A member of Glenn Miller's fabled orchestra from his first session in July 1938 until the orchestra disbanded in 1942, Tex Beneke started out in the tenor sax chair before stepping up to be a featured vocalist.

Following Miller's untimely death in 1944, Beneke took on the mantle of leading the reformed ‘ghost band’ in 1946, initially under the moniker Tex Beneke with The Glenn Miller Orchestra, before it morphed into Tex Beneke & His Orchestra a year later. This generous 48-track 2-CD set brings together selected A and B sides featuring Beneke leading both versions of the orchestra. Top 10 hits on CD1 include the pulsating title track, a version of Lionel Hampton's ‘Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop’ released the same year (1946), ‘I Know’ which featured the dreamy harmonisations of The Crew Chiefs, the much-recorded ‘Five Minutes More’ from the esteemed writing partnership of Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, plus ‘A Gal In Calico’ featuring Beneke and the distinctive close harmonies of The Crew Chiefs once again, a sound which echoes down the decades to Donald Fagen's The Nightfly.

Highlights of CD2 include another great Cahn/Styne song, ‘Hankerin’, from the 1948 musical comedy film Two Guys from Texas, plus a wonderful trio of songs either written or co-written by Hoagy Carmichael (‘Lazy River’, ‘Lazybones’ and ‘Georgia On My Mind’). The 20-page CD booklet includes recording session information garnered from Tom Lord's excellent Jazz Discography website, plus an extensive and informative essay on the music by Paul Watts.