Vaughn Monroe

Vocation

Family

American singer, musician and bandleader of the ‘40s. His movies include "Singing Guns" (1950) and "Toughest Man in Arizona" (1951). Vaughn Wilton Monroe was of Scottish-Irish descent, named after a matinee idol of the time, Vaughn Glaser. The family moved to Cudahy, Wisconsin and later to Jeannette, Pennsylvania. When a neighbor gave him a trumpet, it helped launch Monroe’s musical interest, and by age 11 he played in his school’s band. In high school, he was an all-around athlete, combining this interest with trumpet playing and singing with the high school band. In 1925, he won a state-wide trumpet contest held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He entered Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1929 to take up engineering, not music, even though he earned his tuition by playing nights in a professional dance band. He gradually realized that music was his vocation, and quit college in 1932 to join the Austin Wylie band in Cleveland, Ohio. After six months, he joined Larry Funk’s Orchestra as a vocalist and trumpet player, staying for about 3-l/2 years. In 1936, he signed up with society bandleader Jack Marshard who played in New England areas, which put Monroe in Boston often enough to continue his musical studies at the New England Conservatory of Music. Marshard thought Monroe would make a good bandleader and, in 1937, he had him lead one of his groups. Monroe gradually segued into band leading, and in 1939 put together his own group. The band was primarily a society orchestra. When he reorganized it in April 1940 he was eager to take on the new jump and rhythm that was taking over the country. He married Marion Baughman on 2 April 1940, and their daughter Candace was born on 13 December 1941. Monroe died on 21 May 1973 in Stuart, Florida, cause unspecified. He was 61. Link to Wikipedia biography