Glen Gray

For the American football coach, see Glen Gray (American football). For the curler, see Glenn Gray (curler).

Glen Gray
File:Glen Gray Billboard.jpg
Background information
Birth name	Glen Gray Knoblauch
Also known as	Spike
Born	(1906-06-07)June 7, 1906 Roanoke, Illinois, USA
Died	Plymouth, Massachusetts, USA
Genres	Jazz, big band
Occupation(s)	Bandleader
Instruments	Saxophone
Years active	1915–1963
Labels	Brunswick, Decca, Capitol
Associated acts	Casa Loma Orchestra

Glen Gray (June 7, 1906 – August 23, 1963) was an American jazz saxophonist and leader of the Casa Loma Orchestra.

Biography

Gray was born to Lurdie P. and Agnes (Gray) Knoblauch in Roanoke, Illinois. His father was a lifelong railroad worker who died when Glen was two years of age. His widowed mother married George H. DeWilde.

Gray graduated from Roanoke High School. He is said to have joined the Army at seventeen, and two years later he was living at home with his family. He was employed as a bill clerk for the railroad. He attended Illinois Wesleyan University, where he joined Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity, but left to work for the Santa Fe Railroad.

In 1927, his Orange Blossoms Band was renamed the Casa Loma Orchestra, after Casa Loma in Toronto, where the band played for eight months. Gray collaborated with the jazz musician Jean Goldkette, and with trumpeter/arranger Salvador Camarata. He gave Betty George her first job as a soloist. Ill health forced Gray to retire from touring in 1950. In 1956, he went back into the studio to record the first of what became a series of LPs for Capitol Records, which recreated the sounds of the big band era in stereo. Gray died of cancer in 1963.

External links

• Glen Gray at the Internet Movie Database
• Glen Gray biography at Swingmusic.net
• The Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra records, 1915-1979 are located in the Northeastern University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department, Boston, MA.