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Well, here it is, Richard Grudens’ long-awaited “Bible of the Big Bands.” Not only is he the ideal craftsman to envision and create such a project, in my mind, he’s the only one. A discussion of forty of our twentieth century’s big bands, including Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Les Brown, Stan Kenton, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, Buddy Rich, Harry James, Van Alexander, Jack Teagarden, Ben Grisafi, Lionel Hampton, many of its most famous musicians, thirty-eight of its greatest vocalists, including a centerpiece on Frank Sinatra and my own Bing, their associates and arrangers, together with their predecessors, followers, and European counterparts, demands a scope which no other writer could presume to possess. Largely, as a consequence of my marriage to Bing, I was acquainted with perhaps a score of the celebrities whom you will encounter in this book, I could have recognized them on the street, and that was about it. Richard Grudens, on the other hand, has the greatest breadth of anyone who has ever undertaken to describe the giants of our musical world. Here you will meet, in intimate detail, the leading performers of our finest era, and I trust you will enjoy the brilliant narrative as much as I did. Read on, my friends.

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