Casa Loma Orch. - Under A Blanket Of Blue, 1933

Their name often linked with leader Glen Gray, the Casa Loma Orchestra was the first ’’swing’’ band. As early as 1929 they began playing the same mixture of hot jazz and sweet ballads that Benny Goodman would later popularize and that would dominate the music industry in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Originally named the Orange Blossoms, the group first formed in Detroit during the mid-1920s as an offshoot of Jean Goldkette’s orchestra. Gray, then known as Spike Knoblaugh, joined the group in the winter of 1925-26 as a sax player. Henry Biagini was leader. Playing in and around the Detroit area the Orange Blossoms were booked into a brand new Toronto club called the Casa Loma in 1927. Built in preparation for a visit by the Prince of Wales the club never opened, and in 1929 the Orange Blossoms, shedding Goldkette’s mantel and striking out on their own, decided to rename themselves the Casa Loma Orchestra in memorial. The bandmembers formed a cooperative, dismissing Biagini and