Ray Anthony Turns 100

Ray Anthony, the last surviving member of the Glenn Miller orchestra of the "Big Band Era" of the 1940’s, turns one hundred years old on this date, January 20, 2022.

Anthony was born Raymond Antonini in Bentleyville, PA, part of the metropolitan Pittsburgh area, in 1922, played trumpet, and was part of the Miller band from 1940-1941. He moved with his family to Cleveland, OH where he studied trumpet and enlisted in the US Navy in 1942 until he was discharged in 1946. In addition to playing in the Miller band, he also played in the Jimmy Dorsey and Al Donahue bands before forming his own band which became popular in the early 1950’s with hits like "The Bunny Hop", "The Hokey Pokey" and the theme from the TV show "Dragnet". He had the highest chart pop version of the tune "At Last" in 1952. His band recorded more than forty albums spanning more than twenty years. The band’s theme song was "The Man with a Horn".

Anthony also worked in TV and had a short-lived TV variety show "The Ray Anthony Show" and appeared in several movies, twice with his second wife Mamie Van Doren (Van Doren turns 91 on February 6, 2022). He has been honored with a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

Prescott’s (AZ) FM radio station KAHM frequently plays recordings by the Ray Anthony Orchestra.

Click here to read more about Ray Anthony on Wikipedia.

Big bands originated in the 1910’s and dominated pop music in the early 1940’s, particularly in the years during and after World War II. A typical big band consisted of sixteen musicians arranged in four sections: 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, 4 saxophones, and 4 rhythm (drums, piano, bass, and guitar). Individual big bands often distinguished themselves by varying the overall makeup of the band’s sections (for example, substituting a clarinet for a sax in the saxophone section) in order to give the band a distinctive sound.

Mary Jane and I danced to the music of the Ray Anthony Orchestra one summer in the mid-1950’s at Saylors Lake, a resort area on the edge of Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountain resort region of northeastern Pennsylvania in Saylorsburg, PA about twenty miles east of our hometown of Lehighton, PA. (see left)

On this occasion, the Anthony band also had the McGuire Sisters trio (Dorothy, Phyllis, Christine) with them, so we got to enjoy some of their vocal music along with the instrumentals of the band. (see right)

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