At the age of 18, I was among the highest paid trumpet player sidemen in Omaha making six dollars a night because I could and would play “Hot Lips” like Henry Busse and “Sugar Blues” like Clyde Macaulay (almost all of the other trumpet players in Omaha wanted to play like Harry James).
Three members of my popular 1939 Lyons band–Joe Casey on tenor, Dayton St. Claire on drums and Ronnie Garrett on bass horn—were playing with the 10-piece Gene Pieper band. They told Mr. Pieper about me. He called me in May 1940 to join his band for $30 a week at the Lake Okeejobee ballroom in northern Iowa. It was a “taxi dance” type of ballroom—the floor was cleared after every set and new tickets were sold.
Pieper, a big tall guy, fronted the band with his trumpet. He was good. Pieper’s band was one of the best bands in the “Territory.” We played Mal Dunn’s arrangements. While performing at the lake, we all lived in the resort’s band cottage. Then we went on the road playing one-nighters five and six nights a week all summer. Gene and his wife traveled by car, and the band in a sleeper bus. I learned a lot about being a band leader from Gene.
I did not smoke, drink or play poker so therefore I had few expenses. Sam got out of the CCC and matriculated at Wayne State Teachers College and in time got his accounting degree. I sent him $10 a week. He washed dishes, waited tables and made it on his own. We were all proud of him.
Marybelle Stone and I were high school sweethearts. She had a scholarship at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. When the Pieper band played at the Shermont Ballroom or Peony Park in Omaha Mary would come to Omaha and stay with my brother Howard and his wife Violet. Mary and I got to spend a little time together when I could get to Omaha or Lincoln.
The Pieper band was good, and I had a fun summer, but I remembered what Mr. Welk said about working with as many bands as possible so I quietly put out the word that I was available. I received a call from Eddie Dunsmoore whom I had met once in St. Louis. Eddie’s orchestra was a typical society-club-hotel orchestra: piano, string bass, drums, three tenor sax, two trumpets. Eddie fronted the band on violin, an additional violin. His beautiful wife was our singer. In October of 1940 I joined him at the plush—very private–Kansas City Club atop the Muelbach Hotel in downtown Kansas City, Missouri.
All the Dunsmoore band guys were single except the piano player whose wife traveled with us on the bus—not a sleeper—and helped with our uniforms, etc. Eddie and his wife traveled in their own car. From Kansas City we played some one-nighters at the small “Union City Supper Club”—a gambling club, in Union City, Illinois, across the river from Cape Giarardo, Missouri. We played for dinner and dancing—two shows a night. Off Monday. The band members and the girl dancers in the show stayed in a small “flea bag” hotel in Union City, going back and forth to the club in Eddie’s bus each night.
Next we went to Art Noey’s Supper Club in Saginaw, Michigan for the holiday season. Off Monday. Same routine—dinner/dancing, two floor shows a night. Joe the other trumpet player and I did a “funny hat” routine with the girl dancers. The band and the girl dancers all stayed in a big rooming house close to the club. I didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t party much—so I stayed home Monday nights as did several of the girl dancers. I was a 19-year-old “kid” from Nebraska. I guess I was not very experienced in the “ways of the world”—I learned fast in Saginaw.
We were to close New Year’s Eve in Saginaw because we had to be at the Peabody Hotel in Jackson, Mississippi, Jan. 3 for a 4 p.m. “cocktail hour and radio broadcast” a long way on a “sit up” bus. We would have to drive straight through to make it.
Another problem was that the new ASCAP song/music license for “radio broadcast rights” went into effect with new restrictions and costs on Jan. 1, 1941. The Peabody had not signed with ASCAP but was licensed by BMI but had no BMI songs. Eddie Dunsmoore had been notified. No ASCAP songs could be broadcast. We ate and slept on the bus all the way from Saginaw to Jackson and sketched out enough charts of public domain songs for our first broadcast. We hit Jackson about 2 p.m. with two hours to spare. We didn’t even change clothes, but went straight to setting up. The afternoon cocktail crowd started filing in. Eddie and Jan had arrived several hours earlier.
It went well. We checked into the big rooming house where the whole band and the show girls were staying. We all ate our meals there together where the cook piled it on the table. When the bell rang, it was first there, first seated. We were off Monday. I had always been fascinated with the New Orleans old blues and jazz bands. I went alone, catching a bus late one Sunday night to New Orleans and made Bourbon Street. Back to Jackson in time for the four o’clock cocktail hour/broadcast Tuesday. Tired, but the trip was worth it. My first of many to come over the years. New Orleans is the “Cradle of American Music.”
