Louise Tobin Hucko: A Biographical Sketch

Native-Texan Louise Tobin Hucko (b. 1918, Aubrey, TX) grew up in Denton in a large family that sang and played music together. She was the fourth youngest of eleven children and the only one to make music her profession. Louise remembers the teenagers playing ukuleles on the porch and rushing home from school at lunch to listen to Louis Armstrong on the radio. After winning a CBS Radio Talent Contest in 1932, she toured the larger Texas cities as part of the Interstate Theatre Circuit, singing with society dance orchestras, led by such figures as Hyman Charninsky and Al Kvale. After joining Art Hicks and His Orchestra in 1934, she met Harry James who was playing first trumpet. This ensemble was one of several Texas territory bands of the 1930s that ventured outside the state in hopes of reaching a national audience. In late 1934-early 1935 they made their way to Albany, New York, with stops in Oklahoma and Ohio. By this time Benny Goodman had hit; the swing era had begun. Shortly after their arrival in New York, the Art Hicks Orchestra disbanded. A very young Louise, age 15, and Harry, who had just turned 18 married in May 1935. The newlyweds, who kept the elopement a secret from her family, were now looking for work. Harry accepted an offer to play third trumpet with the Herman Waldman Orchestra back down south in Shreveport. “He hated it and actually lost his lip for awhile!,” Louise recalls. With the help of Texan-band leader, Ligon Smith, Louise found work around Texas, singing with orchestras led by Smith, Charlie Davis, and Carlos Shaw.

An invitation for Harry to join Ben Pollack’s orchestra brought the couple to Chicago at the height of the Depression. While Harry was working and touring with Pollack, Louise found work in Chicago with the Leonard Keller Band, in the touring show of Mike Todd which featured a trained seal, at Loew’s State Theatre in New York City with comedian, Harry Savoy, for whom she pitched lines along with singing. According to Louise, “This was a long, hard period but it prepared me for the “big time.” The Big Time was just around the corner.

In December 1936, Harry was asked to join Benny Goodman and His Orchestra. Louise continued her work with a variety of orchestras and jazz bands, playing casuals and working with Bobby Hackett in Greenwich Village. Indeed, during the infamous 1938 Carnegie Hall Concert of the Goodman orchestra which launched swing music to another level, Louise snuck backstage to hear the performance from the wings. She could not have known at the time that she would be the featured singer with the orchestra at Goodman’s second Carnegie Hall performance in the fall of 1939.

Shortly after Harry left Goodman to start his own orchestra, Louise heard a young Frank Sinatra on the radio and woke up Harry who was napping on the couch and said, “You ought to listen to this guy.” While Harry was struggling to put together his band, Louise was attracting attention singing with trumpeter Bobby Hackett at Nick’s in the Village. Jazz critic and producer, John Hammond, heard her and brought Benny Goodman to a performance. Soon after, she received a call, inviting her to join the band, beginning a whirlwind schedule of rehearsing, performing, recording, and touring. A few of the songs that she recorded with the orchestra were “There’ll Be Some Changes Made,” “Comes Love,” “What’s New?,” “Scatterbrain,” “Love Never Went to College,” “Blue Orchids,” and written for her by Johnny Mercer and arranged by Fletcher Henderson, “Louise Tobin Blues.” The songs featuring Louise sold 3 million copies in only 6 months.

Despite her skyrocketing career, Harry put constant pressure on Louise to quit singing and become a traditional wife. Despite Benny’s pleading with her to not to leave, Louise conceded to Harry’s wishes and left Goodman’s orchestra to start a family. About a year after a recording with Will Bradley and His Orchestra, singing “Deed I Do” and “Don’t Let It Get You Down,” she gave birth to sons Harry and Tim in 1941 and 1942 respectively. Leaving Louise and the boys for a marriage to Betty Grable, Harry proceeded with a very public divorce in 1943. The Hollywood “machine” was firmly in place to protect its big stars and Louise and her children where hidden away from the spotlight and the press.

While Louise’s touring days were essentially over, she still accepted invitations to perform and record upon occasion. In 1945 she recorded “All through the Day” with Tommy Jones and His Orchestra, and later that year “June Comes Every Year” with Emil Coleman and His Orchestra. In 1946 she performed at the Melodee Club in Los Angeles with Skippy Anderson’s Band, and in 1950 she recorded “Sunny Disposish” with her friend from the Goodman band, Ziggy Elman and His Orchestra. Louise played the Hollywood Palladium with Ziggy during this time and was featured on a short-lived Jackie Gleason TV show “Hooray for Hollywood.”

In early 1960 The Washington Post entertainment section included the announcement: “Louise Tobin, ex-wife of Harry James, will resume her career as a vocalist.” It was a combination of her boys having finished school and an invitation from jazz critic and publisher George Simon that brought her out of her “retirement.” She accepted Simon’s offer to record for his label and to sing at the 1962 Newport Jazz Festival where she met her future husband, clarinetist Peanuts Hucko. Whitney Balliett’s review of the festival published in The New Yorker included the statement: “Louise Tobin sings like the young Ella Fitzgerald.” Soon after, she began to perform regularly with Peanuts. In 1964 they attended the first of Dick Gibson’s Colorado Jazz Parties. Peanuts was invited to perform every year. Louise attended; “Gibson rarely asked singers to perform,” Louise recalls. They both performed at the Gibson-inspired Odessa Jazz Parties years later. In 1965 Peanuts and Louise performed together at a regular engagement at Blues Alley in Washington, D.C. They married in 1967 and moved to Denver, Colorado, where they were co-owners and the house band of the Navarre Club.

After performing with the Lawrence Welk Orchestra starting in 1970, in 1974 Peanuts led the Glenn Miller Orchestra, touring worldwide with Louise singing various numbers with the band. (Peanuts played in the original orchestra under the leadership of Glenn Miller.)

In 1977, Louise recorded “There’ll Be Some Changes Made” with Peanuts on an album titled, San Diego Jazz Club Plays the Sound of Jazz. In the early 1980s they performed together with the Pied Piper Quintet, touring Europe, Australia, and Japan. It was during this decade that they also recorded the tribute albums: Tribute to Louis Armstrong and Tribute to Benny Goodman , Louise singing several numbers on both. In 1992 Starline Records issued Swing That Music , including a vocal duet with Peanuts and Louise singing “When You’re Smiling.” This would be their final recording made together.

Peanuts recalled in a 1981 interview with Alice Berthelsen of the Odessa American newspaper that “despite the international success of his musical career and the many notables he’s met along the way, Hucko says that meeting his wife, Louise, has been the high point of it all.” Peanuts Hucko died in 2003. Louise Tobin Hucko now lives with her son, Harry James, Jr., in Dallas, Texas.

--Kevin Mooney, Texas State University-San Marcos