Orrin Tucker

Though he had stud­ied to be a doc­tor, Orrin Tucker ended up as a singer and band­leader. He was lead­ing a suc­cess­ful hotel or­ches­tra in 1939 when his fe­male vo­cal­ist, Bon­nie Baker, recorded the World War I tune “Oh, Johnny, Oh, Johnny, Oh!” With the help of her sexy sighs and coos, Tucker sud­denly found him­self with a hit record and one of the hottest bands in the coun­try. Much of Tucker’s suc­cess was down to Baker’s in­cred­i­ble pop­u­lar­ity with au­di­ences. Her de­par­ture in 1942 ef­fec­tively spelt an end to his fame.

Tucker learned to play sax­o­phone as a youth and formed his first band while in col­lege. By the mid-​1930s, his or­ches­tra had be­come a fix­ture in St. Louis ho­tels and on the Mid­west cir­cuit. In 1937, the band began to at­tract na­tional at­ten­tion, with Down Beat de­scrib­ing it as “the per­fect hotel com­bi­na­tion.” Part of Tucker’s pop­u­lar­ity came from his abil­ity to put on a good show. He built a se­ries of boxes for his mu­si­cians that fea­tured lighted notes of dif­fer­ent shapes and col­ors for dif­fer­ent sec­tions that would flash ac­cord­ingly dur­ing each song. For the band’s stein song he used a set of three-​sided mugs on which could be painted, in flu­o­res­cent paints, let­ters that could spell out the name of the town or venue in which they were play­ing. Such gim­micks quickly helped make the or­ches­tra’s name.

Bon­nie Baker Years

Dur­ing the early years, Tucker pro­vided vo­cals, ac­com­pa­nied by a male glee club. By 1937, though, he had three girl vo­cal­ists. One of those was Baker, who joined the band in St. Louis dur­ing 1936, rec­om­mended to Tucker by Louis Arm­strong. The Bai­ley Sis­ters also sang by late 1938. The or­ches­tra made their first record­ings on Vo­calion in 1938, switch­ing to Co­lum­bia in 1939. Recorded in one of their first Co­lum­bia ses­sions in Au­gust of that year, “Oh, Johnny, Oh, Johnny, Oh!” be­came a sur­prise hit, sell­ing over half-​a-million copies and pro­pelling both Tucker and Baker into the na­tional spot­light by year’s end. Baker’s cute singing style proved wildly pop­u­lar, and she be­came the star of the band, with equal billing to Tucker.

Aside from Baker, Tucker had a great deal of churn in his vocal de­part­ment. Bill­board once re­marked that he changed his vo­cal­ists as often as most men changed their un­der­wear. The Bai­ley Sis­ters left by March 1939, re­placed by the Lor­raine Sis­ters, who likely stayed until mid-​year but were def­i­nitely gone by Feb­ru­ary 1940. Baker and Tucker re­mained the two solo vo­cal­ists, with Baker the only vo­cal­ist on record­ings.

In Feb­ru­ary 1940, Tucker’s glee club con­sisted of Sam K. Sims, who joined in 1938, Phil Ab­bott, who joined in Sep­tem­ber 1939, Carl Leonard Sumpas, who also joined in Sep­tem­ber 1939, and Gil Mer­shon. Ab­bott was said to a “body­guard” “when nec­es­sary,” with no elab­o­ra­tion on what that meant. By Feb­ru­ary 1941, the glee club had been re­named the Body­guards and fea­tured Jack Bartell. By Jan­u­ary 1942, Eddie Rice was one of the male singers.

Tucker and Baker an­nounced their en­gage­ment in fall 1940, though it likely was just a pub­lic­ity stunt. The two never mar­ried, and in in­ter­views Baker typ­i­cally in­sisted that she had no ro­man­tic in­ter­est in Tucker.

In Jan­u­ary 1942, Tucker shook up his whole vocal de­part­ment, re­leas­ing every­one, in­clud­ing Baker, who had de­cided to go solo. Ac­cord­ing to Down Beat, Tucker hired a girl vocal group from Ne­braska to re­place Baker, though that ap­pears not to have hap­pened. Bill­board re­ported, cor­rectly, that Tucker had hired Lor­raine Ben­son, an Arkansas girl as Baker’s re­place­ment, with Bob Haymes, brother of the more fa­mous Dick, be­com­ing male vo­cal­ist. The change took ef­fect in Feb­ru­ary.

War Years and Post-​War Ca­reer

In early 1942, the draft board re­clas­si­fied Tucker as A-1. Fac­ing in­duc­tion, he joined the Navy in May, with a re­port­ing date in July. He planned to leave the band in­tact while he was away, of­fer­ing Baker the job of lead­ing it in his ab­sence, but she turned him down, mak­ing far more money on her own than she could as a sub­sti­tute band­leader. Tucker also of­fered movie singer Phil Regan the job, but he de­clined as well. By mid-​June, Tucker was still look­ing for a way to keep his band going, but in the end he had to dis­band. Ben­son re­mained vo­cal­ist until the end.

Given the rank of Lieu­tenant Ju­nior Grade, Tucker led the band on the navy’s 1943 radio pro­gram Ahoy Amer­ica, broad­cast from the Navy Pier in Chicago and also fea­tur­ing singer Mary Ann Mer­cer. Re­leased from the ser­vice in mid-​1945, he put to­gether a new civil­ian or­ches­tra which began work­ing the Mid­west that fall. Helen Lee was fe­male vo­cal­ist in No­vem­ber. Tucker also sang. Lee, who was re­port­edly dis­cov­ered by Tucker at Auburn Uni­ver­sity, was gone by late Jan­u­ary 1946, re­placed by the Quin­tones vocal group.^[1] Al Parker also sang as part of the glee club. By April 1946, Scot­tee Marsh was fe­male vo­cal­ist, with the Quin­tones gone.^[2] The band recorded on the Mu­s­i­craft label that year.

Marsh re­mained as vo­cal­ist through at least Sep­tem­ber 1948. She fronted the band that sum­mer when Tucker spent sev­eral weeks in the hos­pi­tal with a fever. With­out a record­ing con­tract in 1947, Tucker’s band dropped off the pub­lic’s radar. He recorded two sides each for Uni­ver­sal and Mer­cury in 1948, with the Body­guards as vo­cal­ists, and one side for the Lon­don label in 1949, but his music by that point was some­what old-​fashioned, and the record­ings went nowhere. Tucker was never able to re­cap­ture the fame he’d had be­fore the war, though he con­tin­ued work­ing steadily on the hotel cir­cuit for many years. He re­mained ac­tive in the music busi­ness until health prob­lems forced him to slow down dur­ing the 1990s.

Orrin Tucker lived to be 100, pass­ing away in 2011.

Notes