Striking Up The Band

"The Old Smoothie," Del Courtney Leaves Musical Legacy Spanning Over Seven Decades

The following article on Del Courtney was originally published in the January 2001 issue of Jazz Connection Magazine.

If  Del Courtney had listened to his father who wanted his son to became a music teacher, the music business would have lost out on a very successful and innovative bandleader. For over seven decades, Courtney has led one of the most popular orchestras of the Big Band era.

"My dad wanted me to be a teacher because he thought it was an honorable profession and that I would be looked up to in the community," said Courtney, 90, via telephone from his high-rise apartment in Honolulu, HI. "I got my teacher's degree and taught at a high school for six months. It wasn't to my liking. I went back to my father and said, 'Dad, I did it your way, now I'm going to go out and do it my way.'"

And Courtney did indeed go out and do things his own way. Nicknamed "The Old Smoothie" because his band played a very smooth and danceable-type of music, Courtney and his orchestra played every major hotel in the nation as well as for four U.S. presidents. During his long career, he appeared in movies and television and was surrounded frequently by some of the biggest names in show business. He was a popular radio host and a prominent fixture in early television in the San Francisco area. He formed the original Oakland Raiders band and was one of the first to bring Big Band music to Hawaii.

"I consider myself blessed by 'the Man upstairs' and very fortunate to have enjoyed a successful career in the music and entertainment world," Courtney said. "I was lucky to have had a number of 'firsts' in my profession as well as enjoying a good part of  my life in sports both as a player and in my relationship with the Oakland Raiders football organization."

 The desire to play professional sports almost kept Courtney out of the musical line-up. While pursuing a degree in music and leading a dance band at the University of California, Berkeley, he played semi-pro baseball in the Maxwell League in the San Francisco Bay area, earning $10 per game playing centerfield, $15 if he pitched, he said. He turned down a professional contract with the Pacific League San Francisco Seals.

"I wanted to play professional baseball but I also wanted to lead a band," Courtney said. "I had a decision to make. I figured I could last longer in music than I could in baseball. If I got a couple of broken fingers playing baseball I would never be able to play the piano."

 Born on Sept. 24, 1910, in Oakland, CA, Courtney's interest in music began at age nine when his parents, George and Mary, started him on piano lessons from a lady who lived in the neighborhood who charged the then exorbitant price of twenty-five cents per thirty-minute lesson.

"Being able to play the piano so fascinated me that I wanted to increase the time of each piano lesson," Courtney recalled. "That's pretty unusual for a nine-year-old kid! I knew that I wanted to continue to study music."

At age 16, Courtney first became acquainted with jazz through a chance contact with Waterman's Jazz Piano School, a small piano school located in Oakland.  After taking a number of jazz piano lessons with the owner, Mr. Waterman, Courtney was encouraged to try out for the piano spot with a small jazz band from nearby Alameda.

"I thought I wasn't good enough to play jazz with this band but I auditioned anyway," Courtney said. "I was so nervous that I think I played more on the wooden part of the piano than on the keys! I was hired and that was the beginning of my interest and activity in the jazz field."

As a student at St. Mary's High School in Oakland, Courtney led his first dance band playing in the area with quite a bit of success.

Upon graduation from high school, Courtney attended St. Mary's College in Moraga, CA, but left after two years because of  the school's lack of  music courses.

"By this time I had definitely decided I wanted to be in music," he said.

With a heartfelt desire to study music, Courtney transferred to the College of the Pacific in Stockton, CA (now known as the University of the Pacific).  UOP, an expensive private college, had the reputation of being the best music school west of the Mississippi River.

Courtney joined the Rho Lamda Phi fraternity and was a roommate with Henry "Dutch" Brubeck, the older brother of famous jazz pianist Dave Brubeck.

"Dutch's mother was a piano teacher and she allowed us to use her big studio in her home in Concord for band rehearsals," Courtney said. "Her younger son, Dave, sat on the floor and watched us rehearse. This, he says, inspired him to a life of playing jazz music."

