Will Bradley

Will Bradley was a soft-spoken trombonist who got famous for a few years by teaming up with Ray McKinley and forming a big band that spearheaded the boogie-woogie craze of the late '30s and early '40s. McKinley was more suited to the boogie than Bradley, who preferred sweet ballads and easygoing swing. Nevertheless, he soon found himself closely associated with song titles like "Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar," "Scrub Me, Mama, with a Boogie Beat," "Bounce Me, Brother, with a Solid Four," and "Fry Me, Cookie, with a Can of Lard." For Bradley, a man with classical and 20th century chamber ambitions and whose personal hero was Viennese composer Alban Berg, this was hardly the path he would have preferred. A fine trombonist whose polished tone sounded a bit like that of Tommy Dorsey, Will Bradley was greatly admired and respected by Glenn Miller, who expressed the opinion that Bradley was technically far ahead of his peers, including both Miller and Dorsey. Wilbur Schwichtenberg was born in Newton, NJ, on July 12, 1912, and raised a few miles away in the town of Washington. After moving to New York in 1928 he performed with dance bands such as Milt Shaw's Detroiters and Red Nichols & His Five Pennies. From 1931-1934 he also worked at the CBS studios, played in the Ray Noble orchestra from 1935-1936, and then went back to steady work but relative anonymity as a studio instrumentalist until forming a big band in 1939 at the urging of booking agent Willard Alexander, who seems to have thought he could offset Schwichtenberg's persona by setting him up as co-leader with Texas-born swing drummer and wise guy McKinley, who installed Davey Tough as his own replacement with Jimmy Dorsey in order to link up with Bradley. McKinley, whose talents included singing snappy lyrics from...