The musicians born in 1917 lived through World War II. Many of them served in the military, some of them outright heroes. Some made their careers in the military. Many composed for winds and brass, led school and army bands, and wrote marches. Some preferred the familiar sounds of their traditional music. One thing was sure: their music was popular.
- Conductor, composer and arranger of light music Ronald Hanmer (1917-1994) was born in the South of England and studied at Blackheath Conservatory in South-East London. From 1935 to 1948 he was a theater organist and dance band arranger. In 1975 he emigrated to Brisbane, Australia and was arranger and conductor for the St Lucia Orchestra.
Hanmer wrote potpourris, e.g. The Oak and The Rose, as well as original pieces in orchestral and piano versions, often performed by amateur musicians and bands, e.g. Fashion on Parade.
The theme music for the radio program The Adventures of PC 49 was taken from Hanmer's Changing Moods No. 2. When he arrived in Australia, he discovered that his Pastorale was used to introduce the popular radio program Blue Hills. He later turned the piece into a longer Pastorale Rhapsody.
He also wrote many pieces for wind ensembles, e.g. a Suite for French Horn and Piano, brass bands--some of them still used as test pieces, e.g. Brass Spectacular, and smaller brass ensembles.
He also made arrangements of many musicals and orchestrated shows for amateur companies such as this song from Calamity Jane.
Let's listen to Picking Strings (1957) for pops orchestra.
- American World War II pilot, publisher, composer, actor, editor, lobbyist, writer, disc jockey and campaign manager Ken Hart (1917-2006) was born in Long Beach, NY.
He was Vice President and General Manager of the Lexington, KY radio station WLAP and Publisher of the Kentucky Coal Journal. He also worked for the State Journal. In Frankfort, KY he was a playwright and actor in the local theater.
- Composer, songwriter, author, producer, director, newspaperman, theater manager, and radio writer Bert Gold (1917-2000) also hailed from Long Beach, NY. He studied at Nassau College Center and The Cooper Union. During World War II he served in the U.S. Army and in Air Corps Intelligence.
Between 1948 and 1952 he produced and directed local television programs and worked in television graphic arts thereafter. Musically, he collaborated with Ken Hart.
Dogface Soldier (1942) was co-written by then Lieutenant Ken Hart and Corporal Bert Gold. It was very popular during and after World War II and was later used in the film To Hell and Back (1955).
- Albanian clarinetist and composer Prenke Jakova (1917-1969) was born in Shkodër. His grandfather was clarinetist at Shkodër Jesuit College, and his father was a commander in the army. He played in his high school band and in the local theaters. The school band later became the city band, and Jakova its clarinetist. He studied with Martin Gjoka (1890-1940) and Zef Kurti (nephew of Palokë Kurti (1860-1920)) and started writing music based on folk songs.
At age eighteen he became the school's band director and taught many students who later became great Albanian composers. He started writing marches and other pieces. During a teaching assignment in Bërdicë he started playing guitar. In 1939 he added the accordion. After some teaching in Orosh he returned to Shkodër in 1940, and in 1941-1942 he taught in Katërkollë, biking to and from Shkodër some 31 miles away.
In 1942 he studied clarinet at the prestigious Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome.
In 1944 while he was directing a youth choir, he was imprisoned by the communist regime because of his brother's opposition to it. He was eventually released and from then on adhered to a busy conducting, teaching and composing schedule. Unfortunately, stress and despair led him to commit suicide in 1969.
Jakova wrote two operas Mrika (1958) and Gjergj Kastrioti-Skënderbeu (1968) which put national Albanian opera on the map, as well as many folk inspired songs, orchestral and choral pieces, film music, and operettas. Some of his songs have become so well known that they're now believed to be Albanian folk songs. Let's listen to the popular song Margjelo.
-
- Irish composer, teacher and conductor T.C. Kelly (1917-1985) studied with John Francis Larchet (1884-1967). He first was organist and choirmaster in Newry in Northern Ireland and later became music master at Clongowes Wood College, a boys boarding school. Under his direction the school's choir won several competitions.
Kelly wrote arrangements of traditional Irish music for orchestra, mixed choir and small instrumental ensembles such as violin and piano. Most of his works are short pieces. He also wrote a piano concerto (1960) and three masses.