Between the high tuition rates and the costs incurred of being in a fraternity, Courtney left UOP after his junior year to transfer to the University of California, Berkeley.

Liking the sound of jazz and the sound of a big band, Courtney soon formed a jazz band on the campus of Berkeley. His first engagement as an orchestra leader paid $20.

"The money aspect of it almost discouraged me and whetted my appetite to return to professional sports," Courtney said. "However, I stuck it out."

Courtney graduated with a degree in classical piano and spent an additional year at Berkeley to earn his master's and teaching degree.

"I always had it in my mind that having a teaching degree in my back pocket would be a safety net for me if my professional dance band career didn't prove successful," he said.

In 1933, Courtney signed a booking contract with Music Corporation of America (MCA) and took his newly-formed 16-piece band to Seattle, WA, for its first job, a four-week engagement at the Trianon Ballroom.

Arriving in Seattle a day early, Courtney met with the ballroom's owner/manager, John Savage, who was also part owner of a Seattle baseball team in the Pacific Coast League and part owner of the Rainier Beer Company.

Savage told Courtney, "Kid, you are not opening up in this ballroom tomorrow night. We have a local band the people like."

Courtney felt like crying, he said, but reminded Savage about the contract he signed with MCA to which Savage replied, "I signed that contract when I was in a bad mood one day. You're still not opening here."

After some pleading by the fledgling bandleader, Savage offered a compromise. He told Courtney, "Kid, this is what I'll let you do. You can open here tomorrow night. If the people like you, you can stay for the weekend."

Elated, Courtney returned to the hotel and told his band the news.

"I told my band that if we were to keep this first engagement, we had to play with both hands and with both lips," Courtney said.

The people attending the Trianon Ballroom that Friday evening liked the Courtney band and true to his word, Savage let the band play out the weekend.

 The people liked the band so much that before the weekend was over, Savage extended the band's stay to one week  -   then to four weeks.

"He kept extending the contract and we ended up playing there for eight months!" Courtney said.

During that time, Vic Meyers, a former bandleader turned nightclub owner, invited Courtney and his band to play at his swanky downtown Seattle nightspot, The Club Victor, which broadcasted nightly over NBC.

When Courtney gave Savage his two weeks notice, the Trianon Ballroom manger responded, "Kid, you're not leaving here!"

"The only way that I got out of the Trianon was to go to the musician's union in Seattle and they helped me so I could go to The Club Victor," Courtney said.  "That was a big step up for me being only 24 years old."

After a 12-week stay at The Club Victor, Courtney's booking agency booked the new band in Hawaii, which ironically, led to greater public exposure.

In 1935, MCA booked Courtney at the Alexander Young Hotel Roof Garden in Honolulu, a move the young bandleader stoutly resisted.

"I was against going to Hawaii," Courtney said. "The band was just getting known and I didn't want to be stuck playing on some rock in the middle of the ocean!  I figured no one was ever going to hear about us."

He grudgingly took the job, and as luck would have it, the whole world ended up hearing about Del Courtney and his Orchestra. He was picked by the Hawaii tourist bureau to play the very first broadcast of the long-running radio series, Hawaii Calls.

"At that time, Harry Owens and his Royal Hawaiians were the big name in the Islands and I told the show's producer that I thought Harry should be the first to play on the show," Courtney recalled. "I got the nod to be the first so the rest of the world would know that Hawaii had big name bands playing here, too. Harry was pretty angry about it. He didn't speak to me for weeks."

The Courtney and Owens bands alternated broadcasts weekly for 26 weeks, each airing the show from their respective locations  -  Courtney from the Alexander Young Roof Gardens and Owens (who wrote Sweet Leilani) from the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.

