My Buddy

Bandleader Buddy Moreno Remains A Musical And Broadcasting Icon In The St. Louis Area

 The following article on Buddy Moreno was originally published in the October 2001 issue of Jazz Connection Magazine.

The way Buddy Moreno sees it, he's strictly a survivor from the Big Band era.

"That's exactly what I am, a survivor," said Moreno, 89, via telephone from his home in Florissant, MO. "I guess there's nothing wrong with that, is there?"

 Moreno, a personable guitarist/singer who forged a name for himself with the Griff Williams, Dick Jurgens and Harry James bands and who later went on to lead a dance band of his own during the late 1940s, still leads a band today for special occasions and also has had a lengthy career in radio.

"I think my band was quite good," Moreno said. "It was a good sounding commercial band."

Unfortunately for Moreno, he started his band near the end of the Big Band Era and while his music did have some popular appeal, it just didn't take off as a result of bad timing.

"Things happen and sometimes we just don't know why they happen," Moreno said.

Born on July 14, 1912, in Los Angeles, CA, Moreno grew up in San Francisco. He began his career in high school as a singer forming a trio that copied the vocal arrangements of the renowned Rhythm Boys -- Bing Crosby, Harry Barris and Al Rinker.

"It was a fun thing as far as high school was concerned," Moreno said. "It was a way to charm the girls."

But the trio began to look at their craft with some seriousness and in 1929, they landed a job singing for the weekend crowd at the exclusive Olympic Club, Lakeside, in San Francisco for five dollars a night.

"One of the members of our trio was Walter King. His father, who led an orchestra at the time, helped get us the job," Moreno said.

After singing at various venues in and around the San Francisco area for a few years, Moreno joined the newly formed Griff Williams band in 1933 initially as the band's vocalist. The association would last for seven years.

Williams was a pianist who led his college band while attending Stanford University. In 1932, he joined the Anson Weeks Orchestra, who was very popular at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco, staying only a few months before forming his own outfit. A society band, the Williams Orchestra had it's first booking at San Francisco's Edgewater Beach Hotel beginning in October 1933.

"Griff did a lot of 'debutant-type' parties around the San Francisco area," Moreno said. "He needed a lead singer and hired me for some of those jobs. We started out together. After he left Weeks to form his own band, he asked me to join him."

With a lot of idle time on the bandstand between vocals and when the opportunity of an open chair in the rhythm section becoming available, Moreno invested in some "insurance" in order to keep his job by learning to play the guitar, he said.

"Griff didn't want to use a banjo in the band anymore," Moreno. "He let Bob Logan, our banjo player, go. I asked Griff if I learned how to play the guitar would he put me in the band?  He said yes. I took lessons and practiced like mad anywhere and anytime I could.  After I mastered the instrument, I joined the band as a rhythm guitarist and vocalist."

Eventually, Williams also became a popular draw at the Mark Hopkins. By the late 1930s, Williams relocated to Chicago. During World War II, the band spent four years at the Stevens Hotel in Chicago, which at the time was known as the world's largest hotel. After the war he concentrated on working in Chicago and San Francisco. He disbanded in 1953 to work for a magazine publishing company in Chicago. He occasionally put together bands to work at society events. In 1956, Williams was given a local television show in Chicago. He died of a heart attack three years later.

"Griff was a fine player and had a very good, successful band," Moreno said of his former boss. "He looked like Fred Astaire. Because he was a Fred Astaire look-a-like, he would also dance around a bit in front of the bandstand. He was a very personable guy. All of the socialites loved him."

Some of the songs that Moreno recorded while with the Williams band that featured his vocal talents include Oh, You Gorgeous Dancing Doll  and Down By The O-H-I-O (both recorded May, 1940), That's For Me and Yum-Yum (both recorded June, 1940), all on the Varsity Record label.

"Our first recordings were made in Chicago at a very obscure studio on Wabash Avenue," Moreno recalled. "They weren't too terribly good. At least I wasn't happy with them. They never really amounted to anything."

Wanting to "move up" musically from the strictly society sounds of the Williams ensemble, Moreno received three offers simultaneously from three of the top bands of the day  --  Eddy Duchin, Hal Kemp and Dick Jurgens.

"Griff's band was playing at the Chase Hotel in St. Louis in December 1940 when I got the calls," Moreno said. "I didn't know which one I wanted to take."

After some thought, Moreno opted to go with Jurgens.

"I knew Dick from the West Coast and he had a college-type band that was young and exciting," Moreno said. "Plus, he was gun-ho. I was happy with my decision."

Ironically, while Moreno was finishing his stint with Williams, Kemp was killed in a tragic automobile accident in Madera, CA, on Dec. 19, and a little while later, Duchin's medical problems began to surface.