Kelly did not employ any contemporary classical music techniques. His "bilingual" music combines traditional with classical music and remains lyrical and tonal throughout.
Here is a beautiful T.C. Kelly arrangement of Down by the Sally Gardens, originally written by Patrick Joseph McCall (1861-1919).
- American composer and teacher William P. Latham (1917-2004) was born in Louisiana and educated in Kentucky, at the University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) in Ohio and at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY where he studied composition with Eugene Aynsley Goossens (1893-1962) and Howard Hanson (1896-1981).
From 1946 to 1965 he taught at the University of Northern Iowa and then at the University of North Texas College of Music. He retired in 1984.
Latham wrote 118 works, one of which is the Brighton Beach March (1954). Written shortly after Latham obtained his doctoral degree at the Eastman School. It was his first published work for band and an immediate success. The title, a reference to the famous beach resort in England, was chosen by the publisher. Despite the British allusion, the tempo is more brisk than the typical British march, giving it a decidedly American band flavor. The march has 'numerous dynamic contrasts, as well as unusual scoring of the woodwind parts.'(1)
- American Euphonium virtuoso Arthur W. Lehman (1917-2009) was born in Pennsylvania and studied electrical engineering at Penn State University. Upon his graduation in 1940 he was drafted into the army and assigned to an aircraft factory.
From 1944 to 1946 he played euphonium in the army band. He studied with Simone Mantia (1873-1951), soloist of the Sousa Band, and with Harold Brasch (probably 1916 -1984), soloist of the United States Navy Band and played with the Penn State Varsity Band and the Philco Band of Philadelphia. In 1947 he joined the United States Marine Band. From 1956 to 1964 he was the band's personnel manager and eventually retired with rank of Master Gunnery Sergeant. He continued playing as a member of the National Concert Band of America until 2002.
His teacher Harold Brasch started using bigger-sounding euphoniums made by the British Boosey & Hawkes firm during World War II. In the late 1940s Lehman worked with the firm on five custom-made silver-plated "Imperial" models. Lehman's solos during Marine Band radio concerts in the mid-1950s made these euphoniums popular in America, and they were used in the Marine Band for over half a century. Lehman also developed the deep, large-bore parabolic-cup mouthpieces generally known today as the "Lehman Special," and is credited for 'transforming the typical American Euphonium sound from the lighter continental sound of the John Philip Sousa days to the rich, dark and resonant sound common today.'
In 1969, while teaching euphonium player Glenn Call, he started writing down his euphonium techniques, published in 1970 as The ART of the Euphonium Player in two volumes. He had many students and continued writing on the instrument through the 2000s.
Let's listen to Lehman's arrangement of Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms, a popular song written in 1808 by Irish poet and singer-songwriter Thomas Moore (1779-1852) based on a traditional Irish air.
- Scottish bagpiper, British Army Pipe major, composer and teacher Donald MacLeod (1917-1982) was born on the isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides in Scotland. He was one of the greatest twentieth century bagpipe composers.
His teacher and mentor John Morrison, a founding member of the Lewis Pipe Band, took him to his first Northern Meeting. He also studied with Willie Ross (1878-1966), and every week for 27 years with John MacDonald of Inverness (1865-1953).
He joined the army in 1937 and crossed to France with the 2nd Battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders in the British Expeditionary Force. He became a prisoner of war during the surrender to Rommel in 1940 at St. Valery-en-Caux. He escaped during the march to Germany and returned to France in 1944 as pipe major of the 7th Battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders.
After the war, he won in bagpipe Meetings and Gatherings. He left the British Army in 1963 and became a partner in a Glasgow bagpipe-manufacturing firm.
MacLeod was and influential teacher, including at summer schools in North America. He compiled a 21-volume tutorial on pibroch (piping) which includes 220 recordings of Ceòl Mòr (great music).
Among his compositions are six volumes of light music and one of piping. Iain Macdonald compiled another volume posthumously. Let's listen to Crossing the Minch, one of his best-loved tunes.
- American singer, actor, comedian, and film producer Dean Martin (originally Dino Crocetti, 1917-1995), known as the "King of Cool," was extremely popular during the mid-twentieth century. He was born in Steubenville, OH into an Italian family. He spoke the Abruzzese Italian dialect until he went to school at age five.