It was while in "Paradise" that Courtney first met Alex Anderson, Hawaii's most prolific songwriter, who wrote such tunes as Lovely Hula Hands, Keep Your Eyes On The Hands and The Kakaied Mayor Of  Kaiankakai, among others.  He even wrote a song for Courtney based on the bandleader's discomfort he experienced shortly after arriving to Hawaii.

"I got so sunburned the first week I was in Hawaii that I could hardly walk," Courtney said. "Alex asked me what the matter was. I told him I felt like I was on fire, especially my stomach. He said, 'Oh, you mean your opu.'  The next week he came to me and said, 'I wrote a song about your sunburn.  It's called My Little Red Opu. That song is still played today."

Courtney and his band were one of the first to play Hawaiian War Chant.

"We worked with a number of Hawaiian troupes," Courtney said. "There was one little Hawaiian girl who did a number called Tahawahawai.  I asked her to write down the words, and my arranger took down the notes as she sang the melody. We recorded it back on the mainland as Hawaiian War Chant (Dec. 27, 1939).  Fortunately, the record sold pretty well. Tommy Dorsey also recorded it earlier (July 1938), as did Guy Lombardo."

The Hawaii Calls broadcasts captured a lot of interest on the mainland for Courtney's band. He was soon booked into every major hotel, ballroom and theater in the country, including such famed sites as the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles, the Aragon-Trianon ballrooms in Chicago, New York's Paramount Theatre, the Glen Island Casino in Long Island, the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco and Chicago's Blackhawk Restaurant, where the band was booked for nine straight months in 1946, its longest engagement.

"We didn't have trouble getting jobs after that," Courtney said. "We never played in Hawaii again, until I moved here in 1978. I always knew that this was where I wanted to end up."

Engagements in these major hotels led to recording contracts over the years on such labels as Vocalion, Okeh (a Columbia affiliate), Bluebird (a Victor affiliate), Mercury and Capitol.

The band's most notable recordings include An Apple For The Teacher (July 7, 1939), Monstro The Whale (Aug. 28, 1939), The Singing Hills and Hawaiian War Chant (both Dec. 27, 1939).  Many of Courtney's early recordings featured vocals by guitarist Joe Martin and tenor saxophonists Sherman Hayes and Diek Dildine.

In 1946, Courtney missed out on what could have been biggest hit of his career. The song was To Each His Own, subsequently made famous by Eddy Howard, he said.

Courtney was sent a copy of the Jay Livingston and Ray Evans tune and recorded it for Mercury Records in Chicago. By the time he recorded the piece, there was an internal shake up within the record company and as a result, Courtney's recording of the song never got released, he said.

"Every time I hear that song, I cry," Courtney said. "Eddy made a pile of money off it."

Although music critic George T. Simon in his book, The Big Bands, labels Courtney's band as "part Mickey Mouse and part society," Courtney himself disagrees with that assessment.

"We fell into the category of playing 'smooth' music," he said. "We were never a Mickey Mouse band. We leaned more toward the touch of jazz than strictly being a society band. We played a pretty solid brand of music. We were a solid band leaning more on the smooth side of music than the high-powered jazz/swing bands.  We did play some jazz but the mainstay was 'smooth' danceable music."

And that earned Courtney his nickname of "The Old Smoothie."

"A writer from Down Beat magazine reviewed the band and said it was a very smooth danceable-type of a band," Courtney said. "I guess had personality, too. It was suggested in the article that I be called 'The Old Smoothie.'"

Even with his love for jazz, Courtney peddled his brand of music for commercial reasons, he said.

"The first big band I had, we played jazz, but it was loud and we didn't get too many jobs," he said. "Making it more danceable gave us our niche."

Courtney patterned his band after the sweet band of saxophonist Orville Knapp. In 1936, after Knapp was killed piloting the plane he crashed, Courtney used as his theme song, Three Shades Of Blue, a song from the late popular bandleader's library.

Courtney used that piece as his theme until 1941 when problems arising with the American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP) surfaced, which prohibited playing or recording any song of a publisher associated with ASCAP.

