Buddy Morrow
b. Muni Zudecoff, 8 February 1919, New Haven, USA. Morrow, after graduating from Juilliard, began his prolific career as a sideman with the hotel bands of Eddy Duchin and Vincent Lopez. He developed into a jazzman in Vocalion sessions with Sharkey Bonano's Sharks Of Rhythm, a 1936 Eddie Condon Dixieland group. He reached swing band status with Artie Shaw the same year, under his real name then later Muni Morrow (his adopted name). He joined Tommy Dorsey's trombone section in 1938 for Boogie Woogie and Hawaiian War Chant, the next year playing with Paul Whiteman's Concert Orchestra in their Decca/ Brunswick recording of Gershwin's Concerto In F. He joined Tony Pastor in 1940 on his way to replacing Ray Conniffwith the Bob Crosbyband (1941). (The next year saw him in the US Navy, with a one-off Red McKenzie jazz session for Commodore producing inter aliaSweet Lorraine and Talk Of The Town). On demob Morrow played with Jimmy Dorsey for a while (Jumping Jehosaphat) then moved into radio; conducting in the studios gave him a taste for leading, and RCAVictor decided to back him with his own band in 1951. His first minor hit was a cross-over into R&B with Night Train, taken from Duke Ellington's Happy Go Lucky Local by Jimmy Forrest, who had his own hit on United. There was little room for big bands in subsequent years, on singles at least, and after more minor hits with Man With The Golden Arm and Dragnet, Morrow concentrated in the late '50s and early '60s on albums of standards for Mercury, Victor and Camden, not all of which were issued in the UK. He returned to studio work, emerging on occasion to front revivals of the Dorsey and Miller bands.