He sang Italian songs and ballads during family gatherings and took singing lessons from the mayor's wife Corrine Applegate. But most of all he learnt how to sing from watching Bing Crosby (1903-1977) movies all day long at the local movie theater whenever one was showing.
He though he was smarter than his teachers and dropped out of high school in tenth grade and proceeded to a series of legal and illegal jobs. The first job was, for a very short time, at Weirton Steel where he couldn't breathe. He left to take a trip with his friends to California and Hollywood and dreamt of becoming a movie star.
As a welterweight boxer, he billed himself at age 15 as "Kid Crochet" and sustained many injuries. For a time he shared an apartment with singer Sonny King (1922-2006) in New York City where they held bare-knuckle matches before a paying audience.
He played the drums as a teenager, a.o. in 1934 in a local group that sang Italian songs. (3)
Back in Ohio in 1936 he joined the Steubenville gambling industry by bootlegging liquor, and as a speakeasy croupier and blackjack dealer.
In 1944 Martin was drafted into the army and served a year in Akron, Ohio. He was discharged possibly due to a double hernia.
By 1946 Martin was again an East Coast nightclub singer with a style similar to Bing Crosby's. He met Jerry Lewis (1926-2017) at the Glass Hat Club in New York, and they decided to form a music-comedy team. Their first show in Atlantic City was not well received, but they were able to change their act for the better during the second show. They toured the Eastern seaboard, ending at the Copacabana in NYC, and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and on the radio, and started making movies. After ten successful years the act called it quits in 1956.
In the late 1950s the era of the crooner started to wane, and Martin now focused more on movie making, sometimes alongside Frank Sinatra. Together with Joey Bishop (1918-2007), Peter Lawford (1923-1984) who was JFK's brother-in-law, and Sammy Davis, Jr. (1925-1990) they formed the so-called group the Rat Pack--they themselves called it The Clan or The Summit. They appeared in Las Vegas, made films, were part of Hollywood's social scene, and had a political voice in support of the civil rights movement.
From 1965 to 1974 Martin hosted the weekly series The Dean Martin Show. From then on his recording, acting and appearances slowed considerably. In 1990 he made his final appearances on television and in Vegas.
Martin's singing was influenced by Harry Mills (of the Mills Brothers), Bing Crosby, and Perry Como. Eventually he developed his own style and was a strong partner in duets with Sinatra and Crosby. He recorded more than 100 albums and 600 songs and sang and entertained in Las Vegas for three decades.
Here is a beautiful Dean Marin song--and video, Sway. Originally written by Mexican singer Luis Demetrio (1931-2007) as the bolero-mambo ¿Quién será? (1953), the English version with lyrics by Norman Gimbel (b. 1927) featuring Dean Martin and the Dick Stabile (1909-1980) orchestra was released in 1954. It has since been recorded in numerous other versions.
- Bandmaster Thomas Shacklady, MBE, BEM (1917-2006) was born in England but never knew his parents. His father was killed in World War I prior to his birth. Raised by a relative, he played the flugelhorn and the trombone. He joined the Royal Marines in 1935 and attended the Marines School of Music. He played trumpet, trombone, french horn, percussion instruments, and violin. (5)
Prior to World War II he served off the coast of Franco’s Spain and on the South China station in Hong Kong and Shanghai. During the war he served in various naval stations and Royal Navy ships, a.o. in 1940 as Marine Officer’s Attendant to Prince Philip, then a Midshipman, on HMS Kent. He later was severely bunt on HMS Cleopatra when it was torpedoed. He recovered in Malta and volunteered to man an anti-aircraft battery on the island. During service on HMS Penelope the ship was sunk by a German U-boat, and Shacklady, with other survivors, was rescued by a US Patrol Torpedo (PT) boat. In 1948 he was discharged and held various jobs in the UK.
He then volunteered for the Australian Army and moved to Australia with his family in 1951. Each year during six years he trained new recruits for three bands.
In 1957 he was transferred to the Army Band in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, for a year, and then returned to Australia. There he became Bandmaster for an Army Base band. In 1964 he was appointed Bandmaster of the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary Band with the rank of Inspector. At the Mt Hagen Show in 1965 Earl Mountbatten was surprised to hear his personal march, thePreobranjensky, and found out that the Conductor of the Band was an ex-Royal Marine.
