BIG NAME BIG BANDS PLAYED KINGSPORT IN THE 40s -

ALSO SMALL NAME BIG BANDS

Big bands were all the rage in the thirties and forties, traveling orchestras that crisscrossed the country by bus, playing hotel ballrooms, supper clubs, and, on occasion, Kingsport’s Civic Auditorium.

Scores of these bands played at the Civic Auditorium over the years.

Ten or so years ago I started compiling a list for a future column.

My column ended before my list did.

Kingsport couples had the opportunity to swing and sway to many of the big names – Dorsey, Duke, etc. – but not to Sammy Kaye, whose band’s slogan was “Swing and sway with Sammy Kaye.”

Other big bands who played in Kingsport have faded into obscurity.

Here is my list:

Barney Rapp and His New Englanders Orchestra

Dick Jones and His Commanders (From Knoxville – played the Civic Auditorium on New Years Eve 1945)

Hot Lips Page and His Orchestra (Hot Lips played with Artie Shaw and Count Basie before forming his own big band.)

Tiny Bradshaw and His Jersey Bounce Orchestra (Lead singer Billy Ford, would later record with Lillie Bryant as Billy and Lillie, and have a Billboard Top 10 hit, “La Dee Dah,” written by Bob Crewe, who would go on to write and produce for the Four Seasons.)

Coy Tucker and His Orchestra

Eddie Robinson and His Royal American Orchestra

Fats Perry and His Midnight Strollers (my favorite big band name)

Erman Vicks and His Orchestra

Bruno’s Jive Five Navy Orchestra – Navy Boys from Emory and Henry and Milligan Colleges

Count Bernl Viel and His Musical Sweethearts – An All Girl Orchestra

Ada Leonard and Her All American Girl Orchestra – There were a number of all-girl big bands touring during the war but Ada’s group was the most popular and the first to play a USO tour. Ada had been a vaudevillian and for a time, a stripper.

Ace Lane and His Band (From Erwin)

Names you know:

Count Basie

Erskine Hawkins

Duke Ellington

Tommy Dorsey

The era of the Big Band was over by 1966. But there was one famous performance that year in the Ross N. Robinson Auditorium. Don Shirley  and His Trio performed Oct. 23. His tour of the South would later be fictionalized in the movie “The Green Book.”

The late Doe Hood (D-B ’46) told me he and his friends had a lucrative sideline working coat check at the big band shows.

“Lots of the men had flasks in their coat pockets and we would sell shots out of their flasks. They didn’t figure it out until they got their coats and headed home. And by then we were long gone.”