Harry James

Harry James was an American trumpet player and bandleader whose big band scored major commercial success between 1939 and 1946 and who kept leading an orchestra until his death in 1983. Raised in a traveling circus, he learned trumpet from his bandleader father and was fronting a second circus band by twelve. After Texas dance bands and a spell with Ben Pollack, he joined Benny Goodman's orchestra in 1937. Backed by Goodman, he debuted his own band in Philadelphia in 1939, and a string section added in 1941 helped produce the hit You Made Me Love You. His orchestra appeared in Hollywood musicals including Best Foot Forward (1943) and Two Girls and a Sailor (1944), and he played trumpet on the soundtrack of Young Man with a Horn. Downbeat readers voted him best trumpet instrumentalist for 1937, 1938 and 1939, and in 1960 he received a star on Hollywood Boulevard's Walk of Fame.