Louise Tobin Day
November 11, 1918 – November 26, 2022
A tribute to the final survivor of 1930s jazz
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Louise Tobin passed away on Nov. 26, 2022 at the age of 104.
She was the last person alive who had recorded before 1940.
She was born on Nov. 11, 1918 in Aubrey, Texas and was a singer by the time she was 14.
In 1935 when she was 16, she married a 19-year old unknown trumpeter named Harry James.
The marriage lasted until 1943 and resulted in two sons.
Tobin sang with several bands, alerted her husband about Frank Sinatra (who she heard singing on the radio, resulting in Sinatra being hired for the Harry James Orchestra) and in 1939 was spotted by producer John Hammond singing with cornetist Bobby Hackett in New York.
Hammond got Benny Goodman to see and hire her and for a year Tobin was the clarinetist’s main singer, recording in 1939 and making popular records of “There’ll Be Some Changes Made,” “Comes Love,” and “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was” (she was the first to record the latter) among others.
While she left Goodman’s band in 1940, she turned down chances to tour due to wanting to raise her two sons as a single mother; Tobin did record with Will Bradley, Stan Hasselgard and Ziggy Elman.
Louise Tobin was off records during 1952-76 and was retired for quite a few years before being persuaded to appear at the 1962 Newport Jazz Festival where she met clarinetist Peanuts Hucko who she married in 1967.
Louise Tobin made a gradual comeback, appeared regularly at the Dick Gibson jazz parties, toured with the Glenn Miller ghost orchestra when Hucko led it in the 1970s, and appeared on several of Hucko’s later albums.
She recorded as late as 1992 when she was 74 and stayed active until Peanuts Hucko’s death in 2003; a biography, Texas Jazz Singer, was published in 2021.
Here is Louise Tobin in 1945 (when she was 26) singing “Just One Of Those Things” and “You And The Light Of The Moon” with Emil Coleman’s orchestra.
-Scott Yanow
Stan Getz