ENTERTAINMENT
May 23, 2011 | By Susan King, Los Angeles Times
During her heyday in the 1940s and '50s, dimple-cheeked Monica Lewis was known as "America's Singing Sweetheart": She warbled such chart-topping hits as "Autumn Leaves, "I Wish You Love" and "Put the Blame on Mame" and starred on the radio on such programs as "Beat the Band" and "The Chesterfield Hour: Music That Satisfies. " She was the singing voice for the animated Chiquita Banana commercials and did other ads for Piels Light Beer, Camel cigarettes and General Electric. Lewis was also "Miss Leg-O-Genic" for Burlington Mills hosiery.
ENTERTAINMENT
May 23, 2009 | Associated Press
For decades, Benny Goodman and his clarinet popped up just about everywhere, and when they did, just about everyone knew it. Goodman, who would have turned 100 on May 30, defined for most people the swing era that dominated popular American music for much of the 1930s and 1940s. From Carnegie Hall and New York's exclusive clubs to his backing up Jack Teagarden in 1933 on "Texas Tea Party," he was as versatile and prolific as he was famous.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 28, 2008 | Dennis McLellan, Times Staff Writer
Earle H. Hagen, the Emmy Award-winning television composer who wrote the memorable theme music for "The Andy Griffith Show," "The Dick Van Dyke Show," "I Spy" and other classic TV programs, has died. He was 88. Hagen, who composed the jazz standard "Harlem Nocturne" and was a former big-band trombonist for Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and Ray Noble, died Monday night at his home in Rancho Mirage, said his wife, Laura. He had been ill for several months. After spending seven years at 20th Century Fox as an arranger and orchestrator, Hagen moved into television in 1953 after the studio cut back on its music department.
ENTERTAINMENT
June 17, 2006 | Don Heckman, Special to The Times
There aren't a lot of opportunities to both see and hear the music of jazz artists from Stan Kenton and Nat King Cole to Thelonious Monk and Louis Armstrong. But the Playboy Jazz Festival provides at least one such experience every year via the "Jazz on Film" programs of jazz collector Mark Cantor. His film clips presentation Thursday night in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Leo S. Bing Theater was a fascinating, three-part excursion reaching across virtually the entire history of jazz.
ENTERTAINMENT
February 10, 2003 | Don Heckman, Special to The Times
The music of Benny Goodman was in the air Saturday at Cal State Northridge's Center for the Visual and Performing Arts. Not from the King of Swing himself, of course -- he died in 1986 -- but in the playing of a musician who Goodman mentioned as a prime candidate for carrying the torch of the jazz clarinet: Eddie Daniels. In a program overflowing with Goodman-associated tunes, Daniels made a convincing case for the recommendation.
ENTERTAINMENT
December 16, 2001
By dissing Duke Ellington, film music composer Michael Nyman revealed that he is profoundly ignorant of popular music history ("Composer of Contradictions," by Josef Woodard, Dec. 9). Nyman was quoted as saying he still likes the term "band," adding that "Duke Ellington called his band an orchestra. My title is sort of dumbing down a bit and his description was dumbing up, so to speak. He was trying to get a little more status, I'm going the other way." For Nyman's information, instrumental music organizations before, during and after the swing era, led by such names as Louis Armstrong, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Paul Whiteman and Woody Herman, were routinely listed on record labels and at venues as orchestras.