"I came to work at the Stevens Hotel in Chicago," Courtney said. "About an hour before we were to broadcast, we were told that we couldn't use Three Shades Of Blue as our theme. I went over to the piano and with the help of my piano player, the two of us wrote a song we could play as our theme. We called it Good Evening, because that's what we first say when we come on the air. We kept it as our theme song until the day I retired."

Not all of the venues the band played for during the early days held fond memories. Once while the band was playing a one-nighter at a ballroom in Lexington, KY, a dancer pointed a gun at Courtney. Courtney explains:

"This guy danced by the bandstand and asked us to play Sweet Sue. We always tried to answer requests so we played the song for him. About 20 minutes later the same man danced by and again wanted us to play Sweet Sue. I told him that we had already played it and we don't like to repeat numbers, but that we would play it again. About 30 minutes later the same man came up to me and wanted the band to play Sweet Sue again.  This time I told him no since we played it for him two times. At that moment the man pulled a revolver out of his pocket, aimed it at me and said, 'I said, play Sweet Sue.'  My knees were knocking. I shouted to the boys in the band, 'Hey, guys, stop whatever you're playing and play Sweet Sue.'"

There were also times of struggle as to when the next booking would come from so that the band could eat.

"We finished an engagement in Gallup, NM, and we didn't have another booking. We were starving," Courtney said. "We had six guys in a room eating beans, and five more guys in another room sharing a hamburger. I went to Chicago see a band booker named Bob Weems, the brother of bandleader Ted Weems. He said, 'I've canvassed every place in the Midwest and nobody wants your band. My advice to you, kid, is to go home. You'll never make it as a bandleader.'

"I went to my room that night and cried. Then I borrowed money to get some gasoline in my car, drove up to Minneapolis, thinking I'd find us a job myself.  I was walking down the street when I bumped into Horace Heidt. He and his band were playing the Orpheum Theater. He knew the Radisson Hotel was opening a room and didn't have a band yet. He took me to see the manager, and right under the band booker's nose, I got a four-week job. The worst thing was I had to pay him commission for the job even though I got it myself, because we were under contract. Then we switched agencies and the first job we were booked into was the Ambassador Hotel on Park Avenue in New York. The hotel sent out embossed invitations that said, 'The Ambassador Hotel is proud to present the music of Del Courtney and his Orchestra.'  I got a hold of one those invitations and sent it to Bob Weems in Chicago with a note: 'Dear Bob, I'm sorry I didn't take your advice.  If you're ever in New York, I'll buy you a drink.'  That was the sweetest revenge in my life, to open a swank room in New York when he told me I'd never make it in the band business."

As the Big Bands began to fade out in the late 1940's, Courtney reluctantly decided that it was time for him to disband as well. Courtney's father by this time had opened a television retail store on Franklin Street in Oakland and wanted his son to come home and help him run the business.

"The first television station had not yet been built in San Francisco and we had no 'real' television sets to sell," Courtney said. "Dad's store was set up in anticipation of the first TV station being built. We put a TV cabinet in the store window with a movie camera behind it so that people passing the store could see what they thought was a television set. People became interested and wanted to buy one. Since no TV stations were built yet in the area, that was selling televisions the hard way!  A few months later when the local television station was completed, we sold TV's by the truckloads."

This led Courtney to a new phase of his career as a pioneer in early television in San Francisco on KPIX Channel 5. He re-formed his band and hosted a musical variety/talk show which lasted almost five years.

"Because of the name that I had built up in the band business, the management of the TV station asked me to do a three-hour daily television show," Courtney said. "I turned down their first few offers until they told me that I could mention my family television stores on the show as many times as I wanted. Realizing this would save us thousands of dollars in advertising, I accepted the job."

Working out of a small room from the Mark Hopkins Hotel, doing a television show at that time was a great challenge, Courtney said. The news, for example, was flown in from Los Angeles. Some days, after doing three hours on the air, the station manager would stick his head in the door and ask Courtney to stay on the air since the news hadn't arrived from L.A. yet. 