In 1970 he served in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, on general duties, and then returned to Port Moresby, serving again as Bandmaster. Between 1965 and 1975 the band toured in many countries worldwide and in 1969 played at the South Pacific Games in Port Moresby.
Shacklady received numerous medals during his long, dedicated and at time heroic service to the Royal Marines and in Papua New Guinea. In 1978 he was promoted to Superintendent and Director of Music, Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary, and in 1980 to Chief Superintendent. He retired to Brisbane in 1981.
In 1975 when Papua New Guinea was gaining independence, a competition was held for a National Anthem. Shacklady's entry O Arise All You Sons of This Land was selected.
_____________________________________________________________
(1)"Brighton Beach March." Program notes, The Concord Band website, 10/24/2009. (http://concordband.blogspot.com/2009/10/brighton-beach-march.html (12/30/2017))
(2)"Arthur W. Lehman." Wikipedia entry. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_W._Lehman (12/30/2017))
(3) Dave Tabler, "How Dino Crocetti of Steubenville became pop singer Dean Martin." Appalachian History website, 06/23/2016. (http://www.appalachianhistory.net/2016/06/how-dino-crocetti-of-steubenville-became-pop-singer-dean-martin.html (12/30/2017))
(4) After Nino Martini (1902-1976), an Italian operatic tenor and actor who sang at the Met.
(5) The Shacklady Family, "Thomas SHACKLADY, MBE, BEM (22 January 2006, aged 88)." Papua New Guinea Association of Australia website, Vale, March 2006. (https://www.pngaa.net/Vale/vale_march06.htm#Thomas_SHACKLADY (12/30/2017))
- Conductor, composer and arranger of light music Ronald Hanmer (1917-1994) was born in the South of England and studied at Blackheath Conservatory in South-East London. From 1935 to 1948 he was a theater organist and dance band arranger. In 1975 he emigrated to Brisbane, Australia and was arranger and conductor for the St Lucia Orchestra.
Hanmer wrote potpourris, e.g. The Oak and The Rose, as well as original pieces in orchestral and piano versions, often performed by amateur musicians and bands, e.g. Fashion on Parade.
The theme music for the radio program The Adventures of PC 49 was taken from Hanmer's Changing Moods No. 2. When he arrived in Australia, he discovered that his Pastorale was used to introduce the popular radio program Blue Hills. He later turned the piece into a longer Pastorale Rhapsody.
He also wrote many pieces for wind ensembles, e.g. a Suite for French Horn and Piano, brass bands--some of them still used as test pieces, e.g. Brass Spectacular, and smaller brass ensembles.
He also made arrangements of many musicals and orchestrated shows for amateur companies such as this song from Calamity Jane.
Let's listen to Picking Strings (1957) for pops orchestra.
- American World War II pilot, publisher, composer, actor, editor, lobbyist, writer, disc jockey and campaign manager Ken Hart (1917-2006) was born in Long Beach, NY.
He was Vice President and General Manager of the Lexington, KY radio station WLAP and Publisher of the Kentucky Coal Journal. He also worked for the State Journal. In Frankfort, KY he was a playwright and actor in the local theater.
- Composer, songwriter, author, producer, director, newspaperman, theater manager, and radio writer Bert Gold (1917-2000) also hailed from Long Beach, NY. He studied at Nassau College Center and The Cooper Union. During World War II he served in the U.S. Army and in Air Corps Intelligence.
Between 1948 and 1952 he produced and directed local television programs and worked in television graphic arts thereafter. Musically, he collaborated with Ken Hart.
Dogface Soldier (1942) was co-written by then Lieutenant Ken Hart and Corporal Bert Gold. It was very popular during and after World War II and was later used in the film To Hell and Back (1955).
- Albanian clarinetist and composer Prenke Jakova (1917-1969) was born in Shkodër. His grandfather was clarinetist at Shkodër Jesuit College, and his father was a commander in the army. He played in his high school band and in the local theaters. The school band later became the city band, and Jakova its clarinetist. He studied with Martin Gjoka (1890-1940) and Zef Kurti (nephew of Palokë Kurti (1860-1920)) and started writing music based on folk songs.
