Ben Pollack (June 22, 1903 – June 7, 1971) was one of the more successful White band leaders of the late 1920s. His orchestras featured many future Jazz stars such as Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Jack Teagarden and Jimmy McPartland. While his orchestras were basically commercial dance bands they also gave soloists plenty of freedom in determining the shape of the music.
Pollack played in several bands in Chicago before joining the Friar’s Society Orchestra in 1921. In 1926 he started his own band which played at the hotels in Chicago and then relocated to California in 1927, and then to New York where it found a home at the Park Central Hotel.
Victor signed the band up in 1926 and they recorded with that label until 1929. The band underwent numerous personnel changes until its demise in 1934.
Pollack continued to lead bands into the 1940s including one for comedian Chico Marx, and owned his own record company called Jewel. He also owned restaurants in Hollywood and Palm Springs where he played from time to time. Pollack committed suicide by hanging himself in 1971.
| Ben Pollack and his Californians | Ben Pollack and his Orchestra |
| Ben’s Bad Boys | Ben Pollack and His Park Central Orchestra |
| Ben Pollack and His Pick-A-Rib Boys | |
| Title | Director | Year |
| Disc Jockey | Will Jason | 1951 |
| The Glenn Miller Story | Anthony Mann | 1954 |
| The Benny Goodman Story | Valentine Davies | 1955 |
Redhotjazz.com was a pioneering website during the "Information wants to be Free" era of the 1990s. In that spirit we are recovering the lost data from the now defunct site and sharing it with you.
Most of the music in the archive is in the form of MP3s hosted on Archive.org or the French servers of Jazz-on-line.com where this music is all in the public domain.
Files unavailable from those sources we host ourselves. They were made from original 78 RPM records in the hands of private collectors in the 1990s who contributed to the original redhotjazz.com. They were hosted as .ra files originally and we have converted them into the more modern MP3 format. They are of inferior quality to what is available commercially and are intended for reference purposes only. In some cases a Real Audio (.ra) file from Archive.org will download. Don't be scared! Those files will play in many music programs, but not Windows Media Player.
