Big Bands and Their Theme Songs Quiz

Answer: Moonlight Serenade

Glenn Miller and His Orchestra recorded "Moonlight Serenade" on 4 April 1939. It was one of two million-selling singles for the band in 1939. Miller was the composer.

Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, ("Quasi una fantasia") Op. 27, No. 2, in 1801. Its popular title is "Moonlight Sonata."

Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke wrote "Moonlight Becomes You" for the 1942 motion picture "Road to Morocco." Bing Crosby's 1942 recording was the most popular of the many covers.

Paul Dresser (1857-1906), the elder brother of novelist Theodore Dreiser, wrote "On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away" in 1897. The song was also known as "Moonlight on the Wabash" because of the line in the chorus "The moonlight's fair tonight along the Wabash."

Answer: Minnie the Moocher

Calloway first recorded "Minnie the Moocher" in 1931, which recording sold over a million copies. In the 40s, he sang the song at both the beginning and end of his band's performances. In 1999, "Minnie" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In the 1980 motion picture "The Blues Brothers," Calloway plays a janitor who turns Jake and Elwood's small musical group into a big band and performs "Minnie the Moocher," still his theme song in his 70s.

Answer: Duke Ellington

Billy Strayhorn wrote "A Train" specifically for Duke Ellington and his orchestra. Ellington replaced his former theme song, "Sepia Panorama," because of a legal dispute with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). Duke and his band performed "Take the A Train" in the 1943 motion picture "Reveille with Beverly." Betty Roche sang the lyrics while the entire orchestra played in a moving railroad passenger car (not in a subway).

Answer: none of these

Hupfeld wrote "As Time Goes By" for a Broadway musical, "Everybody's Welcome" in which it was sung by Frances Williams. It was "revived" by its use in the 1942 motion picture "Casablanca" where Dooley Wilson "played" it. Wilson was not a pianist; the sound track was recorded by Jean Vincent Plummer. Warner Brothers adopted it as a signature theme and used it in many trailers. It was the theme song for the British romantic comedy "As Time Goes By" (1992-2005) with Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer. No big band nor orchestra used it as a theme song.

Answer: One O'clock Jump

William James "Count" Basie formed the Barons of Rhythm in 1935. To fill time at the end of a live radio broadcast from the Reno Club, the band improvised and the result was the "One O'clock Jump" which became their signature number. It was included by the National Recording Preservation Board in the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2005.

Thelonious Monk wrote and performed "'Round Midnight" in 1944. A later version, recorded by his quintet, was admitted to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1993.

Wilson Pickett and Steve Cropper wrote "In the Midnight Hour" at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would later be assassinated. Pickett recorded the song in 1965.

Willie Nelson wrote and recorded "The Party's Over" in the mid-1950s but it was made popular by Claude Gray in 1959. "Dandy" Don Meredith, former quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys, sang the lyrics as co-host of "Monday Night Football" when it appeared to him that one team had gained an irreversible advantage in the game.

Answer: Lionel Hampton

The story goes that Lionel Hampton and Benny Goodman were waiting to fly from Los Angeles to Atlantic City one day in 1939. Hampton was nervous about flying and began to whistle a tune to distract himself. Goodman asked him the name of the tune and, there being none, Hampton replied "Flyin' Home." After leaving Goodman, Hampton formed Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra, which recorded "Flyin' Home" in 1942 and used it as their theme song thereafter. Harry James covered it in 1965; Ella Fitzgerald in 1979.

The soundtrack of "A League of Their Own" (1992) includes it. The song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1996.

Answer: Artie Shaw

Porter wrote "Begin the Beguine" in Martinique while on a 'round-the-world cruise. He heard a beguine and set out to write one. The song could have disappeared when "Jubilee" closed but for Jerry Gray's arrangement for Artie Shaw and his Orchestra. For more of the story, see John McDonough, "End the Beguine: the Unapologetic Genius of Artie Shaw 1910-2004". Down Beat, 72:3 (March 2005).

Answer: Bubbles in the Wine

Lawrence Welk himself wrote the music and Robert "Bob" Calame wrote the words to "Bubbles in the Wine" which Welk often referred to as "champagne music." "Blue Champagne" was a hit for the Glenn Miller Orchestra. "The Night They Invented Champagne" is a Lerner and Loewe song from the 1973 musical "Gigi." "Champagne Charlie" is a 19th century composition by Alfred Lee with lyrics by George Leybourne.

Answer: Woodchoppers' Ball

Woodrow Charles Herman sang, arranged, played both the clarinet and saxophone, and conducted a series of jazz-oriented orchestras. He released his first major hit, "Woodchoppers' Ball," in 1939 and used it as a theme song thereafter. Another major hit for Herman was his 1942 recording of Harold Arlen's "Blues in the Night."

Answer: Tommy Dorsey

The Tommy Dorsey band's recordings (1932 on Columbia and 1934 on Decca) of "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You" were so popular that the band became known thereafter as "The Sentimental Gentlemen of Swing." The arrangements featured the solo trombone of band-leader Tommy Dorsey. Dorsey's "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You" features on the soundtrack of Woody Allen's motion picture "Radio Days" (1987).