From Jackson we played a hotel in Shreveport, Louisiana. A couple of one-nighters and then on into Dallas where we had ten days off. I knew Blue Baron who was playing the Dallas Baker Hotel needed a trumpet player. I played with him, but he was headed back east. I stayed with Dunsmoore who was headed west.
We were booked into “Mattie’s” outside of Kilgore, Texas, a club in the Texas oil fields. A good job. Two complete gigs each night: an early start 8 to 10:30, a break at the oil field shift change at midnight, and back on the stand at 12:30 until ? for the second shift party. The house was always packed—nothin’, nowhere else to go. The band and the girls all stayed in a rooming house in Kilgore, all rode on the band bus to the club each night.
From Texas the band headed west to California with gigs in Denver, Colorado Spring, Salt Lake City, Sacramento, San Francisco, on the coast to Pismo Beach, and on to Hollywood. We were scheduled to open the big Figueroa Ballroom on Figueroa and Washington in downtown Los Angeles, following the Skippy Anderson Band out of Omaha.
The Figeroa was owned by Mr. and Mrs. Henry who had owned and operated a big ballroom in Waterloo, Iowa, before buying the Los Angeles ballroom. They catered to the mid-western dance customers, many of whom had moved to Los Angeles to work in the defense plants and preferred the Midwest style dance bands over the big west coast swing bands like those of Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James and Glenn Miller.
Five of us guys wanted to do the town, the first time for any of us, and dressed in our sharp double breasted tan gabardine suits. We hit the first club with a big neon sign we came to, walked in and sat at the bar. The barkeep was strange. He wanted to know who we were and where we were from. A couple of the guys caught on right away. Not me, a farm kid from Nebraska. It was a lesbian joint. The “bulls” were dancing with their partners.
The barkeep said very quietly, “Guys, I suggest you go out that back door at the end of the bar now. Just go and don’t say anything.”
We did. Some of the guys thought it was funny. I was sure learning the ways of the world. The next day we checked into a small hotel off Washington Street close to the Figueroa. Six nights a week—off Monday—nine till one, a thirty-minute broadcast on radio WLAC-Hollywood each night.
Eddie was often ill, off and on since the whole trip west so many nights I fronted the band. Mr. and Mrs. Henry’s manager was Mr. Lynn Giles who also announced the radio broadcast. He and I became good friends. The customers liked us. We were a “success.” But we were a touring band. The Figueroa had to pay the AFM local 47 a ten percent traveling band tax.
The Dunsmoore band next appeared at the private San Clemente Beach Club south of Los Angeles. It was a private, plush dinner/gambling club right on the beach. Great. Needless to say we hung out most of the time on the beach. Lots of gals.
The band was scheduled next for the Chase Hotel in St. Louis, but I wanted to stay in California. I had fallen in love with California and hoped to stay. The Lawrence Welk Band was playing at the Santa Monica Pier Ballroom. I called Mr. Welk’s office and brought him up to date about my career. He came to San Clemente to see me.
“Hal, you may be in luck. You got your AFM card while with me. The owners of the Figueroa ballroom in downtown LA are looking for a Midwest-type house band, and they remember you from the Dunsmoore band.”
Mr. Welk set me up with Mr. and Mrs. Henry and Mr. Giles, the ballroom manager. I would form at 10-piece band. Mr. Welk helped me hand pick my men, gave me copies of some of his special arrangements, as did arrangers Bob Calame and Mal Dunn. I also got arrangements from the Pieper band. I hired Ray Lee, a local tenor sax player and arranger whose special new charts featured my trumpet in my own style. Ray became my assistant leader. By then I also played the flugelhorn and valve trombone. Some arrangements gave us three trumpets, or two trombones and six saxes. Several of us did vocals. Good local musicians. I was 20 years old. No one asked my age.
We opened at the Figueroa ballroom on July 4, 1941. Six nights a week. Broadcast each night on WLAC Hollywood at 10 p.m. Lynn Giles was the announcer. Off on Monday night. We were an immediate success. Four rhythm, four sax, two trumpets, trombone and me, fronting the band on trumpet. We were a pure dance band playing for dancers. The Figueroa business boomed, even the kid “Zoot Suiters” came. All my players lived in the Los Angeles area. I was single, so I moved into Lynn Giles’ apartment near the ballroom. From that opening night, at the end of every broadcast, including all those many broadcasts after becoming known as “The Band of the Stars,” I closed with “Thank you, Mr. Welk, wherever you are.” Ladies would come by streetcar or car in their long flowing gowns. The men dressed in suits/sports coats and ties. The Figueroa was a true Midwest dance hall. No booze. Just dancing.
