Blue Barron, born Harry Freidman, was an American orchestra leader in the 1940s and early 1950s during the “Big Band” era. Although widely associated with swing, the mainstream pop music of the late 1939s and ’40 was also characterised by the strand of easy-on-the-ear orchestral dance band music with featured vocalists – sometimes referred to as “sweet” music - performing the prolific output of fine new songs from Broadway, Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley.

None was more typical of that strand than the Blue Barron Orchestra, whose record labels during the first era of its career referred to them with the words “Music of Yesterday and Today Styled the Blue Barron Way”. Friedman launched his Blue Barron Orchestra on the Floating Palace showboat New York in 1936.

This 48-track set includes selected A- and B-sides from his releases on the Bluebird, Hits by Blue Barron and MGM labels during these years, in a recording career which was interrupted by service during World War Two. It features all his career hits, including the 1949 No.1, Cruising Down The River.

The record sold more than one million copies, gaining gold disc status. This collection also features Top 20 chart entries At A Perfume Counter, Darn That Dream, You Walk By, Chi-Baba, Chi-Baba, You Were Only Fooling, A Strawberry Moon, Powder Your Face With Sunshine and Are You Lonesome Tonight. It includes performances by his featured vocalists Russ Carlyle, Clyde Burke, Babs Ryan, Charlie Fisher, Betty Clarke, Dolores Hawkins, George Nolan, Bobby Beers, Johnny Goodfellow, Susan Laughton and The Blue Notes.

Blue Barron died in 2005 and, for his contribution to the recording industry, was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1724 Vine Street.

REVIEWS

Acrobat's extensive series devoted to the so-called 'sweet bands' of the swing era and beyond probably reaches its peak with this collection of what many have described as the sweetest of all the sweet bands, completely bereft of any jazz influences at all and out-sweeting (if that is such a word) even the likes of Guy Lombardo. The 49 tracks on this two disc set certainly bear out those sentiments but it would be very unfair to be so dismissive of the high standard of professionalism with which this band was imbued... Lesser known artists like Blue Barron are to my mind very worthy of collections like this in order to fully appreciate just how wide the spectrum was in terms of the swing era. I hope Acrobat will continue to unearth more of the same. - Gerry Stonestreet (In Tune Issue 354)