Riding mile after mile on the band bus may be a pleasure for some

(Chris enjoyed it, most likely dating back to his days in elementary

school when the students would go on a field trip on a big bus), but for

other people, including lots of big band musicians, it was (and still

is) a necessary evil.

“It’s not really a grind; it’s the way we live,” Stan Kenton once

said.

The bands had their own bus drivers, who picked them up at the

hotel, got them to the job on time, and then afterwards drove them to

another town for the next performance.

Compared to the millions and millions of miles that band buses

traveled over the years, accidents were relatively few - but they did

happen.

For example, on one occasion, tragedy struck the band of Earl Hines

[ above ].

They had just completed a four-day engagement at the Orpheum

Theatre in Des Moines, Iowa on May 9, 1935, and were booked to appear at

the Singer’s Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis for one week.

While the tour bus was passing near a town called Nevada, Iowa, a

truck collided with it. Cecil Irwin, 32, first saxophonist and arranger

with Hines since 1928, lost his life, and nine others in the band were

injured. Among them, one of Hines’ trombonists, William Franklin, 29,

was hospitalized with a compound fracture of the left arm, three broken

ribs, a cut lip, and possible internal injuries. The other musicians

hurt were Owen Simeon, Lewis Dunlap Jr., George Dixon, Walter Dixon,

Walter Fuller, Louis Taylor, James Young, James Jug, as well as

entertainer Bobbie Frazier. Their bus driver, Joseph Farley, suffered

minor injuries.

Hines and his wife and Philip Aiken, manager of the band, were en

route to Minneapolis by train when the accident occurred. They left the

train and later proceeded with the band to Minneapolis.

Observing the stage motto that “the show must go on,” they opened

on schedule in Minneapolis on May 10th.

“We all feel badly about Cecil and Billy; it was all we could do to

get the boys on the stage for the first apperance [ sic ],” Hines said.

“Fuller and Jug, feet wrapped in bandages, were carried on the

stage at Minneapolis at each performance. Taylor, in defiance of the

physician’s orders, insisted on playing although his eyes were so badly

cut he could hardly see the footlights,” Everett Wadsworth, a Staff

Correspondent for the Chicago Defender newspaper, reported.

According to Charles Carpenter, Hines’ secretary, the tour would

eventually wind up with an engagement on the Pacific coast and the band

was contracted to appear in a film in Hollywood early in the fall.

Franklin left the road to focus on singing, and enrolled at the

Chicago Conservatory of Music. In 1937, he made his operatic debut as

Amonastro in the Chicago Civic Opera’s production of Verdi’s “Aida.”

Taken ca.1941-1942 by Gene Kutch, a pianist and arranger with

Bunny Berigan and his Orchestra, this photo shows the aftermath

when the Berigan band bus and an automobile crashed.

Another of the worst accidents involving the big bands happened in

June of 1947.

Desi Arnaz and his Orchestra [ above ] had completed performances

on June 6th in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and on June 7th in Madison,

Wisconsin, then were going to go to Akron, Ohio, for an appearance at

the Palace Theatre there from June 10th through the 13th. Rooms for the

band had been reserved at the Mayflower Hotel nearby.

According to Copy Editor Mark J. Price of the Akron Beacon Journal

newspaper, “At the last minute, Arnaz and his brother-in-law, Fred Ball,

the band manager, decided to fly to Detroit to see Lucy’s play [ “Dream

Girl” ] while the rest of the orchestra traveled to Akron. Musicians on

the crowded bus were all too happy to move up to the vacated front-row

seats.”

Overnight, as the chartered bus was headed eastward on U.S. Route

20 near Rolling Prairie, Indiana, its driver, James O’Brien, may have

been speeding and evidently fell asleep.

“A westbound truck driver tried to swerve out of the way but

couldn’t avoid the out-of-control bus,” Price detailed in dramatic

fashion. “With a sickening crunch, Arnaz’s band mates were tossed

around like dolls. The charter bus skidded to a stop; the impact had

mangled the exit. Panic spread among the dazed riders as the vehicle

caught fire on the dark roadside. No one could get out! The

quick-thinking truck driver, whose name wasn’t reported, grabbed an ax

from his cab, chopped a hole in the bus and helped the occupants

escape.”

Violinist Charles E. Harris lost an eye in the crash. Others

injured and hospitalized were trumpeter Bobby Jones; trombonists Jose

Garza Gutierrez and Jack Frederick Pickering; saxophonists Jack Baker,

Roger Haller, and Joe Miller; pianist Marco Rizo; and drummer and maraca

player Ralph Angel Felices. Vocalists Carole Richards and Dulcina

escaped serious injury.

Harris was forced to retire from the band, and he sued the bus

company. In 1948, a jury awarded him $80,000.

In her 1997 memoir Love, Lucy, Lucille Ball wrote, “Fate was

certainly looking out for them, because only six men of the

sixteen-piece orchestra were unhurt. The two who took over Desi’s and

Freddy’s regular seats up front were hurt the worst.”

Again, the show did go on, thanks to some of Arnaz’s fellow

bandleaders.

“I didn’t see how we could put on our show and play our

arrangements halfway decently with some of our top guys missing,” Arnaz

recalled in his 1976 autobiography A Book. “I was just about to give up

when I got a call from General Artists Corporation in New York, telling

me that Tommy [ Dorsey ] had heard about the accident and was sending me

tow Dorsey trombone players, Duke Ellington was sending a couple of his

saxophone players and [ Xavier ] Cugat was sending a maraca player.”

Arnaz himself also kept to the planned publicity schedule, signing

autographs at the record department of O’Neil’s in Akron and fielding

questions from the Akron Beacon Journal Hi-Press Club.

