Biography
Mike Riley handled both trumpet and trombone with skill and enjoyed measurable success fronting his own ensembles, yet his lasting recognition rests on co-authoring the year’s biggest 1935 sensation, the dizzying novelty “The Music Goes ’Round and Around.” That number prompted numerous reinterpretations, among them versions by NRBQ, the Boswell Sisters, and jazz luminaries Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. It remained Riley’s solitary songwriting triumph.
His birth year remains disputed: jazz historian John Chilton places it in 1907 in Brooklyn, while additional accounts locate the event roughly three years earlier in Massachusetts.
By 1927 Riley was established in New York, serving as trumpeter in the Parody Club outfit led by pianist, singer, and comedian Jimmy Durante. Before long he had also taken up trombone in multiple large ensembles. His transition to bandleading arose from a partnership with fellow multi-instrumentalist Eddie Farley, a trumpeter and singer.
The pair formed a compact group in the early thirties and tested their joint songwriting abilities, producing the aforementioned chart-topping result. Steady employment at the Onyx Club sustained the Farley-Riley unit until each musician elected to pursue independent projects. Throughout the forties Riley’s orchestra performed not only in New York but also along the West Coast and throughout the Midwest. In the early fifties he worked as a sideman in Chicago before resuming leadership duties, this time shaping a broader variety revue rather than a purely jazz-focused band. That company traversed North America during the fifties and sixties.
Additional performers named Mike Riley—distinct from the subject of this account—include a jazz guitarist who cut several sides in the seventies and a blues bassist known as “Sleepy.”
His birth year remains disputed: jazz historian John Chilton places it in 1907 in Brooklyn, while additional accounts locate the event roughly three years earlier in Massachusetts.
By 1927 Riley was established in New York, serving as trumpeter in the Parody Club outfit led by pianist, singer, and comedian Jimmy Durante. Before long he had also taken up trombone in multiple large ensembles. His transition to bandleading arose from a partnership with fellow multi-instrumentalist Eddie Farley, a trumpeter and singer.
The pair formed a compact group in the early thirties and tested their joint songwriting abilities, producing the aforementioned chart-topping result. Steady employment at the Onyx Club sustained the Farley-Riley unit until each musician elected to pursue independent projects. Throughout the forties Riley’s orchestra performed not only in New York but also along the West Coast and throughout the Midwest. In the early fifties he worked as a sideman in Chicago before resuming leadership duties, this time shaping a broader variety revue rather than a purely jazz-focused band. That company traversed North America during the fifties and sixties.
Additional performers named Mike Riley—distinct from the subject of this account—include a jazz guitarist who cut several sides in the seventies and a blues bassist known as “Sleepy.”
Singles
