Les and Larry Elgart

In the mid-1940s, Les and Larry started up their own ensemble, hiring Nelson Riddle, Bill Finegan and Ralph Flanagan to arrange tunes for them. Their ensemble was not successful, and after a few years, they scuttled the band and sold the arrangements they had commissioned to Tommy Dorsey. Both returned to sideman positions in various orchestras. In 1953, Larry met Charles Albertine and recorded two of his experimental compositions, "Impressions of Outer Space" and "Music for Barefoot Ballerinas". Released on 10" vinyl, these recordings became collector's items for fans of avant-garde jazz, but they were not commercially successful at the time. Larry and Albertine put together a more traditional ensemble and began recording them using precise microphone placements, producing what came to be known as the "Elgart sound". This proved to be very commercially successful, and Larry enjoyed a run of successful albums and singles in the 1950s. In 1954, the Elgarts left their permanent mark on music history in recording Albertine's "Bandstand Boogie," which became the theme for the popular TV series "Bandstand" on ABC-TV. Variations of the original surfaced as the show's theme in later years. Les and Larry reunited in 1963, but it would not last long. Les moved to Texas and performed for the rest of his life with The Les Elgart Orchestra while Larry continued to perform and record regularly for decades....WIKIPEDIA

VIDEO:  Les and Larry Elgart Orchestra Chicago 1965...

LES ELGART Birthday August 3

Les Elgart (August 3, 1917, New Haven, Connecticut-July 29, 1995, Dallas, Texas) was an American swing jazz bandleader and trumpeter.
Les Elgart began playing trumpet as a teenager, and by age 20 had landed professional gigs. In the 1940s he played in bands led by Raymond Scott, Charlie Spivak, and Harry James, and occasionally found himself in bands alongside brother Larry. Together they put together their own Les & Larry Elgart Ensemble in 1945, hiring Nelson Riddle, Ralph Flanagan, and Bill Finegan to do arrangements. The union was short-lived, however, due to the Musician's Union recording strike and the waning of swing jazz's popularity; they split in 1946.
In 1952, the pair reunited and released a substantial number of albums on Columbia Records, many to considerable sales success. Among their better-known tunes is "Bandstand Boogie", which was used by Dick Clark as the theme song for American Bandstand. Later in the 1950s Les moved away from performing to handling the band's business end, and had essentially stopped performing by the end of the decade.
In 1963, the pair reunited, hiring arrangers like Charles Albertine and Bobby Scott for material that tended more toward the contemporary easy listening sound. Les continued to work until his death from heart failure in Dallas, Texas in 1995.
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