Lester Lanin

Lester Lanin was the best known of a family of musical siblings who, between them, managed to keep a major presence in music for close to 80 years. He was, like his brothers Sam and Howard, a bandleader; and while technically his category of music was "jazz," his actual connection to jazz was peripheral at best, and more ephemeral than, say, that of Glenn Miller. He used jazz musicians and some of the elements of jazz in his music, but not by the biggest stretch of the imagination did Lanin or his band play jazz. The youngest of ten sons of a Russian Jewish immigrant family, h...