What happened to Tex Beneke?

Answer 1

Tex Beneke was chosen to lead the post-war incarnation of the Glenn Miller Orchestra after Major Miller's disappearance near the end of WW2. He was picked mostly for his star power but had little experience running a band and was further hampered by being an employee of the Miller Estate, answering to a bunch of lawyers and promotional agents rather than people with musical knowledge. They wanted the band to sound exactly as it had in the early 1940s even though tastes were changing and Glenn Miller himself had laid plans for a much different and more modern orchestra if he had returned.

The clashes between Beneke and the bean-counters became so intense that in 1950 the Miller Estate severed all musical and legal ties. He was even written out of the 1954 biopic starring Jimmy Stewart and June Allyson. Beneke managed to get a contract with the small Coral record label and produced a few hits in the early 1950s, including The Anniversary Waltz and Pennies from Heaven, but nothing came close to his hits with the Miller band.

By the late 1950s there was enough interest in the "original Miller sound" that he reorganized a band with many of the original musicians including vocalists Ray Eberle, Paula Kelly, and the Modernaires. Their first album was called Reunion in Hi-Fiand featured new performances of earlier hits, including a version of A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square that some critics consider to be better than the "real" Miller recording.

This album led to several other LPs with varying degrees of success, but his real comeback happened when the band and singers started a tour called "Music Made Famous by Glenn Miller". The first performance was in 1961 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Promoters were skeptical about the attraction of a dance band playing in an auditorium and featuring 20-year-old songs, but the concert was so popular that they filled every seat and even started selling tickets to spaces in the aisles!

That concert led to a series of additional performances across the country that lasted well into the 1970s. Beneke also made the rounds of musically-oriented Talk Shows such as Merv Griffin's, and sang new versions of his many hits on albums specially performed for the old Time-Life Records series.

He later settled in Costa Mesa, CA and made frequent appearances with his band at Disneyland and venues such as sports stadiums and racetracks as part of the entertainment package. However, in 1995 he suffered a stroke that left him unable to play his beloved sax, and was reduced to conducting and singing while other musicians filled in on his solos. His health declined significantly after the stroke, although he continued to perform with some regularity. He made a few appearances on PBS-TV in his last years, and in 2000 was planning on a tour that would re-create the Army Air Forces Orchestra. However his many years of smoking had caused severe emphysema and he passed away on May 30, 2000.

An interesting footnote is that the Beneke band continued under the direction of first tenor sax player Jim Snodgrass, resulting in probably the only Big Band that is a so-called "ghost band" of an orchestra that itself began as a "ghost band".