Tex Beneke

Vocation

American saxophonist, singer, and bandleader. Beneke is one of the major blues singers who sang with the big bands of the early 1940s. He joined Glenn Miller in 1938 as his primary tenor sax soloist and played all but a few of the tenor solos on all of the records and personal appearances made by the Miller band until it disbanded in 1942. Beneke solos on the 1939 recording Miller’s orchestra made of their popular song "In The Mood." In 1942, Miller's orchestra won the first Gold Record ever awarded for "Chattanooga Choo Choo," part of the score for the 1941 movie "Sun Valley Serenade." Beneke was the featured singer in the movie and on the recording. From 1946, he led the Glenn Miller "ghost band" with Henry Mancini on piano. During the 1970s and 1980s, Beneke had a new band playing a style that resembled the classic Miller sound but with as much newer material as older. He suffered a stroke in the mid-1990s. In 1992, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On 30 May 2000, Beneke died from respiratory failure in Costa Mesa, California, aged 86, survived by his wife. Link to Wikipedia biography