A crowd of more than 3,000 persons who showed up for a 1948 dance

featuring Buddy Johnson [ above ] and his Orchestra at an armory in

Kimball, West Virginia had to be given rainchecks, after the band didn’t

perform because the bus in which they were riding was in an accident.

According to road manager Bernard Archer, the mishap occurred during a

driving rainstorm when a large truck skidded into the side of Johnson’s

bus. The vehicle was badly damaged and several members of the Johnson

band were shaken up but otherwise unhurt.

The band bus for Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra [ above ] collided

with a station wagon driven by John M. Jackson in Wahoo, Nebraska on

June 13, 1949. Jackson later filed a $29,450 damage suit against Dorsey

and his wife Jane and John A. Racesek, who was driving the Dorsey bus.

On November 11, 1953, Stan Kenton [ above ] and his Orchestra were

en route in a two-bus caravan from Newark, New Jersey to Pittsburgh,

Pennsylvania. More than a dozen members of the band were injured when

the first bus smashed into the back of a tractor-trailer truck near Blue

Mountain on the Pennsylvania turnpike. Kenton, who was riding in the

second bus, was not injured.

Members of the Kenton troupe admitted to the hospital were manager

George Morte, with cuts of the face and body; trumpeter Vic

Minichiello, fractured nose and lacerations of the face and head;

trombonist Bob Burgess, cuts and abrasions of the face and right knee;

and Peggy Candoli, back injury. Treated and discharged were Frank

Di Orio, laceration of the right wrist and scalp; bass trombonist Bob

Dockstader, lacerations of the face and left leg; trombonist Frank

Rosolino, fractured nose; his wife, Gertrude, cuts and bruises of the

face; baritone saxophonist Tony Ferino, lacerations of the forehead;

bassist Don Bagley, bruises of the legs and chin; trombonist Milt Gold,

cuts of the chin and lower lip; guitarist Sal Salvador, cuts of the nose

and right knee; and drummer Stanley Levey, scratches of the legs.

Misfortune also came to the Lionel Hampton band with their

chartered bus driver being killed when a blown-out tire caused the bus

to swerve and plunge down an embankment near Socorro, New Mexico in

October 1955.

George Alliston, 45, had been pinned behind the wheel for two

hours. Most of Hampton’s musicians were injured, including trombonist

Alvin Hayse, 34, whose back was broken, and trumpeter Eddie Preston, 30,

who suffered internal injuries. Hayse had been with the Hampton band

from 1943 to 1946, then rejoined them in the early 1950s. Preston had

come on the band in 1955. Hampton himself was hospitalized with broken

leg bones.

It was reported that the band’s entire music library was lost in

the incident, but insurance paid for new arrangements.

Nonetheless, Hampton remained ever-buoyant. “I’m grateful that all

the others and I were spared,” he said, “that’s enough reason for

happiness.”

He initially had planed to go on with a concert at Carnegie Hall in

New York City on October 15, 1955, “but the medics decided to re-break

his ankle and set it again, so the concert was finally canceled.”

It was about a month later that the band resumed its performances.

And, in spite of his theme song, Flying Home, Hampton preferred to

ride the band bus rather than take an airplane.

“I’m very much used to band buses,” he explained. “Man, I don’t

dig the big metal birds. If the leader goofs on the melody, none of the

cats in the crew can take it.”

This photo shows how the side of Lionel Hampton’s tour bus

was wrecked and several of its windows were broken in a 1955 crash.

We thought it was odd that Jet magazine would print a picture

of Hampton laying injured on the ground in that mishap.

More recently, a bus carrying the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra directed

by Buddy Morrow [ above ] was in an accident with a tractor-trailer as

they were attempting to turn onto the grounds of Bearcreek Farms in

Bryant, Indiana for a concert. Luckily, no one was seriously hurt.

SOURCE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

“14 of Kenton Crew Injured On Turnpike,” Billboard, Nov. 21, 1953, p.18.

“16 in Stan Kenton’s Band Hurt in Turnpike Crash,” Chicago Daily

Tribune, Nov. 12, 1953, p.20.

Ancestry (ancestry.com).

Desi Arnaz. A Book (New York City: Warner Books, 1976).

Lucille Ball. Love, Lucy (New York City: Putnam’s & Sons, 1997).

“Buddy Johnson’s Bus Is Wrecked; Men Are Unhurt,” Chicago Defender,

Sept. 4, 1948, p.9.

“Entertainment: Lionel Hampton, 15 Others Hurt In Bus Crash,” Jet,

Oct. 13, 1955, p.59.

“Hit and Run,” Time, Jul. 27, 1962, p.47+.

Dr. William F. Lee. Stan Kenton: Artistry in Rhythm (Los Angeles:

Creative Press of Los Angeles, 1980).

“Lionel Hampton Orchestra To Resume Play Nov. 18,” Jet, Nov. 3, 1955,

p.58.

“Lionel Hampton Remembers Music But Cannot Forget Auto Smashup,”

Chicago Defender, May 2, 1959, p.19.

“Lionel Hampton Sticks To Band Buses,” Jet, Sept. 16, 1954, p.62.

Popa Family Collection.

Mark J. Price. “Local history: Desi Arnaz escapes disaster on trip to

Akron in 1947, Akron Beacon Journal, Jul. 9, 2012.

“TD Sued for 29G Over Bus Collision,” Billboard, Aug. 6, 1949, p.20.

Everett Wadsworth. “Tragedy Halts Earl Hines’ Band Tour,”

Chicago Defender, May 11, 1935, p.1.

“William Franklin (singer),” in Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Franklin_(singer)).

IMAGE ATTRIBUTION

Tom Daugherty

Digital First Media

Ebony Media Corporation

Murray Korman

Gene Kutch

Popa Family Collection