1. Charles Daly Barnet was an American jazz saxophonist, composer, and bandleader.
16 Facts About Charlie Barnet
1. 2.
Charlie Barnet was born in New York City, the son of Charline and Willard Charlie Barnet.
3.
Charlie Barnet's parents divorced when he was two, and he was raised by his mother and her grandparents.
4.
Charlie Barnet's grandfather was Charles Frederick Daly, a vice-president for the New York Central Railroad, banker, and businessman.
5.
Charlie Barnet attended boarding schools, both in the New York and Chicago areas.
6.
Charlie Barnet learned to play piano and saxophone as a child.
7.
Charlie Barnet often left school to listen to music and to try to gain work as a musician.
8.
Charlie Barnet began recording in October 1933, during an engagement at New York's Park Central Hotel, but was not a great success for most of the 1930s, regularly breaking up his band and changing its style.
9.
Charlie Barnet arranged with Joe Haymes to take several of his-jobless sidemen, while he himself went on a lark in Havana, as an escort to well-to-do older women.
10.
Charlie Barnet was one of the first bandleaders to integrate his band, with more black musicians working for him than virtually all of the other popular white bandleaders.
11.
Unusually, for a mainly white group, Charlie Barnet was booked to perform at the Apollo Theater in Harlem and established a new attendance record.
12.
Charlie Barnet was an outspoken admirer of Count Basie and Duke Ellington.
13.
Charlie Barnet was able to retire when he chose because he was one of the few heirs in a very wealthy family.
14.
Charlie Barnet occasionally returned from retirement for brief tours but never returned to music full-time.
15.
In September 1964, Charlie Barnet arranged a private party for his musical hero, Duke Ellington, and orchestra to play at Palm Springs' San Jacinto country club.
16.
Charlie Barnet died from complications of Alzheimer's disease and pneumonia at San Diego's Hillside hospital, on September 4,1991, aged 77.