Harry James

James' band was the first high-profile orchestra to feature vocalist Frank Sinatra, who signed a one-year, $75 a week contract with it in 1939. James wanted to change Sinatra's name to 'Frankie Satin', but the singer refused.[14] Sinatra only worked seven months before leaving to join Tommy Dorsey's outfit.[15] The James band's featured female vocalist was Helen Forrest, and his later band included drummer Buddy Rich[15] and bassist Thurman Teague.[16][17] Johnny MacAfee was featured on the sax and vocals, and Corky Corcoran was a youthful sax prodigy.

James' orchestra succeeded Glenn Miller's on a program sponsored by Chesterfield Cigarettes in 1942, when Miller disbanded his orchestra to enter the Army. In 1945, James and his orchestra had a summer replacement program for Danny Kaye's program on CBS.[18] He also led the orchestra for Call for Music, which was broadcast on CBS February 13, 1948 - April 16, 1948, and on NBC April 20, 1948 - June 29, 1948.[19]

James recorded many popular records and appeared in many Hollywood movies. He played trumpet in the 1950 film Young Man with a Horn,[20] dubbing Kirk Douglas. The album from the movie charted at #1, with James backing big band singer and actress Doris Day. James's recording of "I'm Beginning to See the Light" appears in the motion picture My Dog Skip (2000). His music is also featured in the Woody Allen film Hannah and Her Sisters. James's recording of "It's Been a Long, Long Time" is featured in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and in Marvel's Avengers: Endgame.[21]

With James's childhood spent as a musician in a traveling circus, he picked up a flamboyant style that utilized such techniques as heavy vibrato, half valve and lip glissandi, valve and lip trills, and valve tremolos. These techniques were popular at the time in what was known as "hot" jazz, epitomized by James's idol Louis Armstrong, but somewhat fell out of favor by the 1950s with the advent of "cool" jazz.[22] James's rigorous regime of practice as a child resulted in an exceptional technical proficiency in the more classical techniques of range, fingering and tonguing. Growing up in the South, James was also exposed to blues music, which had an additional influence on his style. As James explained, "I was brought up in Texas with the blues – when I was eleven or twelve years old down in what they call 'barbecue row' I used to sit in with the guys that had the broken bottlenecks on their guitars, playing the blues; that's all we knew."[23] After hearing James solo on several numbers at a Benny Goodman one-nighter, Armstrong enthused to his friend and Goodman vibraphonist Lionel Hampton, "That white boy – he plays like a jig!"[24]

After James left Benny Goodman's band in 1939 to form his own band, he soon found that leading a commercially viable musical group required a broader set of skills than those needed to be a gifted musician playing in someone else's band. The James band ran into financial trouble, and it became increasingly difficult for James to pay salaries and keep the band together. In 1940, James lost his contract with Columbia Records (he returned in 1941), and Frank Sinatra left the band that January. It was not long after this that James made a pivotal decision: he would adopt a "sweeter" style that added strings to the band, and the band would deliver tunes that were in more of a "pop" vein and less true to its jazz roots. From a commercial standpoint, the decision paid off as James soon enjoyed a string of chart topping hits that provided commercial success for him and his band. Indeed, a U.S. Treasury report released in 1945 listed Harry James and Betty Grable as the highest-paid couple in the nation.[25]

While James remained commercially successful and personally committed to his music, some critics sought to find fault. In Peter Levinson's 1999 biography, Dan Morgenstern, the respected critic and Director of the Institute of Jazz Studies, called the 1941 release of the latter Grammy Hall of Fame inducted "You Made Me Love You" "the record that the jazz critics never forgave Harry James for recording."[26] With James continuing to employ his flamboyant style on pop hits through the 1940s, his playing was often labeled as "schmaltzy"[27] and dismissed by the critics, although radio discs from this period reveal James's continued commitment to jazz. James's jazz releases during this period, while not as numerous, include a variety of modern arrangements from Neal Hefti, Frank Devenport, Johnny Richards and Jimmy Mundy that often inspired his musicians, and as bop surpassed swing by the late 1940s, James was surprisingly open to its influence.[28]

Publicity photo of James, c. 1975

After coasting through the mid-1950s, James made a complete reevaluation of where he was heading in his musical career. Count Basie provided the impetus by making a significant comeback with his newly formed "16 Men Swinging" band, and James wanted a band with a decided Basie flavor.[29] James signed with Capitol Records in 1955, and two years later, after releasing new studio versions of many of his previously released songs from Columbia Records, James recorded ten new tracks for an album entitled Wild About Harry!. This album was the first in a series released on Capitol, and continuing later on MGM, representative of the Basie style that James adopted during this period, with some of the arrangements provided by former Basie saxophonist and arranger Ernie Wilkins, whom James hired for his own band.[30]

While James never completely regained favor with jazz critics during his lifetime in spite of his return to more jazz-oriented releases in the late 1950s and into the 1960s, contemporary opinion of his work has shifted. Recent reissues such as Capitol's 2012 7-disc set The Capitol Vaults Jazz Series: Gene Krupa and Harry James have prompted new, more favorable analyses. In 2014, Marc Myers of JazzWax commented, "[James's] band of the mid-1940s was more modern than most of the majors, and in 1949 he led one of the finest bands of the year." And on James's releases from 1958–1961, Myers noted, "The James band during this period has been eclipsed by bands led by Basie, Maynard Ferguson and Stan Kenton. While each served up its own brand of magnificence, James produced more consistently brilliant tracks than the others... virtually everything James recorded during this period was an uncompromising, swinging gem."[31]

James felt strongly about the music he both played and recorded. In 1972 while in London, he did an interview with the English jazz critic Steve Voce, who asked if the biggest audience was for the commercial numbers he had recorded. James visibly bristled, replying "That would depend on for whom you are playing. If you're playing for a jazz audience, I'm pretty sure that some of the jazz things we do would be a lot more popular than 'Sleepy Lagoon,' and if we're playing at a country club or playing Vegas, in which we have many, many types of people, then I'm sure that 'Sleepy Lagoon' would be more popular at that particular time. But I really get bugged about these people talking about commercial tunes, because to me, if you're gonna be commercial, you're gonna stand on your head and make funny noises and do idiotic things. I don't think we've ever recorded or played one tune that I didn't particularly love to play. Otherwise, I wouldn't play it."[32]

As of 2016, two recordings of Harry James had been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance."

Metronome magazine conducted annual readers' polls ranking the top jazz musician on each instrument. The winners were invited to join an ensemble known as the Metronome All-Stars that was assembled for studio recordings. The studio sessions were held in the years 1939–42, 1946–53, and 1956, and typically resulted in two tracks which allowed each participant a one chorus solo. Harry James was chosen to play trumpet with the Metronome All-Stars in 1939, 1940 and 1941.

A similar annual readers' poll conducted by Downbeat magazine selected James as the best trumpet instrumentalist for the years 1937,[68] 1938[69] and 1939,[70] and as favorite soloist for 1942.[71]

For his contribution to the motion picture industry James was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6683 Hollywood Boulevard on February 8, 1960.[72]

He was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1983.[73]