JAMES, HARRY HAGG (1916–1983). Harry Hagg James, jazz trumpet player and big-band leader, was born to Everett Robert and Maybelle (Stewart) James on March 15, 1916, in Albany, Georgia. James began his stage life as the circus contortionist in the Hagg Circus, which later became the Christy Brothers Circus. The gimmick was "the Youngest and Oldest Contortionists in the World," because young Harry worked with a seventy-year-old partner. He started his musical education with the drums at age four in the circus band. He learned to play piano and trumpet with his father, the circus bandmaster.
Though thought by many to be a native Texan, Harry James did not arrive in Texas until the 1930s, when he and his parents moved to Beaumont. There he played trumpet and led a band. In 1934 he toured as a trumpet player with Joe Gill. In 1935 he joined Ben Pollack's band, with which he made his recording debut early in 1936. Fame came later that year, when James joined Benny Goodman's orchestra. He made a name for himself with fiery trumpet solos and an appearance in the band's 1938 movie, Hollywood Hotel. After he started the Harry James Band in 1940, his hit song "You Made Me Love You" (1941) sold over a million copies. Other popular Harry James recordings included "Carnival in Venice" and "Flight of the Bumble Bee."
He had a great technique that showed off rich, brassy tones. A true virtuoso, Harry, along with his band, developed the boogie woogie style for big-band swing. His romantic ballads, the key to his success, shot him to fame as a big-band leader. In 1941 a national poll voted his band the number-one dance band in the country. He appeared on radio shows for Danny Kaye, Coca Cola, and Jack Benny, and also on his own series, sponsored by Chesterfield Cigarettes. Some of the famous musicians who performed with Harry James in the 1940s were Dick Haymes, Frank Sinatra, and Helen Forrest. Into the 1950s and 1960s Harry and the band were joined as well by Buddy Rich, Sam Firmature, Jack Perciful, and Ray Sims.
James continued to be popular, appearing cameo or with Benny Goodman's band in many movies, including Two Girls and a Sailor (1944), Young Man with a Horn (1950), The Benny Goodman Story (1955), and Anything Goes (1956). Still an active musician in the 1970s, he was quoted then as saying, "I don't look at people as changing, being old or being young. I just look down from the stand to see if people are having fun."
James was married first to Louise Tobin in 1935. That lasted until he met Betty Grable, whom he married in 1943. He and Betty moved to Las Vegas, where Harry played for many years. They were divorced in 1965. Afterward, he married Joan Boyd, a Las Vegas showgirl. He later married a fourth time. James had five children from his various marriages. He died of cancer at the age of sixty-seven on July 5, 1983, in Las Vegas, Nevada. That year he was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Charles Eugene Claghorn, Biographical Dictionary of Jazz (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice–Hall, 1982). Peter Gammond, The Oxford Companion to Popular Music (Oxford University Press, 1991). Roger D. Kinkle, The Complete Encyclopedia of Popular Music and Jazz: 1900–1950 (4 vols., New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House, 1974). Vertical Files, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. Leo Walker, The Big Band Almanac (Hollywood: Vinewood Enterprises, 1978).