Taking guitarist Ronny Kepper's place in the Jurgens band, Moreno also shared the boy singer duties with Harry Cool, a tall, handsome, virile, curly-haired baritone whom Perry Como had recommended highly to Jurgens.

The Jurgens band was a very commercial, romantic-sounding outfit known for its full, lush ensemble sound and danceable melodies. From the late 1930's throughout the early 1940s, the Jurgens band was the toast of Chicago, drawing huge crowds during its stints at their home base, the Aragon and Trianon ballrooms.

"I really don't know why Dick's band was so extremely popular with Chicagoans," Moreno said. "That's a question that is kind of hard to answer. The band was very solid, very commercial and played the way the people wanted to dance. The band itself was very personable. All the patrons knew each and every band member and called them by their first names."

When the band would go on tour to play at such places at Catalina Island off the Southern California coast or at New York's Strand Theater, other name bands would be hired to fill in for Jurgens at the Aragon and Trianon ballrooms. When Jurgens would return to Chicago, dancers would welcome him back like a conquering hero worthy of a Roman triumph.

"Dick was more of a front man and was very good at what he did," Moreno said. "The crowds in Chicago just adored him. He insisted on every one in the band having a neat appearance at all times."

During the two years that Moreno was with Jurgens, he made over twenty studio recordings on the Okeh (a Columbia affiliate) and the Columbia red label as the featured vocalist.  Some of those sides include San Antonio Rose (Nov. 26, 1940), Pardon Me For Falling In Love (Feb, 17, 1941 --  this was a Griff Williams composition but was never recorded by Williams), I've Got A Bone To Pick With You (April 10, 1941), Around And Around She Goes (Sept. 19, 1941), Yankee Doodle Ain't Doodlin' Now (Feb. 20, 1942), Happy In Love (Jan. 16, 1942), Everything I've Got and I'm So-So-So-So In Love (both recorded on June 22, 1942).  But it was the band's biggest hit, One Dozen Roses (recorded March 4, 1942), which helped to give more recognition to Moreno's vocal talents. 

"One Dozen Roses was a big one for Dick," Moreno said. "We would get requests to play it everywhere we went."

With America at war in 1942, many bands were breaking up as both sideman and bandleaders alike got "caught in the draft" or were enlisting to heed their country's call for military service. Jurgens was no exception.

Jurgens was called into the Marines and when he put his band members on notice, they all decided to stick it out until the very end.

"We really had such a tight band that all the fellows made a pack to stay together until Dick actually left to go in the service," Moreno said.

The band's last public performance was on Sunday evening Jan. 17, 1943, at the Aragon Ballroom.  The event was broadcasted over radio as part of the Fitch Bandwagon program. Thousands of loyal Dick Jurgens fans packed the North Side dance hall to say goodbye to the Windy City's favorite bandleader.

Many offers came in during the windup and the most interesting one for Moreno came from bandleader Ted Weems who wanted the displaced singer/guitarist to replace Perry Como, he said. 

"Ted called me from New Orleans and said that his whole band was being inducted into the Merchant Marine and asked if I would like to be the boy singer for his new band," Moreno said. "Perry Como was singing with Weems at the time and was classified 4-F. Ted's manager was a friend of mine and he suggested that I go with the band.  I hated turning it down but I knew my service time was drawing near."

Moreno's decision proved to be prudent because shortly after the call from Weems, Moreno received a call from trumpeter Harry James, who led one of the hottest bands in the country.

"I told Harry about the pack the guys in the band made with each other," Moreno said.  "I then said if after that time his offer was still good, I'd love to join his band."

James' offer was indeed still good, so Moreno joined the popular trumpet player's band in March 1943 in California.

By that time, the recording ban between the record companies and the musicians' union was into its eighth month, denying bands and its singers the opportunity to wax commercial studio recordings.  But that didn't disappoint Moreno, he said.

"Just the fact that I was singing with Harry was exciting enough for me," Moreno said. "It was a great experience and a challenge. We worked the Hollywood Palladium and the Paramount Theater and the Astor Roof of the Hotel Astor in New York  -  all the big places. We even did the Chesterfield radio shows."

By 1943 James was one of  America's most successful bandleaders. He sported many top-notched musicians like Corky Corcoran on tenor sax; valve trombonist Juan Tizol, who had come over from Duke Ellington's band; and Willie Smith, Jimmie Lunceford's former alto saxophonist. James rounded out the American Dream on July 5 of that year by marrying Betty Grable, pinup girl of a million G. I.s.

"Harry was without a doubt the finest trumpet player I have ever known," Moreno said. "He's still tops. He was also a very fine leader."

Moreno was with the band for only a short time before Helen Forrest, James' celebrated girl singer who helped to record many hits for the trumpeter, left to go out as a single.

