Sentimental Journey

Les Brown and His Band of Renown

I’ve been looking forward to an excuse to introduce some Big Band music in Sometimes a Song, and this week’s theme (and we won’t ALWAYS have a theme), “journey,” brought one popular old song immediately to mind. The tune, which I’ve heard played by just about every Big Band there is and sung by just about every crooner, has been floating around my head all week. As it floats there, I’m “hearing” — with no sound at all — the wonderful arrangement by the tune’s composer, Les Brown, a Pennsylvania Boy (like Tony), who “made good.”

There’s a funny thing about “making good” in the old-fashioned way that the Big Band leaders made good: it didn’t happen by luck or good marketing, exactly, though those did play a role in the greatest successes. It mostly happened because someone turned a talent into a vocation, which he pursued energetically and thoroughly, by honing his craft, and in the case of the popular composers, by studying the greats. Big Bands were the popular orchestras of thei…