Luck has always been with me in my career. The wife of one of my trumpet players was the hair beautician for Betty Grable. Betty came down to the Figueroa with her several times and fell in love with our band. One night she brought George Raft. During the intermission we sat in a booth and somehow the subject of the Hollywood film gang never having an outdoor pool party came up. In Chicago high society garden parties were quite popular in the summertime. The idea was born! I explained how they would put a portable dance floor around the pool, set up a tent for the bar and guests. That Sunday afternoon George Raft’s “Hollywood Garden Party” was born. He lived on a beautiful estate in the wooded hills of north Beverly Hills. At his party were Hollywood’s Who’s Who. Betty Grable and several other stars followed that summer with parties. I played them all. Good luck again.
I had a scholarship at the University of Southern California. My dad influenced me to go to college until I would be drafted. I registered, went to school during the day and played with my band at night. Many nights I fell asleep at the kitchen table studying. I loved USC. World War II was in full swing in Europe, and it would be only a matter of time I before I would be drafedt.
I had not seen Mary in over a year. She was in college at the University of Nebraska. I called her late one night and asked, “Would you like to come to Hollywood and get married?”
“Yes,” she said.
We made plans. She would quit school, go home for a week or so, catch a train to Los Angeles. Mary had an aunt in Pasadena where she would stay for the three-day California waiting period. I rented us a small apartment but didn’t tell anyone. We were married at her aunt’s preacher’s parsonage early that evening. I went to work and introduced Mary to the Henrys and others. Lynn Giles introduced her to the ballroom crowd as my “new bride.” The Henrys decided to have a reception for us in the ballroom after it closed and invited many of our “regulars.” It was a wonderful evening.
At one of the pool parties I was introduced to the manager of the famed Beverly Hills Hotel, the watering hole for the Hollywood film community. Its ballroom was Hollywood’s showcase for its stars, hope-to-bes and wannabes. It was the place to go, to be seen. The manager liked my band and offered me a deal. The Henrys were happy for me and my chance.
My band opened in the Big Room–the famed Polo Room upstairs off the lobby–Saturday, December 6, 1941. We usually played from about 8 p.m., took a break, then played again until 12:30 or one, depending upon the house. I got home late, dead tired and went right to bed. I never turned on the radio. When I awoke it was Sunday, December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor.

(Author’s note: Neely’s memoirs are in italics.)
I discovered it! I was sitting on the curb one Saturday morning on the street in the small town of Lyons, Nebraska. I was 10 years old and in the fourth grade. My dad told me before he left for his barbershop that Mr. Bietrick, a tuba player in the Kaiser’s army in World War I and now the director of the Lyons High School music program, had something for me. Mr. Bietrick put a brand-new black leather case in my hands. Inside sitting on blue velvet was a shiny new silver Conn 22 trumpet.
“Harold, this is from your mom and dad. Treat it with the same love and care they have for you.”
He showed me how to hold it, how to pucker up and blow. It was my very first trumpet lesson. Donna Sandborn, who lived next door and was a grade ahead of me, came out to sit beside me and Jack Loppnow, my classmate came from across the street, joined us to see what we were doing. I couldn’t believe it. My own brand-new trumpet! I took it out of the case and was able to play a few notes.
The Neelys were a musical family. My dad was always whistling. Mother sang in the church choir. Howard, six years older, played clarinet and my brother Sam alto horn and later French horn in the school band and orchestra. I had been trying to play Sam’s alto horn (same type of mouth piece as a trumpet but slightly larger).
Lyons High, a Class C school, always had an award-winning band. The Lyons town band was one of the best town bands in the state and in the summer played Sunday night concerts in the beautiful Lyons Park band shell. Wednesday nights the stores were open, and Mr. Munson, the town marshal, rolled out the band shell onto Main Street, and we played a concert. As I said, Lyons, Nebraska, was a good music and football town.
Lyons had a proud musical heritage which started with Boyd Sentner, clarinetist of world repute at the turn of the century. In the 1930s Lyons High School graduates Stan Fritz, trombone, and Harry Turene, clarinet, carried on the tradition playing with the Schnicklefritz comedy band. They broke off and formed their own Corn Cobblers Band which was for many years featured in the famous Jack Dempsey Saloon in the Brill Building on Manhattan’s Broadway. The Brill Building housed, then and today, more music people and firms than any other building in the world. I had my New York office there for several years in the 1970s. In 1941 through 1946 Hal Neely’s Band of the Stars carried on in the big band tradition by playing Hollywood film star parties, the Beverly Hills Hotel, Bel-Air Hotel, beach clubs, and other southern Californian special functions. But that’s getting ahead of my story.
