BILL BROWN - MAN OF RENOWN! 

Several recent enquiries made by Mantovani fan Alan Dixon have helped us obtain a clearer picture of the Mantovani Orchestra musicians of the 1950s. These are still on-going, but in the meantime no-one has helped us more to identify those players than Mr Gordon Brown of Somerset, England.  

   Gordon is the son of former Mantovani trombonist Walter "Bill" Brown (1908-1979) who played in the orchestra during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Like Lionel Monte, Bill was present in the Decca studios on 6 March 1951 when the recording of "Charmaine" was made. Gordon believes that Bill probably joined Monty in the mid-1940s and was present until just before the first American tour of 1955. He can be clearly identified in the photos of the orchestra from the early 1950s.   Like so many wind instrumentalists, particularly brass players, Bill learned his trade courtesy of the British Army. He was a band boy in his first regiment, the King's Own Royal Regiment (Lancaster), playing euphonium. He served 13 years, nine of which were spent in such exotic locations as Burma, India and the Sudan. After arriving home in 1931 he soon attended a pupils' course for 18 months at the Royal Military School Of Music at Kneller Hall with euphonium as his favoured instrument but also cello. In the mid-1930s he transferred to the Irish Guards where he served until 1946.

   He toured North America with the Guards in 1935 and saw service in Italy during the latter part of the War.  While in the Army he was still able to play trombone in the evenings with various orchestras with the result that he was able to find steady employment as a trombonist when he left the Army in 1946. Some of the ensembles he appeared with in his long career were the well known British bands of Sydney Lipton, Maurice Winnick, Geraldo, Billy Cotton, Ambrose and Louis Levy. He also sat in with the West Indian band of Leslie "Jiver" Hutchinson and the British orchestras of Ray Martin, Ron Goodwin, Peter Yorke, George Melachrino, Sydney Thompson and Sydney Bowman.

  The latter also made many appearances as the leader of the Mantovani Orchestra. Bill Brown was always a freelance musician, as were most of the other members of the Mantovani Orchestra. In 1946-47 he was a member of Mantovani's Theatre Royal (Drury Lane) Orchestra for the Noel Coward show "Pacific 1860". He kept his euphonium handy at home in case a conductor or arranger might want to use it for tonal effect such as on Mantovani's hit recordings of "Swedish Rhapsody" (1953) and "Luxembourg Polka" (1954). Bill also appeared anonymously on euphonium on a rival recording of the latter by Wally Stott and his Orchestra!  

   The picture of Bill with his trombone was taken in the 1950s; it is a French Selmer "Paris" model purchased c 1952/53. His son Gordon says that it is still playable, although it would need a minor overhaul. The instrument Bill preferred before acquiring the Selmer was an American King trombone which would have been used on the 1951 "Charmaine" recording and those others recorded with Mantovani in 1951 and 1952. When Mantovani made his first tour of Germany in December 1953, Bill was part of the ensemble which the Germans dubbed the "Charmaine-Orchester". It included trumpeter Stan Newsome (whom Bill nicknamed "The Prince" because he closely resembled Prince Bernhardt of the Netherlands) and violinist Lionel Monte, the oldest surviving member of the orchestra. Bill also played with Mantovani at Butlin's holiday camp at Filey in the late 1940s and also on many of the classic recordings of the early 1950s, including a session of Gershwin's "Rhapsody In Blue" and "Concerto In F" in May 1955 with the brilliant piano soloist Julius Katchen.  Gordon Brown remembers many other fine Mantovani musicians, among them Maurice Gee (trombone), George Swift (trumpet), Frank Johnson (clarinet), Aubrey Johnson (oboe), John Alexander (bassoon), Lionel Solomon (flautist), Charlie Botterill (percussion), Wally Ashworth (string bass) and Sydney Sax, Sydney Kamine, Len Kitchen and Louis Voss of the string section.

   We would like to thank Gordon for his memories of his father from the golden era of Mantovani's Orchestra and also Alan Dixon for contacting Gordon.   

Colin MacKenzie