Final Bow For Big Band Leader
Gordon "Tex" Beneke, a singer and sax player who took over the Glenn Miller Orchestra after the band leader's death during World War II, died Tuesday at an Orange County rest home, the facility's owner said. He was 86.
Beneke, who joined the orchestra in 1938, died of respiratory arrest at the Assured Horizons home in Costa Mesa, said Sheryl Thompson.
His sunny Southern voice helped make hits of Miller's "Chattanooga Choo Choo," "I Gotta Girl in Kalamazoo" and "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree."
When Miller broke up the band in 1942 to join the military, Beneke played with other bands before joining the Navy during World War II. Although he played in the U.S. Navy Band, he never played in Miller's Air Force orchestra.
Miller disappeared in December 1944 after taking off for a flight from England to France in a plane that was never seen again.
In 1946, Miller's widow asked Beneke to take the Glenn Miller Orchestra back out on the road. Under Beneke's direction, the band flourished.
"With Miller a fallen hero," big band author Leo Walker once wrote, "demand for the Miller sound was bigger than ever, and the band played to capacity audiences everywhere."
Postwar audiences went wild for the reconstituted group, which scored a string of Top 10 records. However, the band's manager and producer insisted Beneke keep the sounds as faithful to Miller's prewar work as possible, with no experiments. The frustrated Beneke broke with Miller's estate and formed his own band.
A year later, he billed the performance as "Tex Beneke and His Orchestra: Playing the Music Made Famous by Glenn Miller." He released his own album "Shooting Star" in 1948 on the Magic Records label.
He still played the great hits of Glenn Miller, but he also laid down fresh sounds and followed his own musical instincts.
Born Gordon Beneke in Fort Worth, Texas, on Feb. 12, 1914, he earned the nickname Tex early on. Later, fellow band members also called him Tex.
Beneke began his big band career with the Ben Young Orchestra in 1935 and played with it until 1937. In 1938, he joined Glenn Miller as a sideman earning $52.50 a week.
Although one of the most popular soloists with the Miller band, Beneke was left out of the famed movie Glenn Miller Story.
He appeared in films like Sun Valley Serenade (1941) and Orchestra Wives (1942) that helped propel him to the top of the polls in Downbeat and Metronome magazines.
But fellow band members noted fame never went to his head.
"Tex's big ambition was to get back to Texas, eat some chili and play some blues," drummer Maurice Purtill once said.
Beneke worked consistently through the 1960s, appearing on TV's Cavalcade of Big Bands. Through the 1970s and 1980s, Beneke continued to play his own music in a style closely resembling the Miller orchestra.