Biography
Samuel Zamocay, 13 March 1910, Lakewood, Ohio, USA, d. 2 June 1987, Ridgewood, New Jersey, USA. Kaye began playing in bands while still at college. In the early 30s he led a band at the Statler Hotel in Cleveland and also worked in Pittsburgh. In the later years of the decade he was hired by several top New York hotels, including the Astor and the New Yorker. An adept clarinettist, Kaye also made a name for himself as a band leader without any help from the critics who unanimously derided his corny arrangements. ‘Swing and Sway with Sammy Kaye’ ran the billing, but swinging was something beyond the band. Instead, they offered hotel patrons and their later radio audience simple dance music, and becoming enormously successful. The band featured numerous singers, none of them especially memorable, although the musicians Kaye hired were always competent (George T. Simon referred to them as ‘magnificently trained and exceedingly unoriginal’). Pianist...
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