Dale Jones & His Sextette 1944 Radio Broadcast
Channel: C Porter
Date: 23/06/2022

Advertisement of Dale from The Billboard 1944 Music Year Book "Personal Appearances" section; Page 258. More information taken from an article on page 256. Other info from a summer 1944 issue that I can no longer locate. (The only pitfall that worldofradiohistory.com has is that it commonly replaces/removes some pages or issues to get better scans put in place, but in the process screwing up the search results and other aspects, for each magazine.)

0:00 Intro/Band Theme (a. Bill (?) Lawrence, v. Dale Jones)
0:55 Tess's Torch Song (v. Marianne)
5:07 Better Do It Now (v. Marianne, Dale Jones, ensemble)
7:39 How Sweet You Are (v. Marianne)
10:39 Dallas Blues. 
13:36 Outro/Band theme. (a. Bill (?) Lawrence.)


Dale Jones, the former bassist of the Will Osborne bands since late 1937 until roughly mid-1941. After leaving one the new band of his formed in 1941, he eventually finds his stride on the West Coast with a sextette being managed by former bandleader Ben Pollack. Dale's Sextette's sidemen are Frank Simmons (sax,clarinet); Pete Dally and Hottis Bidwell (trumpets); Earl Sturgis (piano), Eddie Spaniard, (drums) and--at the time of this transcription disc--was one of Osborne's former vocalists he likely convinced to come with him, was the female vocalist who only went by the name "Marianne" but her last name was Dunne. (Possibly Dunn, but unknown). Jones got the nickname billing of "America's Modern Minstrel Man" due to his popularity, and assumedly would be addressed over the radio like that sometimes, foregoing the actual content. 

As part of her parting from the Osborne band, he took some other sidemen from Will over the years, as was customary for sidemen departures at that point. Along with his popularity, Ben Pollack in 1943 was able to land him an engagement at Hollywood's Palladium Theatre, and that engagement ended up lasting 14 months. Remote CBS broadcasts lasting usually 15 and 30 minutes would feature the Jones Sextette, mainly over KROY and KQW, usually near 11:30PM and 11:45PM. Dale likely could have recorded commercially, and judging by the length of their engagement as well as their more swingin' stuff, they really could have made a few notable cus too, but they had got a contract exclusively for MacGregor transcriptions, who recorded this June 7th broadcast, and seemingly 5-10 others, but I have yet to find any discographical proof of other transcription discs of his existing, or that this broadcast is from this date. One of the things that throws me off here is the full minute loss from this 15 minute broadcast. Columbia Broadcasting System announcer Bill (?) Lawrence is also present.