REMEMBERING PEARL HARBOR
WITH MUSIC FROM THE ERA.....
Benny Goodman~Let's Dance
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Frederick Alfred Martin (1906-83) was an orphan reared in Cleveland. He started out playing drums, then switched to saxophone, the instrument with which he would be identified for the rest of his life. He intended to become a reporter, as journalists were called then. He hoped he would earn enough money from his music to enter Ohio State but instead wound up becoming a professional musician. Freddy led his own band while in high school, then played in various local bands. After working on a ship's band, Freddy joined the Mason-Dixon band, then joined Arnold Johnson and Jack Albin.
After a couple of years, his skill began attracting other musicians. One was Guy Lombardo, who would remain friends with Freddy throughout his life. One night, when Guy could not do a certain gig, he suggested Freddy's band fill in for him. The gig went very well, and that's how the ball got rolling. But the band broke up, and Freddy did not form a permanent band until 1931 at the Bossert Hotel in Brooklyn.
There, Freddy pioneered the "tenor band" style that swept dance music. With his tenor sax as melodic lead, Freddy fronted an all-tenor sax section with just two brasses and a violin trio plus rhythm. The quickly spawned imitators in hotels and ballrooms nationwide. Freddy took his band into the Roosevelt Grill in New York City and the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
Peter Tchaikovsky wrote a piano concerto in B-flat minor with a long introduction in D-flat Major that everyone who listened to Arturo Toscanini or Walter Damrosch on the radio knew by heart. Freddy worked the introduction up into a hit single that put him on the map.