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Larry Clinton, "The Old Dipsy Doodler", was a musician who played trumpet, trombone and clarinet, arranged and wrote music, and served as the leader of his own dance band. Born on August 17, 1909, in Brooklyn, New York, he charted nearly 40 hit recordings, including the #1 hits "Cry, Baby, Cry" (1938), "My Reverie Heart and Soul" (1938) and "Deep Purple" (1939).
He was responsible for some of the more enduring hits in the dance band repertoire. He had a great, though short-lived, band 1937-1941 that recorded 214 sides for RCA Victor and Bluebird. Clinton was a great composer and arranger whose songs include "The Dipsy-Doodle," "Satan Takes A Holiday," "Study In Brown" and "Midnight In a Madhouse". Among his greatest hits were "Heart and Soul" and "My Reverie", which he 'borrowed' from Claude Debussy's "Reverie".
For much of the decade before he formed his own band in 1938, Clinton had been one of the top arrangers, writing for the Dorsey Brothers, then Jimmy Dorsey, the Casa Loma Orchestra, and finally for Tommy Dorsey. He was the arranger for both Claude Hopkins and Isham Jones in 1933 before moving on to the Dorsey Brothers in 1935. When the brothers split, he remained with Jimmy but soon replaced Gene Gifford as arranger with Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra.
In 1937, he arranged for Bunny Berigan, Louis Armstrong and Tommy Dorsey, the latter scoring huge hits with Clinton's "Satan Takes a Holiday" and "The Dipsy Doodle." The Tommy Dorsey band's recording of "Dipsey Doodle" proved to be one of the biggest hits of the 1930s. Dorsey and his label, RCA Victor, encouraged Clinton to form his own band, which he soon did (whenever Tommy Dorsey played "Dipsey Doodle", he would credit Clinton as the composer. The "plugs" made Clinton well known and helped launch his new band).
Later that year Clinton laid down his first tracks with a studio orchestra before going on the road with a live band, Larry Clinton and His Orchestra, in the summer of 1938. The repertoire, which typically featured Clinton's arrangements (in addition to Clinton's arrangements, Les Brown wrote some of the band's early arrangements while Van Alexander wrote some in the band's latter days), was clichéd and offered little variety, though the music was well performed. However, what was most important to the audience in the swing era was that Clinton's compositions were always lively and danceable. The band quickly caught on and became a popular attraction, though it never was in the first rank in terms of popularity, as were the separate bands of the Dorsey brothers or Glenn Miller.
The band's biggest asset was singer Bea Wain, considered to be one of the very best vocalists of the era. However, she parted company with Clinton in 1939 to go solo and was replaced by Mary Dugan. She, in turn, was followed by Helen Southern and Peggy Mann. Other vocalists who appeared with the band included Terry Allen, Carol Bruce and Ford Leary.
The Larry Clinton Orchestra's introduction-theme was "Dipsey Doodle" and its closing theme was "Study In Brown." Ironically, he was unable to record "Dipsey Doodle" because Tommy Dorsey had already recorded it on their label, RCA Victor (ditto his "Satan Takes a Holiday," another Tommy Dorsey hit on RCA Victor). He also was unable to record "Study In Brown" (originally composed for Glen Gray and The Casa Loma Orchestra) because Bunny Berigan had recorded it for RCA Victor.
Clinton was known for adapting melodies from the classical repertoire to create popular songs. "It goes in one ear and comes out his pen," one wag said of Clinton's facility for "swinging the classics" (which also entailed adding texts and light syncopation to the previously composed classical works). "My Reverie" was derived from Debussy, while the theme of "Our Love" was borrowed from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. To high-brow criticism that he had desecrated great music, Clinton replied, "If your kids want to dance," he said, "would you rather have them dance to a Tchaikovsky melody or to 'Flat Foot Floogie'?"
Larry Clinton and His Orchestra officially broke up in 1942, the year he year joined the military. An excellent pilot, Clinton was commissioned as a lieutenant in the US Army Air Corps. He was promoted to captain while serving in Calcutta, India, where one of his men was Sgt. Tony Martin. He served as a flight instructor at the 1343rd ATC base unit in China. He was discharged from the service in 1946.
After being demobilized, Clinton went to work as the musical director for the small recording company Cosmo, recording several sides during his time there. He briefly toured in 1948 and remained active with a group until 1950. After leaving the performing end of the business, he spent the next decade in semi-retirement, remaining active in music publishing and recording. In the mid-1950s he re-recorded his most popular numbers in stereo for RCA Victor.
A consummate businessman who had saved his money when touring, Clinton officially retired from the music business in 1961. He lived in comfort, first in Florida and then in Green Valley, Arizona. In his later years he became a science fiction and humor writer.
Larry Clinton died in Tucson, Arizona, on May 2, 1985. He is a member of the National Academy of Music's Songwriter Hall of Fame.
