Boyd Raeburn

Boyd Raeburn rarely stepped forward as a featured soloist, yet the brief existence of his mid-1940s ensembles showcased some of the era’s most forward-thinking charts, above all those penned by George Handy. During the 1930s Raeburn had fronted strictly commercial orchestras, and only in 1944 did his work intersect meaningfully with jazz. That season his forward-looking swing unit employed, at different moments, Benny Harris, the Johnny Hodges-influenced Johnny Bothwell, Serge Chaloff, Roy Eldridge, Trummy Young, and Handy himself at the piano, performing scores supplied by George Williams, Eddie Finckel, and Handy. While the ensemble drew its primary impetus from Count Basie, it also became the first orchestra to commit Dizzy Gillespie’s “Night in Tunisia” to disc, with Gillespie himself appearing as a guest. By 1945 Handy’s increasingly daring arrangements—occasionally echoing contemporary classical idioms—had taken over the book, and vocalists David Allyn and Ginnie Powell, Raeburn’s wife, delivered their lines against backdrops of pronounced dissonance. Although financial pressures continually threatened the orchestra’s survival, its personnel actually expanded throughout 1946 as reed players took up additional woodwinds and French horns plus a harp were added. Among the many musicians who moved through the ranks were Lucky Thompson, Dodo Marmarosa, Ray Linn, and Buddy DeFranco. Johnny Richards assumed the principal arranging role in 1947, yet by year’s end the band had ceased recording and Raeburn soon returned to dance-oriented work. The genial Columbia dates he made in 1956–1957 hold scant interest for jazz listeners, whereas the earlier groups are documented on Musicraft and Savoy sessions, Circle transcriptions of radio broadcasts, and airchecks issued by IAJRC and Hep.