At age eighteen he became the school's band director and taught many students who later became great Albanian composers. He started writing marches and other pieces. During a teaching assignment in Bërdicë he started playing guitar. In 1939 he added the accordion. After some teaching in Orosh he returned to Shkodër in 1940, and in 1941-1942 he taught in Katërkollë, biking to and from Shkodër some 31 miles away.
In 1942 he studied clarinet at the prestigious Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome.
In 1944 while he was directing a youth choir, he was imprisoned by the communist regime because of his brother's opposition to it. He was eventually released and from then on adhered to a busy conducting, teaching and composing schedule. Unfortunately, stress and despair led him to commit suicide in 1969.
Jakova wrote two operas Mrika (1958) and Gjergj Kastrioti-Skënderbeu (1968) which put national Albanian opera on the map, as well as many folk inspired songs, orchestral and choral pieces, film music, and operettas. Some of his songs have become so well known that they're now believed to be Albanian folk songs. Let's listen to the popular song Margjelo.
-
- Irish composer, teacher and conductor T.C. Kelly (1917-1985) studied with John Francis Larchet (1884-1967). He first was organist and choirmaster in Newry in Northern Ireland and later became music master at Clongowes Wood College, a boys boarding school. Under his direction the school's choir won several competitions.
Kelly wrote arrangements of traditional Irish music for orchestra, mixed choir and small instrumental ensembles such as violin and piano. Most of his works are short pieces. He also wrote a piano concerto (1960) and three masses.
Kelly did not employ any contemporary classical music techniques. His "bilingual" music combines traditional with classical music and remains lyrical and tonal throughout.
Here is a beautiful T.C. Kelly arrangement of Down by the Sally Gardens, originally written by Patrick Joseph McCall (1861-1919).
- American composer and teacher William P. Latham (1917-2004) was born in Louisiana and educated in Kentucky, at the University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) in Ohio and at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY where he studied composition with Eugene Aynsley Goossens (1893-1962) and Howard Hanson (1896-1981).
From 1946 to 1965 he taught at the University of Northern Iowa and then at the University of North Texas College of Music. He retired in 1984.
Latham wrote 118 works, one of which is the Brighton Beach March (1954). Written shortly after Latham obtained his doctoral degree at the Eastman School. It was his first published work for band and an immediate success. The title, a reference to the famous beach resort in England, was chosen by the publisher. Despite the British allusion, the tempo is more brisk than the typical British march, giving it a decidedly American band flavor. The march has 'numerous dynamic contrasts, as well as unusual scoring of the woodwind parts.'(1)
- American Euphonium virtuoso Arthur W. Lehman (1917-2009) was born in Pennsylvania and studied electrical engineering at Penn State University. Upon his graduation in 1940 he was drafted into the army and assigned to an aircraft factory.
From 1944 to 1946 he played euphonium in the army band. He studied with Simone Mantia (1873-1951), soloist of the Sousa Band, and with Harold Brasch (probably 1916 -1984), soloist of the United States Navy Band and played with the Penn State Varsity Band and the Philco Band of Philadelphia. In 1947 he joined the United States Marine Band. From 1956 to 1964 he was the band's personnel manager and eventually retired with rank of Master Gunnery Sergeant. He continued playing as a member of the National Concert Band of America until 2002.
His teacher Harold Brasch started using bigger-sounding euphoniums made by the British Boosey & Hawkes firm during World War II. In the late 1940s Lehman worked with the firm on five custom-made silver-plated "Imperial" models. Lehman's solos during Marine Band radio concerts in the mid-1950s made these euphoniums popular in America, and they were used in the Marine Band for over half a century. Lehman also developed the deep, large-bore parabolic-cup mouthpieces generally known today as the "Lehman Special," and is credited for 'transforming the typical American Euphonium sound from the lighter continental sound of the John Philip Sousa days to the rich, dark and resonant sound common today.'
In 1969, while teaching euphonium player Glenn Call, he started writing down his euphonium techniques, published in 1970 as The ART of the Euphonium Player in two volumes. He had many students and continued writing on the instrument through the 2000s.
Let's listen to Lehman's arrangement of Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms, a popular song written in 1808 by Irish poet and singer-songwriter Thomas Moore (1779-1852) based on a traditional Irish air.
- Scottish bagpiper, British Army Pipe major, composer and teacher Donald MacLeod (1917-1982) was born on the isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides in Scotland. He was one of the greatest twentieth century bagpipe composers.
