Irv Kluger
b. 9 July 1921, New York City, New York, USA. In the early '40s, after studying music at high school and while still at university, Kluger drifted into New York's bebop scene. He played drums in Georgie Auld's modernistic band and also worked with Dizzy Gillespie, appearing with him on a 1945 recording date which produced the hugely popular Salt Peanuts and Good Bait. Kluger then moved on to the adventurous Boyd Raeburn band and also worked with Stan Kenton and Artie Shaw in the late '40s. In the '50s and subsequently, Kluger played in studio, as well as in theatre and casino orchestras, across the country, eventually settling on the west coast. In the early '80s he was an executive of the American Federation of Musicians in Las Vegas and talked of returning to drumming in his ‘retirement’, and, time permitting, also of writing his memoirs.