Johnny Long

Johnny Long, known as "the Man Who's Long on Music," was one of those ubiquitous talents of the big-band era, leading a group that -- to his detriment in terms of long-term exposure -- fit comfortably neither into the "swing" (i.e., jazz) nor "sweet" (i.e., pop) category beginning at the end of the 1930s. Johnny Long was born in 1915 (some sources say 1916) in Newell, NC. He was raised on a farm and manifested a serious interest in music while still a young boy, taking up the violin at age six. Long was born right-handed, but at age seven he seriously injured two fingers on his right hand in an accident on the farm -- he might well have left the violin, but he refused to give up on the instrument and his teacher was inspired by his dedication to reverse the stringing on his violin, and he proceeded to learn to play left-handed. He was good enough to aspire to play professionally, a goal he pursued even as an undergraduate at Duke University. He formed a band, the Duke Collegians, in the mid-'30s, and replaced Les Brown's group as the official college band after Brown's graduation. The members stayed together after their own graduation, renaming themselves the Johnny Long Orchestra, Long serving as their leader with assistance from his fellow Duke graduate Hal Kemp. The Johnny Long Orchestra came along with a sound that crossed swing and sweet sounds just as the swing boom was sweeping the country, and were good enough to play most of the better hotels in the East and the Midwest, with singers Bob Houston and Helen Young (who sang a killer version of "Takin' a Chance on Love") as well as the entire band -- often referred to as "the Glee Club" -- taking the vocals. In 1939, while appearing in their first national radio broadcast on The Fitch Summer Bandwagon Show, the...