Background
Vaughn Wilton Monroe was born on October 7, 1911, in Akron, Ohio, to Ira C. Monroe, an itinerant rubber tire industry worker, and Mabel Louisa Maahs.
bandleader trumpeter singing star
Vaughn Wilton Monroe was born on October 7, 1911, in Akron, Ohio, to Ira C. Monroe, an itinerant rubber tire industry worker, and Mabel Louisa Maahs.
At age fifteen, Vaughn Monroe won the Wisconsin state trumpet championship for his interpretation of "Pearl of the Ocean. " He spent the last two years of high school at Jeannette, Pennsylvania, where he played the trumpet in the school band and in various local bands. There he joined the Methodist church choir, where he decided to pursue a singing career. In June 1929, he graduated with honors and in September he entered Carnegie Institute of Technology, where he completed two years of engineering and a number of music classes. Vaughn Monroe supported himself by playing the trumpet in several Pittsburgh bands. In 1931, he left Carnegie for lack of funds and went on the road with a dance band that played the eastern Pennsylvania circuit.
In 1935, Monroe moved to Boston, where he joined the Harry and Jack Marshard band, which played society galas and debutante balls. In Boston he attended the New England Conservatory of Music (1936 - 1938), where he was trained for classical opera roles. In 1938, he fronted the Marshard brothers' second six-piece unit as a trumpeter-vocalist-bandleader. He adapted his disciplined basso voice to the deep throaty baritone of a microphone crooner, which filled the big dance halls and large hotel rooms of the era as few crooners could. In 1940, Monroe left the Marshard brothers and formed his own orchestra, touring New England, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and eastern Canada. Along the way, he gained a near ecstatic following. In 1941, the RCA Victor company signed him to a contract and organized his first big-time theater engagement at the Paramount Theatre in New York City. It proved an unprecedented box-office success. Between 1941 and 1951, RCA Victor sold more than 20 million copies of his records. Monroe was given his own room in mid-Manhattan at the Hotel Commodore. The Camel cigarettes company hired him to replace Benny Goodman on their weekly "Camel Caravan" radio show (1945 - 1953). Monroe also produced and headlined Camel cigarettes' half-hour weekly television show (1950 - 1951), which was an elaborate extravaganza with the effect of a Radio City Music Hall spectacular and a quality Broadway revue. In addition, Monroe performed as the "Voice of RCA" on television for fifteen years (1955 - 1970). His standing-room-only engagements at the Strand Theatre in Manhattan were always box-office events. His appeal to the black-tie set brought him repeated invitations to appear at the Waldorf Astoria. Wherever he went on tour, attendance at his concerts was unparalleled. Monroe's record sales skyrocketed. His radio show theme song, "Racing with the Moon" (1941), sold 1, 750, 000 copies. Other hit songs were "Ghost Riders in the Night, " "Cool Water, " "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow, " "Mule Train, " "Riders in the Sky, " "Ballerina, " "Dreamy New England Moon, " "High Up in the Midnight Blue, " "And Then All Too Soon, " and "It's Lost from View, " as well as World War II best-sellers "Desolation, " "The Very Thought of You, " and "When the Lights Go Up Again All Over the World. " Variety called him the number-one vocalist.
In spite of his wealth, Monroe continued to perform 200 nights out of the year in clubs and cruise ships, traveling from his home in Stuart, Florida, where he lived from the early 1960's. After a performance in Louisville, Kentucky, Monroe collapsed from an internal hemorrhage, a result of a long stomach ailment. He was operated on at the Martin County Memorial Hospital in Florida, where he died two weeks later.
Monroe's songs were played more often than any other performers' on juke boxes and by disc jockeys, and many of his records were number one in store sales. Republic Pictures Corporation in Hollywood hired Monroe to replace retiring western singing stars Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, their chief money-makers. They first cast Monroe in Singing Guns (1950), for which he sang his hit song "Mule Train. " His second film for Republic was The Toughest Man in Tombstone (1952), for which he was paid $500, 000. The film established him as one of Hollywood's highest-paid stars. These activities made Monroe a multimillionaire whose investments were as varied and multiple as his artistic interests. He owned office buildings in downtown Boston, a fleet of taxicabs, and a successful theme restaurant outside Boston, The Meadows, which he operated with the Marshard brothers. He was president of Vaughn Monroe Productions, which collected more than $1 million annually from his six bands alone. Monroe also ran a publishing firm, which published several of his own songs including the best-selling United States Army anthem, "Men of the Army"; a recording company; a children's book and music publishing firm; and a toy manufacturing company. He was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for recording at 1600 Vine Street and one for radio at 1755 Vine Street in Hollywood, California.
Quotations:
"I knew that we were clicking when mimics started kidding my voice, I'll know that I'm on the way out when they stop doing their imitations. "
"If I had my choice, I'd pick a song that tells a story every time. There is a great deal of pleasure in doing the vocal on a number that you can put feeling into. "
"Well, we like to let down our hair and pep it up at the dances, but we keep it slower when we broadcast. We have to please everybody, and that softer music appeals to the larger amount of people. It's like eating too much cake. You have to have your steak too. "
"It now costs more to amuse a child than it once did to educate his father. "
"There are hundreds of people running around with great voices. If they would study and develop them they could become great singers. "
"How in the world any one weighing 185 pounds can be cute is beyond me. "
"We spent the next three years working up a nice, sweet society band and then realized that although we had plenty of class appeal, we had little or no mass appeal. So we started all over again and reorganized to get some jump and rhythm. But through it all we've tried to play the type of music that fits in with soft lights and sweet whispers. "
On April 2, 1940, Monroe married his high school sweetheart, Marion Baughman, who graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a degree in business administration. They had two children and made their home in West Newton, a Boston suburb.
