Ben Pollack

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Ben Pollack was an American drummer and bandleader, born in 1903 in Chicago. He learned to drum in high school and was already playing professionally as a teenager. In 1923 in Chicago he joined the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, and later the Harry Bastin Band in Los Angeles. In 1925 he formed his own twelve-piece orchestra in Chicago, the Venice Ballroom Orchestra, also known as Ben Pollack and his Californians, which could sometimes be heard on the radio of WLW in Cincinnati.

Music and breakthrough

Pollack's great gift was spotting talent. His band included Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Jack Teagarden, Jimmy McPartland and later Harry James. Gil Rodin, one of the first members, later became an executive at the Music Corporation of America. From about 1928, members of the band recorded, with Irving Mills, an enormous amount of hot dance music and jazz for cheap labels, under all kinds of pseudonyms. In 1928 the orchestra moved to New York, played for Broadway shows and obtained a regular engagement at the Park Central Hotel. Pollack preferred to see himself as a bandleader and singer, and therefore hired Ray Bauduc as drummer. In 1929 Goodman and McPartland left.

Influence

Because so many later stars of swing began with him, Pollack earned the nickname Father of Swing. His orchestra shows how the jazz of the 1920s passed into the big band style of the 1930s.

Listening