Jazz Lifestyle
A look at the booking dates of the The New Glenn Miller Orchestra in the two months following Hambro's November 5 wedding is representative of the lifestyle of a big-band musician. On the day of his marriage, Hambro and the 17-member The New Glenn Miller Orchestra were playing one of the ballrooms of Philadelphia's Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, while his fiancée, Lynn Michels, was singing with Al Raymond's big band in another room. Immediately after his marriage, while Hambro and Michels celebrated a weekend honeymoon, the band played The Tuxedo Ballroom in New York City. On Monday, with Hambro and Michels following the tour bus in their new convertible, the band headed to the Midwest for two weeks of engagements, followed by dates in Louisiana and Texas. After a brief respite for Hanukkah/Christmas, they broadcast from the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago on New Year's Eve, and after the post-Christmas break, a few weeks later, on 19 January 1961, they performed at one of President John F. Kennedy's five inaugural balls in Washington, DC. The band's repertoire in January, 1957 (during an extended engagement at the Cafe Rouge at the New York Statler Hotel, including Sunday afternoon's Treasury Savings Shows) included 60 Glenn Miller originals, 10 McKinley standards, 10 contemporary tunes done in the Glenn Miller style (thanks to arranger Joe Cribari) and several pieces by the Lenny Hambro Quintet.
Despite the "different-hotel-every-night" lifestyle of a jazz musician, Hambro managed not to be seduced by the drugs and alcohol that were rampant during the jazz era of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, that ended the careers and/or lives of many jazz musicians. Hambro credited Roy Eldridge, a mentor from his initial years with Gene Krupa's band, for his being able to shun narcotics. When Hambro was just 19, Roy forced him to watch a band member inject heroin, and stay to watch its effects, with a stern warning not to get involved with drugs.
Read more about this topic: Lenny Hambro
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