"Helen was the greatest," Moreno said. "As far as I'm concerned, she was the best of the big band singers."

Forrest was replaced briefly by another Helen  -  Helen Ward, who gained notoriety singing with Benny Goodman's orchestra in the mid-1930s.

After Ward's departure, Kitty Kallen, who had left Jimmy Dorsey, stepped in when the band returned to the Astor Roof on May 22.

"Kitty was fabulous, too," he said.

During his year stay with James, a number of Moreno's vocals have been preserved thanks to radio remotes and V-Disc recordings. Some of these recordings include Remember (from a remote broadcast from the Hotel Astor on June 5, 1943); Nice Work If You Can Get It (broadcast from the Hollywood Palladium on Nov. 25, 1943); Always ( Hollywood Palladium in Jan.1944); and three V-Disc recordings dated Nov. 17, 1943: Oh, What A Beautiful Morning!, Better Give Me Lots Of Lovin', Honey and Mexico City.

Prior to leaving James for military service in March 1944, Moreno helped his boss to make a decision by offering his opinion about a singer they both heard over the radio.

"I was riding in the car with Harry to the Hollywood Palladium one night and we were listening to the Eddie Oliver band out of Chicago over the radio," Moreno recalled. "Someone was singing named Buddy DiVito. Harry asked me what I thought. I said he sounded fine. Harry then called him to join the band."

DiVito may not have been the most famous of all of the boy singers who sang with James, but he worked for the celebrated trumpeter the longest, until 1948.

When Uncle Sam took out his option on Moreno, he was initially drafted as an infantryman into the Army and was trained in chemical warfare, Moreno said.

Once the Army learned of Moreno's background, he was then transferred to Special Services hooking up with Bill Finegan, former arranger for Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey, who was in charge of the military band at Camp Shanks, NY. Finegan would later go on to co-lead a band during the 1950s with fellow arranger, Eddie Sauter.

Upon his discharge from the Army in 1947, Moreno went out as a single for a while, he said.

He worked a few dates in New York with a band led by Eddie Stone, the former violinist/novelty singer with Freddy Martin.

After some frustrating experiences, Moreno gave up on the idea of being a single, he said.

"I wasn't happy because I was never sure as to the amount of players I would get for a job," he said. "Sometimes I'd wind up with a trio of guys who couldn't read."

Then Music Corporation of America (MCA), Moreno's booking agency, urged the guitar playing singer to put together a commercial band.

"I thought it was a good idea and I went out to find the guys I wanted," Moreno said.

 The band, patterned after the Jurgens unit, debuted at the Casa Loma Ballroom in St. Louis in the fall of 1947.

"I always liked the Jurgens sound with the full ensemble," he said.

Moreno's new outfit incorporated a little from each of the three bands from which he played, he said.

"From Griff I developed a love of Cole Porter and George Gershwin tunes," Moreno said. "When I built my library of standards, I used those composers. I incorporated some of the show band gimmicks that Dick used. All the guys in the band acted in some skits. From Harry, I utilized big swing arrangements."

By 1947, many of the noted and more established bands of the day were throwing in the towel because venues to feature such groups were drying up. The idea of forming a new band during such "lean" days didn't seem to faze Moreno, he said.

"I didn't give that too much thought," he said. "I just enjoyed doing it. I enjoyed playing at the places we played. I had a bunch of good guys. We went on for as long as we could."

When Moreno went looking for a band vocalist, little did he know he would be getting a wife as well.

"MCA knew I was looking for a girl singer to compliment me," Moreno said. "I was looking for a blonde with good looks. They told me of a gal named Perri Mitchell who was singing with a band in Minneapolis. We were playing in Chicago at the time and so MCA brought her down for an audition. I liked how she sang and I hired her."

Less than three years later the bandleader and the band singer were married.

Was it love at first sight?

"Not really," Moreno said. "I thought Perri sang well and I had no intentions of marrying her at first. We sort of grew on each other."

On Nov. 20, 1947, the Moreno band recorded some transcriptions in Chicago for Lang-worth Transcriptions, their first as a unit. The selections included Carolyn (an original composition by Moreno), Just An Old Stone House, They're Mine, They're Mine, They're Mine, I Concentrate On You, I Went Down To Virginia, Josephine and  I-I Love (a duet with Perri Mitchell).

With another recording ban due to take effect staring Jan.1, 1948, and studio space limited, it was nearly impossible for Moreno to get back in the studios to recording anything further before year's end. He didn't think the ban hurt him any, he said.

"It just didn't allow me to make any records for a year," he said.

