Jean Goldkette
b. 18 March 1899, Valenciennes, France, d. 24 May 1962. A child prodigy, Goldkette toured as a concert pianist, spending several years in Greece and Russia and was still only 12 years old when he settled in America. Equipped with an astute business brain, Goldkette was soon working as a danceband pianist and joined the organization headed by Chicago's Edgar Benson. As director of one of the several Benson Orchestras, Goldkette expanded his knowledge of the band circuit to the point where he decided to set up his own business. He established an organization similar to Benson's and later acquired a building in Detroit which he turned into the Graystone Ballroom. With a recording contract for Victor, Goldkette soon had more work than he could handle with one band and once again followed Benson's example by forming additional bands, each labelled as a Jean Goldkette Orchestra. Throughout the late '20s his bands were home to several white jazz stars, including Bix Beiderbecke, Frank Trumbauer, Joe Venuti and the Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, and several important early big band arrangers, notably Bill Challis and Bill Rank. At the end of 1927, after a hugely successful engagement at the Roseland Ballroom in New York, the jazz nucleus of Goldkette's number one orchestra left to join Paul Whiteman. In the '30s Goldkette concentrated his energies on operating his many dancehalls and the 20-plus bands that bore his name (in none of which he ever played). Although the bands became of less importance, Jean Goldkette orchestras were still performing into the '50s. Later in his life, Goldkette returned to his first love, classical piano music. He died in March 1962, thus missing the nostalgia boom from which he would doubtless have benefitted.