"I thought to myself, 'What could I do for three hours a day that I hadn't done yesterday or last week or last month?'" Courtney said."We did everything on this show from having animals to interviewing people outside the studio to comedy skits to broadcasting weddings. Our receptionist at KPIX was getting married and we did the wedding live on television. This was the very first wedding done on television anywhere."

 Since Courtney made so many contacts in show business as a bandleader, it wasn't much of a problem to have these celebrities appear on his television show, he said.

"We were fortunate to have had people from Hollywood come up to San Francisco who wanted to plug their latest motion picture, recording, book or whatever," Courtney said. "Whoever they were, we interviewed them. We had such greats as Ella Fitzgerald on six times. Sammy Davis, Jr., was such a hit and he loved being on the show that whenever he came to play the Fairmont Hotel, he'd always call me and ask for an appearance."

Besides featuring established stars on his show, Courtney also introduced then-unknown performers such as comedian Phyllis Diller, singer Johnny Mathis and the vocal group, The Kingston Trio, he said.

With all the Hollywood greats that he has been associated with, Courtney counts conducting for crooner Frank Sinatra as a career highlight, he said.

"KPIX just opened its studios on Van Ness Avenue so were able to have a live audience," Courtney said. "The station manager asked me if I knew Frank Sinatra.  I told him I did.  He wanted me to get Frank to appear on the opening night of the new studios. Frank was still recording with Columbia Records at the time and since the station was a Columbia Broadcasting affiliate, he was hoping there wouldn't be a problem.  If Frank liked you, he'd do you a favor. If he didn't like you, he'd be apt to put a contract out on you. Frank was appearing in Los Angeles at the time and he agreed to show up at the studios. Half way through the show, I looked in the wings and there was Frank, impeccably dressed in a tuxedo. I introduced him and he asked me if the band knew Somebody Loves Me in B-flat.  I said, 'They sure do.'  Frank responded with , 'Well, let's do it.'  He was off singing. I also conducted another number for him."

While working for KPIX, Courtney would put a band together for special performances at various posh hotels in San Francisco including the Mark Hopkins, the St. Francis, the Palace, the Fairmont and the Claremont in nearby Berkeley.

In addition to being a television personality, Courtney also hosted his own three-hour daily radio show in the early afternoons on KSFO in San Francisco for twelve years. The radio show was broadcasted from the Tonga Room at the Fairmont Hotel. Courtney interviewed many top performers including Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Buddy Rich, Mel Torme, Nat "King" Cole and Abbott & Costello, who did what seemed to be a never-ending and funny take-off on their famous "Who's On First?" comedy routine.

A self-confessed workaholic, Courtney always seemed to have three or four jobs going at the same time.  he pace got really hectic when for years beginning in 1958, he was simultaneously working on television, radio and driving 400 miles a day to lead the house band at Harrah's at Lake Tahoe, NV, he said.

"After I'd get off the air at KSFO, I'd jump in my car and drive 200 miles to Sacramento," Courtney said. "That was before they had the bypass. You had to stop at every light. I'd get to Tahoe just in time to give the downbeat for the 8:15 dinner show. I'd do the dinner show, do the midnight show, get through with work about 2 a.m., get in my car, drive all the way back from Lake Tahoe to San Francisco, get three hours of sleep, four if I was lucky, get up and do it all over again."

The routine got to be too strenuous for Courtney and he decided not to do anything more with the band but to just concentrate on his radio and television career, he said.

Courtney also gave Hollywood a try, appearing in the1955 sci-fi film, It Came From Beneath The Sea.  He also appeared in other flicks such as Chicago At Night and John Loves Mary, and on the television shows Dragnet, San Francisco Beat and Harbor Command.

