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1 of 1- Steve Fay
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- From: Fulton County, Illinois, USA
- Registered: 26/5/2011
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John Scott Trotter -- stature among the "Big Bands"?
Trotter was backing Bing on radio and on many of his recordings for a stretch of several years that overlap with what is often called today "The Big Band Era." Yet, when people list the Big Band leaders, or compile recordings of Big Band hits, nobody mentions John Scott Trotter. I'll admit that as a kid collecting my first Crosby 78s, I wondered who this Trotter fellow was. It wasn't a bandleader name I knew from those my parents talked about.
When I think about it, some of the widely acknowleged Big Band hits I had come to know about were instrumentals or only had band members talk-singing something in them, like "Pennsylvania Six-five-thousand!." The Dorseys and others tended to hire a boy or girl-singer for a period of time, in order to intersperse vocal numbers in the performance, but few of these singers over-shadowed the band for very long. If they did, they left for a solo career. The bandleader remained the star. But Trotter is a bandleader hired by or at least hired to serve a singer, not the other way around. I don't even know if he had any instrumental hits.
Then, too, many of the Big Band hits were popular as dance tunes, whether or not there was a vocal part. The Big Bands toured at venues with big dance floors. Even Lawrence Welk's later TV performances included a dance floor suitable for fox trots and polkas. Everybody danced at Guy Lombardo's TV New Year's Eve performance, whether Kenny Gardner was singing or not. Did Bing and Trotter ever play for dances? Was there a place for the radio studio audiences to cut a rug when Bing, guests, and Trotter's band were doing a number? Or was Bing, and by connection Trotter's music, chiefly for listening, contemplation, humor, and romance off the dance floor?
Was Trotter good enough to be a memorable Big Band leader, apart from a star like Bing? With vocals mixed so much in the foreground (unlike today), did listeners really hear Trotter's band as well as they might have had he, the bandleader, been the star? I wonder. Of his hits with Bing, which ones come closest to qualifiying as a Big Band hit -- for what Trotter and the musicians are doing on it? Should Trotter hold a place among the likes of Miller, Dorsey, Orrin Tucker, Wayne King, and Sammy Kaye (hey, some of the Bing Bands weren't so lusterous but still get a track on those Big Band compilations)?
I'm just wondering what other's think about this.
Last edited by Steve Fay (08/12/2011 8:26 pm)
- David Lobosco
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Re: John Scott Trotter -- stature among the "Big Bands"?
John Scott Trotter is not really known as a big band leader - because his orchestra was mostly around to just accompany the sing on record or radio. His band was not a performance band like Miller or Goodman. John Scott Trotter was a great arranger and did play with the big bands (I believe he was with Hal Kemp for awhile , but as a big band leader I would not put him with the likes of Miller, Goodman or Shaw.
- Steve Fay
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Re: John Scott Trotter -- stature among the "Big Bands"?
Trotter did perform live in front of a radio studio audience, yet that is not the same kind of performance as touring the major night spots of cities around the country.
Since the Trotter song list was mainly Bing's and Bing's included so many songs from his movies, that might be another thing that separtated Trotter from those dance bands.
I wonder what acknowledged Bing Band hits alternated in the top ten for extended periods with major Crosby/Trotter hits?
Last edited by Steve Fay (09/12/2011 5:58 am)
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Thread Starter- Richard Baker
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Re: John Scott Trotter -- stature among the "Big Bands"?
I suspect that John Scott Trotter would have had his work cut out working for Bing. There was the radio show for which he was providing several new arrangements each week, and I suppose quite a bit of rehearsing, and he also worked on by far the greater proportion of Bing's commercial recordings. Between times he popped up in several of the films. Whatever time he might have left was probably confined to a few pieces of studio work and arrangements, but I have not been able to find references on line to very much else that he did until into the 1950s
He would just not have had the time to go out 'on the road' as many of the big name bands used to. And many of the very well known names were not making a fortune, as is attested in the biographies of several of them, so there was not a great incentive to do so. Times were still hard in the 1930s!
Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and later Glenn Miller, with one or two others, were exceptions. Not for nothing was Tommy Dorsey nicknamed the General Motors of show business. And some of them, notably Glenn Miller, financed other band leaders, who despite that still had financial problems. JST probably fancied a regular contract that saved him from such a precarious life - and possibly he accepted that he would not be able to break into the top rank.
Prior to life with Bing and KMH, he had been an arranger for Hal Kemp - who sacked him, according to Maxine Gray, () one of the vocalists.
While with Kemp he had been responsible for the staccato triplets interjected between each vocal line in (particularly) Skinnay Ennis's vocals. Possibly the most famous of these was 'Got A Date With An Angel', which can be heard here ! He's tumbling down the stairs on the way to heaven! It's an interesting gimmick but does not survive repeated usage. Despite the suggestion that he was sacked by Kemp, he did, much later, record an album 'I Remember Hal Kemp' which has not been available for some time, though it has recently become available as an iTunes (and Amazon) download.
Steve, It would be very interesting to see a weekly listing of the top ten in the hit parade. It would give a good idea of actual popularity at each point in time, but most published information of this type that I have come across look at annual ranking in sales, as here
I think the information (or at least the publicist's claims) is out there - it just has to be collated from the appropriate music magazines of the time, though I believe that there was no reliable audited information in the 1930s.
- Steve Fay
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Re: John Scott Trotter -- stature among the "Big Bands"?
Richard, Maxine Gray's account certainly reminds one of how musicians migrated back and forth between bands on those days. The annual top 10 and top 25 rankings were interesting, especially the latter as the top 10s would seem to leave out a number of songs that my have ranked highly but only for a brief time. If I had time I would go through all of Bing's songs listed to figure out which ones were backed by Trotter. It seems to me that there must have been a few years when Trotter was playing on as many hits as some of the best-known and still-remembered big bands' leaders. If that is so, it seems a bit of a shame that only Bing Crosby fans still know Trotter was a bandleader during that period.
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