In 1938 I formed my first 10-piece band with all Lyons kids in the summer before my junior year in high school. We started playing local area school dances, small country dance halls, grange halls. Wherever, whenever and whatever for a few dollars if or when we could. We spent it on gas, eats, and old standard big dance band music orchestrations I ordered out of Omaha. I was the leader, Hal and Art Anderson, trumpets; Jack Loppnow, trombone; Dick Shumway, Keith Payne, Helen Jean Stiles, saxophone; Mary Belle Stone, piano and violin; and Bob Sentner, bass.
Lyons had two piano teachers. Mrs. Moseman was a friend of my mother’s and tried to teach me—for free—the rudiments of piano. It was a good foundation for my later musical skills.
Mr. Kenneth Pace, Lyons High School musical director, encouraged us. We did not have a piano at our house, so we practiced when and where we could—school, the Lyons City Hall, in decent weather in Lyons Park band shell or in the American Legion’s dance hall. The whole town helped us. We had a ball and developed quite a kid following where ever we played. All of us were in the class of 1939, except from time to time other Lyons kids filled in and played with us. All of us played in the Lyons High band and orchestra.
We had fun. I was learning my future career. But, it was clear to me by this time that I wanted and intended to make my career in music. My hope and goal was to become a professional trumpet player and eventually become a leader of my own band.
In my 1938-39 senior year in high school I drove my dad’s Ford to Omaha to audition for trumpet lessons from the famed trumpet teacher Fred Elias, who discovered and developed a revolutionary low-pressure system for brass horn players. Mr. Elias had very few students, and he took me on for a lesson every two weeks. I would drive or hitchhike. My not playing on the basketball team my senior year didn’t set well with some people, but my family was all for it “if that is what I wanted.” Mr. Elias taught three national “superior” high school trumpet players, his daughter Evelyn Elias in 1937, Neal Hefi, who gained fame with the Stan Keaton band, in 1938, and Hal Neely in 1939.
To gain personal experience as a band leader, it was evident that I needed better and more experienced players. The other kids understood since after graduation some or even most were going to college or had other plans the next summer. Now 17, I’d reorganized the band with young players from nearby towns. Joe Casey, tenor sax; Dayton St. Claire, drum; Dale Keister, trombone from West Point. From nearby Pilcher, a bass player Ronnie Garrett. Dale Muzack, sax/clarinet, from Decatur, played with us until he joined a band in Omaha. It was a better-than-good 10-piece young big band.
We soon earned fame, popularity, a reputation and a loyal fan following. School kids in the entire state started calling us their own. We now made enough money per job to pay our gas expenses and split a few bucks each playing local area ballrooms, dance halls, and high school dances. We traveled in three cars. Joe Casey had a car, and my brother Sam drove my dad’s Ford V-8 sedan. I purchased a 1932 Ford V-8 coupe with a rumble seat for $210. It was my first bank loan. We would rendezvous for travel to our bookings in West Point or Lyons. Sam drove dad’s car and acted as our agent/bookkeeper counting the house and collecting our money, paying the guys their share each night.
It was a professional band system. Each guy in the band had a setup and breakdown job, except the drummer who had enough to do just setting up his own equipment (same in all bands). Each guy would do a job: setting up/taking down the stands, hooking up the lights, setting up the amps and speakers, putting the libraries/arrangement books (each arrangement carried a number not a song title) on each stand.
Standard procedure for big dance bands was to play a set of three songs. The leader would call the arrangement numbers and order of play sequence. We followed procedure.
In those late 1920s, 1930s and early 1940s, Nebraska was in a depression and “no crop” drought. For adults, dances provided their favorite, and affordable, entertainment. Most everyone had an old car. Gas was 18 cents a gallon. Movies were a quarter, Coke a nickel, hamburgers 10 cents. Dance halls, at one buck per couple, were the favorite night out. They danced at least four nights per week in some good dance hall or ballroom within 40 miles of their hometowns in Nebraska, Iowa, South and North Dakota, Northern Kansas, Southwest Missouri and Western Illinois. This area was known to all bands and booking agents as the “Territory.”
