Ray Ventura

French bandleader Ray Ventura has rightly been compared with England's Jack Hylton; during the 1920s and '30s both men succeeded in popularizing jazz and U.S. dance music in their respective countries by purveying accessible foxtrots sprinkled with real jazz solos and peppered with pop and novelty vocals. The younger Ventura was born in Paris on April 16, 1908. Beginning in 1924 he played piano in a group called the Collegiate Five; in 1928 this band began recording for Columbia as the Collegians, and the following year they began operating as Ray Ventura's Collegians, steadil...