records from the late 1920's
Shaw could scarcely have known that within a short time he would make a
hit record of a song called Begin the Beguine, which he now jokingly refers
to as "a nice little tune from one of Cole Porter's very few flop shows."
Shortly before that he had hired Billie Holiday as his band vocalist (the
first white band leader to employ a black female singer as a full-time
member of his band), and within a year after the release of Beguine, the
Artie Shaw Orchestra was earning as much as $60,000 weekly -- a figure
that would nowadays amount to more than $600,000 a week! |
|