We got our big break July 4, 1939. We were booked into the West Point Ballroom, the best, largest, most popular ballroom in North East Nebraska. It was the ballroom where all the best “Territory” and touring name bands played. We hit it big! From then on the bookings came. Our price went up. But summer ended, and we split up.
In the fall of 1939, five of us took jobs with the Bob Calame Band out of Omaha. Bob wrote “Bubbles in the Wine” which was Lawrence Welk’s theme song. He quit Welk and formed his own nine-piece band with his wife Jan as vocalist. Bob wrote all the arrangements in his own style. He, Jan and the seven guys in the band came to Lyons and stayed in the small Lyons Hotel. My mom cooked breakfast and supper each day with the help of several neighbors and packed a “go” lunch for us. The American Legion allowed us to use its dance hall for day and night practices. The townspeople came by to listen to the rehearsals. In two weeks we were ready. We were a good “Territory” band. Bob and his wife drove in his new four-door Ford sedan. His dad was a “wheel” with Union Pacific Railroad in Council Bluffs and found a good used panel truck which he converted into a van with front and back seats to accommodate four musicians. It also had racks in the back for our gear, uniforms and one small suitcase per musician. Four of us(Dayton St. Claire, Ronnie Garrett, Dale Keister and me) drove in the small converted van with the instruments. The Vic Schroeder Agency out of Omaha booked the band.
We worked a full schedule playing one-nighters and several week engagements in clubs, mostly in northeastern Nebraska, the Dakotas and western Iowa. We got a break and were booked into a club in Fargo, North Dakota. They loved us. We got some good reviews in the trade papers. Our price and booking went up. We worked steadily.
For the Christmas season, we were booked for four dates in western Nebraska–Minden, North Platte, Grand Island, Scottsbluff—and one in Laramie, Wyoming, when a job opened up through Bob’s dad with the Union Pacific Railroad in Council Bluffs, Iowa. After years on the road he and his wife were ready to settle down and play only local dates, buy a home and start a family. The Schroeder Agency said I should take over as leader of the band for the remaining dates. I hired an old friend, Jeep Harnett, to replace Bob on lead alto sax. We did okay, but it was soon evident that I was still not experienced enough to be a “leader on the circuit.” The rest of the Caleme dates were cancelled, and we all returned home to look for new jobs. Bob and I stayed in touch for many years. Nice man.
I was home in Lyons when I got a call from a Mr. Hall who was the booker/manager of Sammy Haven’s 10-piece band based in Columbus, Nebraska. They were desperate for a new lead trumpet player. He made me a deal. The next day my mom drove me to Columbus and then went on to Ogalla where she had family. Haven was a string bass player and a young guy singer fronted the band. He had a new sleeper bus. Mr. Hall’s son was our driver.
My dad knew Lawrence Welk, who was a baseball fan, for many years. He told Mr. Welk about me and my ambitions. Mr. Welk had gained national acclaim and popularity and was now a “name band.” He was playing a series of one-nighters in Nebraska, Iowa, and South Dakota. I graduated from high school on Thursday night and joined Lawrence Welk’s band Friday morning on tour. Mr. Welk would introduce me each night.
“This young man from Lyons, Nebraska, is the current high school national champion trumpet soloist.”
I would do my thing! I asked Mr. Welk if I could sit in with the band and played third trumpet.
“Okay.”
The band finished its Midwest tour and was on the way to Los Angeles for a long engagement. Because of this stint with a professional band I received a membership card in the American Federation of Musicians (AFM). Mr. Welk asked me if I wanted to join the band as a regular member. I had to decline. My reason was because my brother Sam had a crippled left arm and had joined the Civilian Conservation Corps created by President Roosevelt to give employment to thousands of unemployed young men. Sam was sent to Montana. He was not a happy camper. Sam’s only ambition was to go to Wayne State College where he had a lot of friends. He wanted to study accounting. But, problems intervened. There was no Neely money for him. My dad was a barber and mom was sick in bed quite a bit during this time. Mr. Welk understood my problem.
“What’s your life’s ambition?” Mr. Welk asked me.
“I want to be a big-band leader like you,” I replied.
“Good for you. I suggest you work in as many bands as you can, learn your horn and gain experience. When you think you are ready, get in touch with me and I’ll try to help you. How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“I suggest, if anyone asks, change the subject.”
A lie was never in Lawrence Welk’s vocabulary. And all my career no one ever asked my age, as I always passed as much older. Mr. Welk told me to play in as many bands as I could, learn my horn and the band business and to stay in touch. When the “opportune time” came he would “help me”. He became my inspiration and mentor.