Joe Haymes & His Orchestra - The Breeze

Joe Haymes (1908-1964) was an American jazz bandleader and arranger. He worked in a circus as a youth, performing as a trapeze artist and playing bass drum in the circus band. He would relocate to Springfield after his father was killed in a railroad accident when he was about 10 years old. An autodidact on piano, he played locally before being hired by Ted Weems toward the end of the 1920s. He arranged the hit "Piccolo Pete", among others. He attended Drury College and Greenwood Laboratory School in Springfield. He started to lead his own band in 1930 in Tulsa, Oklahoma and then New York City. He recorded with them in 1932, but in late 1933 Buddy Rogers took control of the group. He then put together a swing jazz group, but after Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey split in 1935, twelve of Haymes's players took jobs in Tommy's new orchestra. He arranged a third band and recorded with it until 1937 but it was not successful. Haymes toured as an arranger with Lee Brown in 1938, and then found work writing and arranging anonymously for Hollywood and for CBS Records from the 1940s into the 1960s. Among the players in Haymes's orchestra were Johnny Mince, Pee Wee Erwin, Sterling Bose, Bud Freeman, Walt Yoder, and Lee Castle. This great record was made in 1934. Vocal by Cliff Wetterau, a pseudonym of Cliff Weston.