The end of my thirty years

Abstract

Meanwhile I received a call from Will Bradley’s manager, Doc Richardson. He asked me if I wanted to join the band. After coming to terms I accepted. Will Bradley had been a busy freelance radio trombone player. He was also good looking, and the William Morris office had groomed him to front the band some time before. Ray McKinley, a fine drummer and novelty singer, was the co-leader. The band had more or less introduced boogie-woogie in big-band form. While at the Astor Hotel in New York they had fired the sax section, all but Mahlon Clark, a fine seventeen-year-old clarinet player, who years later married one of the Lennon sisters while they were with Lawrence Welk.