Ben Pollack
Check out this artist at Amazon.com

Born

  • June 22, 1903
  • Chicago, IL

Died

  • June 7, 1971
  • Palm Springs, CA

Marriage

  • Doris Robbins

Theme Song

  • Song of the Islands

Ben Pollack

One of the more successful bandleaders of the late 1920s and early 1930s, Ben Pollack got his professional start in Chicago in the early 1920s playing drums for Dick Schoenberg's orchestra. He subsequently worked for Izzy Wagner in Fox Lake, Wisconsin, before joining the New Orleans Rhythm Kings in 1921. He later traveled to the West Coast, spending a week with Larry Shields and eleven months with the Harry Bastin Band.

From California Pollack returned to Chicago with plans to take over his family's fur business but was unable to get music out of his blood. He headed for New York in late 1924 and wasn't there long before he received an offer from Bastin to take over his band. He went back to the West Coast, remaining there for a year before returning to Chicago in 1926. He worked briefly with Art Kassel and then formed his own orchestra that May. He took his new band back to California the following year and then to New York, where it spent much of its time at the Park Central Hotel.

Producing some of the most exciting music of its era, Pollack's orchestra was chocked full of talent. At various times it featured such future stars as Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Jack Teagarden, Smith Ballew, Charlie Spivak, Bud Freeman, Fud Livingston, Ray Bauduc, Nappy Lamare, and Gil Rodin. Pollack often sang. Other early vocalists were Ballew, Gene Austin, Scrappy Lambert, Belle Mann, Franklyn Baur, Ilomay Bailey, Joey Ray, Hannah Williams, Dorothy Williams, and Dick Robertson. The group recorded on Victor from 1926 to 1929, on the Banner label in 1930 and 1931, and on the Columbia label in 1933 and 1934. Members of Pollack's band sometimes recorded together under different pseudonyms in the late 1920s, often without Pollack's approval.

Though Pollack may have had an all-star line-up he was unable to keep most of them for very long. By 1930 Goodman, Miller, and many others had left, forcing Pollack to revise the group's direction. Pollack's band of the 1930s, while still talented, was not as consistent as his 1920s grouping. It also suffered because of Pollack's inattentiveness. In the early 1930s Pollack fell in love with vocalist Doris Robbins, and the two eventually married. As he began to concentrate more and more on her career and less on the orchestra his musicians became disgruntled. Finally, in 1934, they quit en masse and formed a new group under sax player Gil Rodin, which later went on to fame under Bob Crosby's name.

Inspired by the commercial success of swing Pollack formed a new orchestra in late 1935. Though it featured a then unknown Harry James and Freddie Slack, as well as trumpeter Shorty Sherock, clarinetist Irving Fazola, and saxophonist Dave Matthews, it failed to live up to its predecessor and soon disbanded. Pollack attempted to put together another band on the West Coast, but it too was short-lived, breaking up in 1938. Pollack's later groups recorded on Vocalion and Brunswick in 1936 and on Decca in 1937 and 1938. Vocalists for Pollack during the 1930s include Peggy Mann, Paula Gayle, Jim Hardy, Frances Hunt, Carol McKay, and Lois Still.

After the demise of his big bands Pollack put together a small Dixieland combo and continued to work in the music industry into the 1940s, leading several groups and directing an orchestra for Chico Marx. He also started the Jewel record label and eventually went into the business world, operating his own restaurants and clubs. He became increasingly bitter in his later years, often filing lawsuits against various big bands. Ben Pollack committed suicide in 1971, hanging himself in his Palm Springs home.