Robert Dade

On recordings, Bob Astor is most beneficial remembered as half a songwriting team behind jazz jive and tempo & blues tracks like the hefty saga of “Fat Sam from Birmingham,” lots recorded with great relish by bandleaders Louis Jordan and King Pleasure. Astor and his primary collaborator, pianist George Williams, also developed the haunting and evocative ballad “I RECALL Harlem,” linked so highly with the fantastic jazz trumpeter Roy Eldridge that his name frequently turns up in the songwriting credits rather. Astor, whose genuine name was Robert Dade, got an extensive profession in the music business that had not been just limited by songwriting, nevertheless. He was energetic and influential being a bandleader, although his group under no circumstances were able to record. And he also converted into quite an industrious reserving agent, among the important organizers from the 1964 American tour by non-e apart from the Beatles. In New Orleans, he’s actually known for speaking the moptops down from $25,000 to $20,000 for the band’s one-and-only gig for the reason that town. Astor started his music profession playing both trumpet and drums in little rings around New Orleans as well as the party-hearty oilfield settlements of East Tx. Once he previously managed to get as definately not house as southern California, Astor required the gamble on beginning his personal big music group, while also garnering work like a disk jockey, club supervisor, and emcee. In the first ’40s, Astor’s music group also worked well in NEW YORK, and was as important as an organization could be that didn’t record. This impact was rather experienced through the attempts of a bunch of excellent music artists who toiled in Astor’s group ahead of becoming big titles in jazz, including composer and arranger Neal Hefti, trumpeter Les Elgart, saxophonists Zoot Sims and Illinois Jacquet, drummers Shelly Manne and Teddy Charles, and these Williams. As the huge Astor band didn’t linger for longer, area of the leader’s reputed legacy was the actual fact that he had not been a racist, and for that reason, was susceptible to placing dark and white music artists on a single bandstand, something the general public did not specifically neglect in the ’40s. You will find musicologists who consider the Astor music group to actually have already been the 1st on the western Coast to include a racial blend. Initially, Astor noticed the music group as a car for advertising his personal compositions, but later on discovered the recordings of the pieces by additional artists such as for example Count Basie had been a lot more effective. Additional titles compiled by Astor and Williams consist of “In the Great of the Night,” never to become puzzled using the Hoagy Carmichael, Johnny Mercer, or Nat Ruler Cole opus from the same name, the reasonable “UNLESS YOU Believe I’m Departing, Count the times I’m Gone,” and “You’re my Baby, You,” without doubt created in a far more content passionate period. In the ’50s, Astor obtained additional fame like a radio disk jockey and by the finish of that 10 years had also started working like a reservation agent for NY City’s Shaw Company. Like a songwriter he held his two cents in the container, joining makes with rowdy comedian Pigmeat Markham for the novelty tune “Right here Shows up the Judge,” although why Markham believed he needed as much as five collaborators acknowledged because of this ditty is among the mysteries from the songwriting trade. Astor, whose credits occasionally arrive under his genuine name of Dade, shouldn’t be baffled with a youthful vocalist called Bob Astor who documented with Arthur Briggs’ Savoy Syncopators Orchestra in the past due ’20s.