that he is the last surviving member of the Glenn Miller Orchestra; that’s kind of an understatement.  I wish that Phil Schaap were still around to help me with a statistic like this, but how many musicians from the swing era and WW2 are still around at all?  He’s also surely the last surviving major bandleader of the 1940s and ‘50s. 

I’ve only met Ray a few times in person, courtesy of the late Hugh Hefner, and I knew Hef thanks to two very close friends, the cinematic scholar, author, and researcher Richard Bann (whose book on Our Gang-The Little Rascals remains definitive) and Mark Cantor, jazz-on-film historian supreme.

Two years ago, in honor of Ray’s centennial birthday, Mark and I did a special Clip Joint celebrating his life and music. It lasted well over four hours and we barely got beyond the highlights.  Anyhow, thankfully I made a recording of that session. It’s so long I have to post it in two parts, but I’ll link to part one here.

So to commemorate this special birthday, here’s some essential viewing and listening in honor of Mr. Anthony:

Ray Anthony Plays Steve Allen.  The TV host and pianist’s prolificness as a songwriter was a frequent subject of humor, most notably by his successor on The Tonight Show, Johnny Carson.  But Allen was great at virtually everything he tried, especially writing music, whether full-out songs with lyrics, his one Broadway musical (Sophie), or jazz instrumentals.  This 1958 album showcases the best of both Allen and Anthony, whose great band of the period - very much in the groove of New Testament Count Basie and contemporaneous Harry James - has never been heard to better advantage.  This uT link gives you the whole album in one go.

In 1955, Hollywood released what might be the most prestigious, big-budget film ever made about jazz, Pete Kelly’s Blues, thanks to the tenacity of the star actor / writer / director Jack Webb.  The movie itself isn’t bad at all - read Kevin Whitehead’s book, Play the Way You Feel: The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film (2020) for some highly recommended, very trenchant analysis - but the TV special promoting it was even better. Webb took over an episode of The Colgate Comedy Hour (I’m not sure if it wasn’t already renamed The Colgate Variety Hour) and brought on both of the major singers featured in the film, Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald, as well as his hand-picked “dixieland” jazz band, billed as “Pete Kelly’s Big Seven.”  

And, as an added bonus, there’s Ray Anthony.  The duet he plays with Fitzgerald is one of the highlights of his career, and shows what a great blues player he was.  True, this is a rather souped-up Ray Heindorf / Hollywood soundtrack idea of the blues, but Ella and Ray do it beautifully just the same.  The first clip below is just the Ella-Ray sequence (in first rate quality, albeit with intrusive watermarking), the second is the mostly complete 46-minute broadcast, courtesy of our buddy Alan Eichler

Talk about a Hollywood blues!  Many of us Generation X-ers (I still cling to the definition) first discovered Ray Anthony and his music thanks to his unforgettable cameo in the classic movie comedy Frank Tashlin’s The Girl Can’t Help It (1956).  In the youtube edit below, Ray himself picked out a few clips, featuring himself, Jayne Mansfield, and Edmond O'Brien; he also includes a little of his home-movie footage of Marilyn Monroe at the end.  Perhaps not coincidentally, Ray was closely associated with all three of the blonde mega-bombshells of the Eisenhower era, Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, and Mamie Van Doren, who was Mrs. Ray Anthony from 1955 to 1961.  

Rocking around the Rockpile: Left, a German CD; center, a South African 45 RPM single cover; right, the 78 RPM single as originally issued in the UK.

But here’s the rub: the song is supposed to be a gag, and clearly, a spoof of the incoming rock and roll trend. But it’s actually the work of the great Bobby “Route 66” Troup, and it’s a pretty darn catchy tune - like the best of Ray Anthony’s big band boogie woogies of the period (like “Mr. Anthony’s Boogie”) and the lyrics are quite droll.  You can easily imagine Louis Jordan or Bill Haley playing and singing this.  In addition to Ray’s edit of the Girl Can’t Help It sequences, I’m also including the 1956 Capitol single, with a vocal by Med Flory (better known as a saxophonist, arranger, bandleader, and, later, an actor) - he’s as great, in his own way, as Edmund O’Brien. 

Lastly, I wanted to thank Ray for a birthday present that he just gave to me.  I acquired a really nice collection of big band posters originally used at a ballroom in Liberty, New Jersey, courtesy my friend Marty Adler and the Annual Jazz Record Collector’s Bash.  I have about ten of these, and they’re all beautiful, and, obviously, Ray is the only bandleader who is still with us.  So I shipped the poster off to Richard Bann, who very thoughtfully presented it to Ray - and got a picture of himself and Ray posing with the signed picture.  Dick shipped it back to me, and it’s now hanging on my wall of fame, alongside Billy May, Tex Beneke, Louis Prima, and the rest.  So thank you, Dick, thank you Mark, and most of all, thank you Ray Anthony, for a lifetime of great music.

Happy Birthday, Ray Anthony, and many more! 

On the left, Patricia (Ridgely) Storm, Ray, Richard Bann (holding poster), famed TV director Howard Storm, and Kathy McCabe. 

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Very Special thanks to the fabulous Ms. Elizabeth Zimmer, for expert proofreading of this page, and scanning for typos, mistakes, and other assorted boo-boos!

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