In 1964, Courtney began working on The King Family Show television series which lasted about five seasons and was named the show's General Manager. The idea behind the show came from Yvonne King, one of the four King Sisters, a female quartet who rose to notoriety as the featured act with guitarist Alvino Rey and his band. Courtney was married to Yvonne King at the time, his second marriage.

"I got taken off the air at KSFO and Yvonne, my wife, said to me that she was going to make me the best-known MC in the United States," Courtney said. "The fact that I was married to the brainchild of the show made it easy for me to be named General Manager. The show consisted of 41 family members and I couldn't fire any one of them!"

The cast rehearsed six days a week and the show was performed live on the seventh day over ABC. Managing such a "menagerie" was a real challenge at times, Courtney said.

"Some family members would come late to rehearsals, which was very frustrating," he said. "When we took the show on the road during the summer months, one teenager may not want to room with another teenager because they had a falling out the day before. Or, one mother would want to know why her daughter was being paid a certain amount of money while her cousin was being paid a different wage. It just went on and on."

One of the bright spots of being affiliated with The King Family show was working with his brother-in-law and co-host of the program, Alvino Rey, who was married to Luise King, Courtney said.

"They just don't come any better than Alvino Rey," he said. "He's a great musician and probably the best guitar player ever."

Courtney also helped to infuse show biz into the world of sports in 1960 when he formed the band for the then newly-formed football franchise, the Oakland Raiders. He was also instrumental in establishing pro football's first corps of cheerleaders, the Raiderettes.

At first Courtney turned down offers made to him by the owners of the Raiders to lead the "Silver and Black" band, citing that he had a "full plate" of interests going already. He did agree, however, to put the initial 40-piece band together and to produce home game half-time shows for the first season, he said.

"The owners kept after me to come aboard and pretty soon they made the offer better and better and so I went to work for the Oakland Raiders," Courtney said. "I started out as entertainment director, conducting the band at half-time and getting the national anthem singer. When Al Davis came to Oakland, I was soon elevated to the role of the team's director of administration, overseeing virtually all Raider operations except those directly involving the players.  I represented Al in contracts for television and radio rights and a myriad of other things."

Courtney utilized his vast array of contacts in show business by inviting celebrities to sing the National Anthem or to participate in Raider half-time extravaganzas, he said. 

During his 19 years with the Raiders organization, the team made four Super Bowl appearances, winning three.

In 1971, Courtney was stricken with the rare Guillam-Barre syndrome, which attacks the nervous system.  The condition left Courtney completely paralyzed and in a coma for nearly five weeks.

"I could hear what was going on, but I couldn't move or speak at all during that time," Courtney said. "Eight doctors said I had about an hour to live."

But Courtney proved the doctors wrong and in six months, three of which were spent in the intensive-care unit, he walked out of the hospital with the aid of canes and returned to his job with the Raiders.

"A lot of people may not like Al Davis, but he used to visit me when I was in the hospital and he continued to pay me my salary and the Raiders took care of the hospital bills, which were astronomical," Courtney said. "He did right by me."

By 1978, Courtney decided the time was right to relocate to Hawaii and planned to completely retire from show biz, but his plan was short lived. Less than a month after arriving in Honolulu, Courtney was recruited by the Royal Hawaiian Hotel's manager, Joe Hiebert, to put together a band to play for Sunday afternoon tea dances in the hotel's Monarch Room.

"A couple years earlier, Joe came to the Hyatt Regency Hotel in San Francisco where my band was playing every Friday and he gave me a standing invitation to run such dances if I ever came  to Honolulu," Courtney said. "A week after I got to Honolulu, I went to see Joe and asked when I could start. Two weeks later I had a band together working for a twelve-week contract."

So successful were those Sunday afternoon tea dances, that like the Trianon Ballroom engagement in Seattle forty-five years earlier, Courtney's contract kept getting extended until it turned into an unprecedented 15-year stint that finally ended in 1993.

"I finally said to Joe that I was retiring," Courtney said. "You have to know when its time to let go."