His teacher and mentor John Morrison, a founding member of the Lewis Pipe Band, took him to his first Northern Meeting. He also studied with Willie Ross (1878-1966), and every week for 27 years with John MacDonald of Inverness (1865-1953).
He joined the army in 1937 and crossed to France with the 2nd Battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders in the British Expeditionary Force. He became a prisoner of war during the surrender to Rommel in 1940 at St. Valery-en-Caux. He escaped during the march to Germany and returned to France in 1944 as pipe major of the 7th Battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders.
After the war, he won in bagpipe Meetings and Gatherings. He left the British Army in 1963 and became a partner in a Glasgow bagpipe-manufacturing firm.
MacLeod was and influential teacher, including at summer schools in North America. He compiled a 21-volume tutorial on pibroch (piping) which includes 220 recordings of Ceòl Mòr (great music).
Among his compositions are six volumes of light music and one of piping. Iain Macdonald compiled another volume posthumously. Let's listen to Crossing the Minch, one of his best-loved tunes.
- American singer, actor, comedian, and film producer Dean Martin (originally Dino Crocetti, 1917-1995), known as the "King of Cool," was extremely popular during the mid-twentieth century. He was born in Steubenville, OH into an Italian family. He spoke the Abruzzese Italian dialect until he went to school at age five.
He sang Italian songs and ballads during family gatherings and took singing lessons from the mayor's wife Corrine Applegate. But most of all he learnt how to sing from watching Bing Crosby (1903-1977) movies all day long at the local movie theater whenever one was showing.
He though he was smarter than his teachers and dropped out of high school in tenth grade and proceeded to a series of legal and illegal jobs. The first job was, for a very short time, at Weirton Steel where he couldn't breathe. He left to take a trip with his friends to California and Hollywood and dreamt of becoming a movie star.
As a welterweight boxer, he billed himself at age 15 as "Kid Crochet" and sustained many injuries. For a time he shared an apartment with singer Sonny King (1922-2006) in New York City where they held bare-knuckle matches before a paying audience.
He played the drums as a teenager, a.o. in 1934 in a local group that sang Italian songs. (3)
Back in Ohio in 1936 he joined the Steubenville gambling industry by bootlegging liquor, and as a speakeasy croupier and blackjack dealer.
He’d wear shoes that were two sizes too big for him, and he’d stuff silver dollars in ‘em when he stole money from Mr. Quattrone. - Rose Angelica (3)He started singing fairly regularly as an amateur singer in a crooning style he heard from Harry Mills (of the Mills Brothers (1928-1982)) and others. In 1939 he sang for the Ernie McKay Orchestra, his first paid singing job, a.o. at the State Restaurant in Columbus. First he sang under his real name Dino Crocetti, but McKay changed it to "Dino Martini."(4) In 1940 he started singing for bandleader Sammy Watkins (ca. 1904-1969), a.o. at the Vogue Room of Cleveland’s Hollenden Hotel. Watkins told him to change his name to Dean Martin. Variety magazine wrote:
Watkins has acquired a new vocalist, Dean Martin, who backs a personable kisser with a low tenor and agreeable manner.(3)In 1942 the Watkins orchestra was broadcast on national radio with Martin singing four songs. He broke his contract with Watkins in 1943, moved to New York City, and signed with the MCA talent agency. They got him to follow Frank Sinatra (1915-1998) at the Riobamba nightclub.
In 1944 Martin was drafted into the army and served a year in Akron, Ohio. He was discharged possibly due to a double hernia.
By 1946 Martin was again an East Coast nightclub singer with a style similar to Bing Crosby's. He met Jerry Lewis (1926-2017) at the Glass Hat Club in New York, and they decided to form a music-comedy team. Their first show in Atlantic City was not well received, but they were able to change their act for the better during the second show. They toured the Eastern seaboard, ending at the Copacabana in NYC, and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and on the radio, and started making movies. After ten successful years the act called it quits in 1956.
In the late 1950s the era of the crooner started to wane, and Martin now focused more on movie making, sometimes alongside Frank Sinatra. Together with Joey Bishop (1918-2007), Peter Lawford (1923-1984) who was JFK's brother-in-law, and Sammy Davis, Jr. (1925-1990) they formed the so-called group the Rat Pack--they themselves called it The Clan or The Summit. They appeared in Las Vegas, made films, were part of Hollywood's social scene, and had a political voice in support of the civil rights movement.
