Van Alexander

Con­sid­ered one of the great­est arrangers of the big band era, Van Alexan­der was also known for his abil­ity to put to­gether qual­ity or­ches­tras. Un­for­tu­nately for him, those two skills didn’t trans­late into suc­cess for his own band, which never re­ally man­aged to get off the ground.

Alexan­der began his pro­fes­sional ca­reer as Al Feld­man, sell­ing two arrange­ments to Chick Webb for twenty dol­lars. Webb soon con­tracted him to write three arrange­ments a week, often for his up-​and-coming young vo­cal­ist, Ella Fitzger­ald, which cul­mi­nated in the pop­u­lar 1938 hit song “A-​Tisket, A-​Tasket,” a num­ber Fitzger­ald and Feld­man co-​wrote. The suc­cess of “A-​Tisket, A-​Tasket” brought Feld­man to the at­ten­tion of RCA Vic­tor record­ing chief Eli Ober­stein, who en­cour­aged him to form his own or­ches­tra in late 1938. Ober­stein also sug­gested that Feld­man change his to name Van Alexan­der.

The or­ches­tra made its first record­ings for RCA Vic­tor’s Blue­bird label in early No­vem­ber 1938. Orig­i­nal vo­cal­ists were Shirley Brown and sax­o­phon­ist Butch Stone, who sang nov­elty tunes. The num­bers given Brown to record were arrange­ments Alexan­der had done for Fitzger­ald. Brown was no Ella Fitzger­ald how­ever, and the tunes came off poorly. Jayne Dover had re­placed Brown by the time the band en­tered the stu­dio for the sec­ond time in late No­vem­ber. With new arrange­ments, it fi­nally began to come into its own, cap­tur­ing the re­view­ers’ ears. Crit­ics found Alexan­der’s group a good band but not spec­tac­u­lar, not­ing that it had pos­si­bil­i­ties.

Phyl­lis Kenny had be­come fe­male vo­cal­ist by mid-​February 1939. In Sep­tem­ber, Ober­stein formed a new record­ing com­pany, United States Record, re­leas­ing Alexan­der from RCA Vic­tor and sign­ing him to Var­sity, one of new firm’s im­prints, where they were billed as “Van Alexan­der and His Swing­time Band.” In mid-​1940, in ad­di­tion to his own band, Alexan­der be­came con­duc­tor of the house or­ches­tra at New York radio sta­tion WOR for the Mabel Todd-​Maury Am­s­ter­dam Laugh and Swing Club broad­casts. As 1940 rolled on, Alexan­der began hav­ing trou­ble lin­ing up book­ings for his dance or­ches­tra. He tried re­duc­ing its size to make it more eco­nom­i­cally palat­able for the­ater own­ers, but it made no dif­fer­ence. Fi­nally, in early Oc­to­ber, he called it quits, de­cid­ing to focus on writ­ing and ar­rang­ing in­stead.

Later Ca­reer

Work­ing for Larry Clin­ton and oth­ers over the next few years, Alexan­der taught ar­rang­ing on the side and con­tin­ued on the Laugh and Swing Club until early 1941. That year, he also played piano with Doc Price’s jump quar­tet. Alexan­der led bands off and on for the rest of the decade. He left Price in June 1941 to form a new band to play sum­mer lo­ca­tions and one-​nighters, with Dover, who had changed her name to Jane Essex by that time, re­turn­ing as fe­male vo­cal­ist. Kay Lit­tle sang with the or­ches­tra in Au­gust. Bob Pre­ston was male vo­cal­ist. In early 1942 Alexan­der as­sem­bled a band for the Minoco soundie “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” with Kenny as fe­male vo­cal­ist, singing with Lew Hearn. In mid-​1942, Alexan­der put to­gether a new twelve-​piece out­fit to com­pete in a bat­tle of the bands with Mug­gsy Spanier’s or­ches­tra in Hart­ford, Con­necti­cut. Alexan­der’s un­pol­ished band was no match for Spanier’s out­stand­ing en­sem­ble.

In early 1943, Alexan­der as­sem­bled a tem­po­rary band for Bob Crosby’s ap­pear­ance at the Capi­tol The­ater in New York. When Crosby’s four-​week run was over, Alexan­der de­cided to keep the band going. It worked through the sum­mer, play­ing the­aters and ball­rooms, with Betty Carr as vo­cal­ist. David Allen joined the band when it went into the Rose­land in July, where it re­mained until Sep­tem­ber with a coast-​to-coast broad­cast over the NBC Blue Net­work.

Alexan­der left the music busi­ness in late 1943 to do “de­fense work.” He made a come­back in mid-​1945, fronting a pick-​up band for pub­lic park dance dates. Alexan­der fo­cused on teach­ing as well as ar­rang­ing for the rest of the 1940s, writ­ing the 1946 book, First Arrange­ment, with its tagline “Any mu­si­cian can arrange with this book!!!” Read­ers could send their arrange­ments to Alexan­der by mail and, for a fee, he would cor­rect them.

In the late 1940s, Alexan­der be­came in­ter­ested in be-​bop and began to focus on smaller bands. In early 1946, he and Quig Quigley helped put to­gether Bob Crosby’s new post-​war band and then de­cided to form an eight-​piece combo of their own. The group fell apart soon after. In 1947, Alexan­der wrote book for Butch Stone’s new small combo. The fol­low­ing year, MGM, for whom Stone recorded, asked Alexan­der to cre­ate a pro­gres­sive big band for an album of songs. Called the Blue Rhythm Band, it in­cluded such mu­si­cians as Char­lie Shavers, Lucky Thomp­son, Jimmy Rowles, Chuck Pe­ter­son, Don La­m­ond and Stan Getz. One side of the album fea­tured be-​bop while the other con­tained a swing jam. In 1949, Alexan­der wrote a book for mu­si­cians, The Be-​Bop Style, in which he ex­plained the in­tri­ca­cies of cre­at­ing chords in pro­gres­sive jazz.

Alexan­der worked with a va­ri­ety of his own small com­bos in the late 1940s and early 1950s, record­ing with Rose Marie on Mer­cury in 1947 using a sex­tet. In 1952, he or­ga­nized a new or­ches­tra for Las Vegas, keep­ing the size of the band down to ten mu­si­cians. He ex­plained to Down Beat mag­a­zine why he used small groups:

The day of the big band is over. The cur­rent trends call for smaller bands, both for rea­sons of econ­omy and be­cause the danc­ing pub­lic doesn’t want the com­pli­cated, loud, brassy arrange­ments of the big band era even though mu­si­cians like to write and play them. If we’re going to put the dance busi­ness back on its feet, we’re going to have to play for the pub­lic.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Alexan­der recorded sev­eral al­bums under his own name and also con­ducted for pop­u­lar singers, in­clud­ing Doris Day, Andy Williams, and Dean Mar­tin. He be­came a highly suc­cess­ful com­poser and arranger in the film and tele­vi­sion in­dus­try, in­clud­ing eight years on Mar­tin’s clas­sic tele­vi­sion pro­gram. Van Alexan­der passed away in 2015 at the age of 100.