Little did Courtney realize that his association with the Raiders football team did not end when he retired from the organization and moved away. In 1983, when the Raiders moved to Los Angeles, Al Davis telephoned the semi-retired bandleader and wanted him to come to Los Angeles to work once again for six months.

"I didn't want to but before I knew it, I was on a plane going to Los Angeles," Courtney said. "Al Davis is a very persuasive man."

Courtney helped put together a new Raider band and produced all the half-time shows. He was also looking for someone to permanently take over the band when friend and former bandleader Horace Heidt contacted him.

"Horace asked me if his son, Horace Heidt, Jr., who was starting out in the band business, could get the job of leading the Los Angeles Raiders Band," Courtney said. "I gave him the job. It was something I could do for Horace because he helped me when I was down."

In 1986, Courtney released a tape cassette, Del Courtney Swings In Hawaii, and in August of that year appeared with the Honolulu Symphony in a tribute to the Big Bands at the Waikiki Shell in Honolulu.

Since his retirement, Courtney has undergone major back surgery and has had two knee operations, which limit his activities. He spends a good deal of time in his condo reading or listening to music, he said. He occasionally leads a band for special engagements as he did for his 90th birthday party last Sept. 24. Hosted by the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, many celebrities came out to celebrate including singer Herb Jeffries (who celebrated his 89th birthday on the same day and who has worked with Courtney on many occasions in the past), singer Jimmy Borges, alto saxophonist Gabe Baltazar, John Norris, Kanoe Miller, Sonny Kamahele and trombonist Ira Neptus.

The Musician's Association of Hawaii Local 677 AFM, even awarded Courtney with its first-ever Distinguished Life Member Gold Card and through resolution declared that "...September 24 of each and every year henceforth be declared 'Del Courtney Day' in Hawaii... and that the Local (musician's union) sponsor a Big Band concert, featuring the music that Del made famous around the world, in honor of Del and his contributions to the life of music and musicians in Hawaii."

Courtney is also in the process of writing a book about his life in the music business, an idea encouraged to him by friend Herb Jeffries.

"Herb kept reminding me that music has treated me very well and that I have to give something back," Courtney said. "He's right."

Courtney has been married and divorced four times. His wives include Yvonne King and singer Connie Haines. Courtney has no children.

Although he favors good jazz music, Courtney likes all kinds of music except rock, which he abhors, he said.

"There really isn't any live music here in Hawaii right now," Courtney said. "My music has deteriorated to the point where there isn't any."

The high-water mark of Courtney's career was playing for four different U.S. presidents, he said.

"I don't know of any other band who ever played for four presidents," Courtney said. "I consider this a great honor. I was lucky enough to have bands play for Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan. We played for President Truman in Kansas City for the 35th reunion of his Army Division. Every big star in the country attended the reunion which was hosted by Jack Benny. We played for one of President Eisenhower's Inaugural Balls in Washington, D.C.  Then we played for President Nixon for one of his functions in California. We were a hit with President Reagan at one his Inaugural Balls held at the Space Museum in Washington, D.C., when we played Nancy With The Laughing Face. He always liked our band.  I knew him when he was governor of California. He told me that he ordered Del Courtney tapes to be played on Air Force One. I thought that was quite an honor."

With such an illustrious career in music, Courtney feels that his contribution to the history of American popular music is directly connected with his association with the Aloha State, Hawaii, he said.

"I think I've done some things for Hawaii by bringing good Big Band music here which it never had before," he said.

Would Courtney do all over again?

"You bet I would!" he said. "With my love of music and the success I enjoyed, I would do the whole thing all over again. I enjoyed every minute of it."

*****

***  Coda: In January 2005, Del Courtney self-published his autobiography, Hey! The Band's Too Loud (AuthorHouse Publishing), written by Stephen Fratallone. During the past few years, it has been reported that Courtney has been suffering from ill health and is confined the majority of the time to his bed.  ***