The lyrics to the song “Auld Lang Syne” are based on a poem by 18th-century Scottish poet Robert Burns and loosely translated mean “for the sake of old times.” When a talented band of teenage boys in the 1920s first played “Auld Lang Syne” to please a Scottish audience, they never realized that it would one day become the band’s signature song.
No Fiddlin’ Around
Gaetano Alberto “Guy” Lombardo was born in 1902 in London, Ontario, to Italian immigrants Gaetano and Angeline Lombardo. The senior Lombardo was a tailor and amateur baritone singer who loved music and encouraged four of his five sons to play musical instruments. Guy was the oldest and assumed leadership of their band from the beginning.Their music teacher, Professor Pasquale Venuta, was strict about playing music as written. One day, the senior Lombardo caught Guy riffing a classical melody on his violin. He broke the instrument over his son’s head, though the elder Lombardo sheepishly admitted years later that it was a small violin.
The Lombardo boys rehearsed in the back of their father’s tailor shop, and their hard work paid off when they played their first professional gig at the Lakeview Casino in Grand Bend, Ontario, when the bandleader Lombardo was just 17 years old.
In those early days, Guy played violin and conducted the band, while younger brother Carmen played clarinet and saxophone, Lebert lead trumpet and friend Freddie Kreitzer played piano. The Lombardo Brothers’ Orchestra and Concert Company was initially a quartet and was popular enough that eventually all the Lombardo teenagers quit school with their father’s blessing to become full-time musicians.
Over time, a few more members were added, and Lombardo’s group was hired as the house band at the Hopkins Casino at Port Stanley on Lake Erie. They also played at the Winter Gardens in London, Ontario. It was around this time that Guy decided the band needed to expand outside Canada and connected with a booking agent in Ohio. By the time the band returned to Ontario in 1927, they had struck a popular chord with the American public and assumed a new name.
Strike Up the Band
The band became Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians in 1924. Mike Shea was their agent at the time and suggested the band dress up in Royal Mountie uniforms. Guy nixed that idea, though he and his brothers realized that it was going to be difficult for a new band to break through without a distinctive sound of its own to attract American audiences.The group was actually a jazz band at that time brimming with creative talent, but two people influenced the three Lombardo men to encourage the band to pursue a new direction. First, they recalled the words of their father to play music that listeners could “sing, hum, or whistle.” The other influence was Louis Bleet, a Cleveland nightclub owner that signed the band for a two-year engagement at his club, the Claremont Tent. Bleet persuaded the band to slow the tempo of the music, lower the volume, and do medleys of songs his patrons requested.
Initially, some of the band members resisted, saying it stifled their creativity to play straight dance music, but the three Lombardo brothers convinced the dissenters to change their tune, and suddenly the band found its niche.
Their new sound started with the sax section. Carmen Lombardo, who also sang and wrote much of the music, had a unique tone on the alto sax that blended perfectly with the other two sax players to create a velvety vibrato. The band also perfected a rich repertoire of infectious melodies using a slight polka-style that enticed listeners to dance. The group used a tuba instead of a double bass for harmony rather than rhythm, and the cadence of the drummer was barely audible other than to the band itself.
Many of the social elite of the late 1920s flocked to the new music style, and reportedly even some Prohibition-era gangsters liked the band’s classy approach. Chicago music critic Ashton Stevens called their performances “the sweetest music this side of heaven.”
America’s Favorite New Year’s Eve Show
Lombardo and His Royal Canadians debuted their version of “Auld Lang Syne” in front of a nationwide radio audience in 1929 at the Roosevelt Hotel. They played at that same location until 1959, having established themselves as America’s preeminent New Year’s Eve entertainers.The band was in such demand on New Year’s Eve that both CBS and NBC radio wanted them for their shows. Guy would close the old year on one network and usher in the new one on the other.
Lombardo’s end-of-the-year national radio broadcasts eventually set a record as the longest-running annual special (1929–1952). The band gained legions of new fans in 1956 when it began appearing annually on television. In 1959, the famed New Year’s Eve show moved to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel and played there until 1976.
The New Year’s Eve television broadcast airing on CBS ran for two decades (1956–1976) and one year was viewed by 55 million Americans, earning Lombardo the moniker, “Mr. New Year’s Eve.”
Marching to the Beat of Their Own Drum
Lombardo had his share of critics who thought the band’s music was sentimental pap and boring, earning Lombardo derisive nicknames like “The King of Corn” and “Gooey Lumbago.” Lombardo couldn’t have cared less. He was a big believer in giving fans what they wanted—great melodies—and no less than jazz greats Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald were fans of that unique Lombardo sound.In the late 1920s, when playing at Chicago’s Palace Theatre, the band was earning $4,000 a week. In another concert at the Chicago Armory, they performed before 20,000 fans.
Even judging by today’s standards, the band was a huge commercial success. Twenty-one of their songs reached No. 1, they had at least one top 10 song for 23 consecutive years, and they were voted America’s top dance band for 14 consecutive years. By 1959, the band had sold 100 million records, with some estimates as high as 300 million, and they played at seven U.S. presidential inaugurations from Franklin Roosevelt to Dwight Eisenhower.
Amazingly, years after his passing in 1977, Lombardo’s music can be heard on the soundtracks of newer movies, including “Angel Heart” (1987), “The Green Mile” (1999), and “Never Let Me Go” (2010).
Guy Lombardo became a naturalized citizen in 1937, but he was an American icon years before that, and his musical legacy remains with us today.