During his days in the Williams band, Moreno became friends with Harold Kaplar, the owner of the Chase Hotel in St. Louis. Kaplar signed Moreno and his band for the entire summer at the Chase. When the Chase Hotel engagement ended, the band hit the road to play the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, the Ansley Hotel in Atlanta and the Aragon and Trianon ballrooms in Chicago, among others.

When 1949 rolled around, Moreno and company were eager to get back into the studios to record. They continued to make transcriptions through Lang-worth such as How It Lies, How It Lies, How It Lies, Doo Dee Doo On An Old Kazoo, My Bashful Nashville Girl From Tennessee, I'll Remember April, and Gee, I Wish You Were My Sweetheart (all recorded March 23, 1949 in New York).

Moreno was also able to sign a record contract that year with RCA Victor to wax such tunes as Carolyn, I-I Love (vocal duet with Perri Mitchell), This Will Be The Best Years Of Our Lives (with back up by trumpeter Charlie Spivak), Doo Dee Doo On An Old Kazoo, Johnny Get Your Girl, How It Lies, How It Lies, How It Lies, Honey Bun, Thank You, My Bashful Nashville Gal From Tennessee, Open Door Polka (vocal duet with Perri Mitchell) and Drop Daid Little Darlin'.

He later recorded for Circle Records.

Now married and with the band business getting slimmer and slimmer, Moreno was looking for more stability in life for he and his wife. This would be the beginning for him of a long love affair with radio. MCA helped him find work in radio as a disc jockey. He was teamed up at WHHM in Memphis with Ted Weems for a year.  When the contract expired, Weems went back on the road with another band while Moreno went back to St. Louis

Moreno then auditioned for and won the position to host a musical variety show on KOMX television in St. Louis. The show lasted for 18 months and was broadcasted five days a week and was supported by a nine-piece band which Moreno fronted, he said.

"We had guest stars come on the show like Jack Teagarden or whoever happened to be in town," Moreno said. "It was a fun show."

After the show was cancelled due to economic restraints, Moreno organized a sweet band based at the Chase Hotel, a stint which lasted over ten years.

When that ballroom in the Chase Hotel closed, Moreno returned to radio and succeeded in joining KWK as an all-night DJ. After spending ten years at that radio station, he then became Program Director of WEW radio also of St. Louis, doing a four-hour daily record show.  He helped steer that station into a big band nostalgia format, which proved successful.

In addition to his involvement in radio, Moreno also served as the musical director for the Fox Theater and Municipal Opera orchestras in St. Louis.

For the past five years Moreno has hosted a live jazz-big band program on Saturday afternoons  from 4-7 p.m. (Central Time) over WSIE-FM (88.7), a 50,000 watt, National Public Radio, 24-hour jazz station at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, which serves the St. Louis region.

"I'm still a disc jockey but I do interviews, too," Moreno said. "I play some of the newer big band and swing stuff that's out there and good small group jazz. It's more than enough radio for me."

Do any callers to the station ever request hearing a tune played by the Buddy Moreno band?

"No," Moreno said with a laugh. "They just call to talk."

Moreno continues to lead a band for special dates a few times a year in and around the St. Louis area, he said. He still does the Chuck Norman Benefit at the Regal Riverfront Inn every year. He is scheduled to perform at the12th Annual Gateway Jazz Festival on Oct. 4 at the St. Louis Airport Hilton Hotel. ( www.gatewayjazzfestival.com )

"My singing was alright," Moreno said of his style. "I didn't thrill anyone with it but I found my style. It's a happy version of people singing happy tunes."

The Moreno's have called Florissant, MO, located seventeen miles from St. Louis, home since 1957. In 1997, Perri Mitchell Moreno died. They have two children, a daughter, Julie, 48, and a son, Rick, 44.

Julie is a professional singer who has worked the Las Vegas and Tahoe show circuit, the Municipal Opera and various nightspots around the U.S.  Her strong, bluesy vocals are reminiscent of those of singer Annie Lennox. She currently sings with the rock group, Pavlov's Dog 2000, and sings with her father whenever his band scheduled to perform. 

Rick is a clinical psychologist in private practice who also heads the Missouri State Mental Hospital in St. Louis and plays drums on the side.

With over 70 years in the music business it doesn't seem that Moreno is any where near retiring.

"I've enjoyed what I've been doing on radio, on TV and with the band and as long as I can keep it up, I will," Moreno said. "I'm getting kind of rickety right about now. I had a couple of metal hips put in but I'm doing alright."

While Moreno's musical legacy is probably more readily felt within the St. Louis area than from without, he remains uncertain as to what that legacy might be, he said.

"Gosh, I don't know," he said. "I've gotten letters from people telling me I'm a musical icon and that I've given folks a lot of pleasure with my music. If I have given them pleasure with my music then what better legacy can I leave?"

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