From 1965 to 1974 Martin hosted the weekly series The Dean Martin Show. From then on his recording, acting and appearances slowed considerably. In 1990 he made his final appearances on television and in Vegas.
Martin's singing was influenced by Harry Mills (of the Mills Brothers), Bing Crosby, and Perry Como. Eventually he developed his own style and was a strong partner in duets with Sinatra and Crosby. He recorded more than 100 albums and 600 songs and sang and entertained in Las Vegas for three decades.
Here is a beautiful Dean Marin song--and video, Sway. Originally written by Mexican singer Luis Demetrio (1931-2007) as the bolero-mambo ¿Quién será? (1953), the English version with lyrics by Norman Gimbel (b. 1927) featuring Dean Martin and the Dick Stabile (1909-1980) orchestra was released in 1954. It has since been recorded in numerous other versions.
- Bandmaster Thomas Shacklady, MBE, BEM (1917-2006) was born in England but never knew his parents. His father was killed in World War I prior to his birth. Raised by a relative, he played the flugelhorn and the trombone. He joined the Royal Marines in 1935 and attended the Marines School of Music. He played trumpet, trombone, french horn, percussion instruments, and violin. (5)
Prior to World War II he served off the coast of Franco’s Spain and on the South China station in Hong Kong and Shanghai. During the war he served in various naval stations and Royal Navy ships, a.o. in 1940 as Marine Officer’s Attendant to Prince Philip, then a Midshipman, on HMS Kent. He later was severely bunt on HMS Cleopatra when it was torpedoed. He recovered in Malta and volunteered to man an anti-aircraft battery on the island. During service on HMS Penelope the ship was sunk by a German U-boat, and Shacklady, with other survivors, was rescued by a US Patrol Torpedo (PT) boat. In 1948 he was discharged and held various jobs in the UK.
He then volunteered for the Australian Army and moved to Australia with his family in 1951. Each year during six years he trained new recruits for three bands.
In 1957 he was transferred to the Army Band in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, for a year, and then returned to Australia. There he became Bandmaster for an Army Base band. In 1964 he was appointed Bandmaster of the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary Band with the rank of Inspector. At the Mt Hagen Show in 1965 Earl Mountbatten was surprised to hear his personal march, thePreobranjensky, and found out that the Conductor of the Band was an ex-Royal Marine.
In 1970 he served in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, on general duties, and then returned to Port Moresby, serving again as Bandmaster. Between 1965 and 1975 the band toured in many countries worldwide and in 1969 played at the South Pacific Games in Port Moresby.
Shacklady received numerous medals during his long, dedicated and at time heroic service to the Royal Marines and in Papua New Guinea. In 1978 he was promoted to Superintendent and Director of Music, Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary, and in 1980 to Chief Superintendent. He retired to Brisbane in 1981.
In 1975 when Papua New Guinea was gaining independence, a competition was held for a National Anthem. Shacklady's entry O Arise All You Sons of This Land was selected.
His crowning achievement was the playing of the new National Anthem at the PNG Independence Ceremony in September 1975.(5)This is a truly beautiful national anthem both in words and in music.
_____________________________________________________________
(1)"Brighton Beach March." Program notes, The Concord Band website, 10/24/2009. (http://concordband.blogspot.com/2009/10/brighton-beach-march.html (12/30/2017))
(2)"Arthur W. Lehman." Wikipedia entry. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_W._Lehman (12/30/2017))
(3) Dave Tabler, "How Dino Crocetti of Steubenville became pop singer Dean Martin." Appalachian History website, 06/23/2016. (http://www.appalachianhistory.net/2016/06/how-dino-crocetti-of-steubenville-became-pop-singer-dean-martin.html (12/30/2017))
(4) After Nino Martini (1902-1976), an Italian operatic tenor and actor who sang at the Met.
(5) The Shacklady Family, "Thomas SHACKLADY, MBE, BEM (22 January 2006, aged 88)." Papua New Guinea Association of Australia website, Vale, March 2006. (https://www.pngaa.net/Vale/vale_march06.htm#Thomas_SHACKLADY (12/30/2017))