Glen Gray & the Casa Loma Orchestra

Looked at today, Glen Gray seems a strange, almost otherworldly musical figure -- the photographs of a slim, elegant-looking gentleman with a mustache, in white tie and black dinner jacket, baton held awkwardly in his right hand, evoke another time and place, not only from our own age but also from any setting and image that we normally associate with jazz. He wasn't much of a bandleader, barely able to look like he was keeping time; and as a musician -- specifically a reedman -- he was adequate, but no threat to Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, or Jimmy Dorsey. And yet, Gray and th...