Artist: Harry James

Harry James was an American musician who is best known as a trumpet-playing band leader who led a big band from 1939 to 1946.

He was especially known among musicians for his technical proficiency as well as his tone, and was influential on new trumpet players from the late 1930s into the 1940s. He was also an actor in a number of films that usually featured his band. 

In 1935 he joined Pollack's band, but left at the start of 1937 to join Benny Goodman's orchestra, where he stayed through 1938. He was nicknamed "The Hawk" early in his career for his ability to sight-read. With financial backing from Goodman, James debuted his own big band in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in January 1939, but it didn't click until adding a string section in 1941. Subsequently, known as Harry James and His Music Makers, it produced the hit "You Made Me Love You", which peaked at no. 5 on Billboard's National Best Selling Retail Records chart in 1941.

James' band was the first high-profile orchestra to feature vocalist Frank Sinatra, who signed a one-year, $75 a week contract with it in 1939 ($1,589 a week in 2022).

James recorded many popular records and appeared in many Hollywood movies. He played trumpet in the 1950 film Young Man with a Horn, dubbing Kirk Douglas. The album from the movie charted at #1, with James backing big band singer and actress Doris Day. James's recording of "I'm Beginning to See the Light" appears in the motion picture My Dog Skip (2000).

With James continuing to employ his flamboyant style on pop hits through the 1940s, his playing was often labeled as "schmaltzy" and dismissed by the critics, although radio discs from this period reveal James's continued commitment to jazz. James's jazz releases during this period, while not as numerous, include a variety of modern arrangements from Neal Hefti, Frank Devenport, Johnny Richards and Jimmy Mundy  that often inspired his musicians, and as bop  surpassed swing by the late 1940s, James was surprisingly open to its influence. 

Further information about Harry James is found here.