ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 13, 1997 TAG: 9704110012
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 10 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PALM BEACH, FLA.
SOURCE: LIZ DOUP KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
Sally Bennett of Palm Beach is the force behind plans for Big Band Hall of Fame Museum
Hear the music? That hard-driving swing of Benny Goodman, or the forceful Dixieland of Bob Crosby?
OK, so it's actually stone silent just now at Sally Bennett's Palm Beach, Fla., home. But you'd still swear Glenn Miller's ``Moonlight Serenade'' must be playing, or maybe Harry James' ``Ciribiribin'', because the Big Band era seems to come alive here.
In Bennett's den closet hangs a Sammy Kaye jacket. Her kitchen cabinets are filled with biographies of big-band greats. In her spare bathroom: old radio tapes filled with the sounds of Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey.
There's enough stuff here to stock a museum. In fact, that's exactly where all this stuff is destined to go, to the new Big Band Hall of Fame Museum, scheduled to open early next year in West Palm Beach.
``We have museums for Picasso and Rembrandt, don't we? We need a monument for the big bands, too,'' says Bennett, who is making that happen.
Through the Great Depression and second World War, Big Band music kept the country on its feet. It was a baby step toward society's broader integration, marked by black and white artists working the same stage together. And though it's swinging through its seventh decade, you can still hear it played on the radio, at parties, in clubs.
``There's something eternal about the music I grew up with,'' says Bennett, who's in her 70s. ``I wanted to help make it last forever.''
One way to do that, she figured, is to dedicate an entire museum to the Big Band era. But how do you stock a museum from the ground up?
You do it by asking for things. Sweetly, politely, as Bennett did, starting 30-some years ago. Back then, she was a local TV and radio talk-show host in Cleveland, interviewing entertainers who breezed through town.
If the chat went well, she'd ask: ``How about something to remember you by?'' As a result, she snagged stuff like a Count Basie-signature captain's cap.
Today, Bennett says: ``Please don't make it sound like I was always asking people for things.'' But Bennett was never shy about the hunt. Take the clarinet she says once belonged to Benny Goodman. Though the price tag escapes her, she bought it in the late '60s from Cleveland's Shirmer Music Company, where musicians occasionally traded instruments. She got chummy with the staff, who knew her through big-band balls, which started in Cleveland in 1965. When they had a Goodman clarinet, they called her.
As word spread, donors popped up with contributions. A Xavier Cugat bandstand came courtesy of Bob Kasha, manager of the Xavier Cugat Orchestra. Kasha, who splits his home between New York and South Florida, has a contract with the Cugat estate to use the name. He donated a bandstand, which features a caricature Cugat drew of himself, that Kasha had made after he took the Cugat name in 1985. And Sammy Kaye's personal assistant offered one of the entertainer's signature blue jackets after Kaye's death in 1987.
Like her donors, Bennett grew up with big-band music. She heard Horace Heidt at the Hershey Park bandstand near her Philadelphia home. Trips to Chicago and New York included stops at the Aragon Ballroom and the Roosevelt Hotel for concerts by Artie Shaw and Guy Lombardo.
Her interest in music primed, she started writing lyrics and music as a teen-ager. Years later, she wrote a romantic melody titled ``Magic Moments,'' recorded in the '60s by the Glenn Miller orchestra.
After studying English and drama at the University of Pennsylvania, she married Paul Bennett, a Dow Chemical executive. In 1965, when big-band music appeared lost amid rock 'n' roll riffs, the Bennetts financed the first Big Band Ball in Cleveland, where they lived.
``All I wanted was to keep the music alive,'' Bennett says.
After staging a dozen balls in Cleveland, the couple moved to Palm Beach, where Bennett re-created her personal '60s-era photo gallery: Bennett and Harry James. Bennett and Guy Lombardo. Bennett and Sammy Kaye.
She resurrected the gala in 1984 and turned it into a museum fund-raiser. She also began inducting musicians, vocalists and composers into her self-created ``Hall of Fame.''
She continued when she moved to Florida.
``I don't know that Palm Beach is the epicenter of big bands, but who's to say that Cleveland [home of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame] is the epicenter of rock 'n' roll?'' says Carl Schunk, whose Chicago company represents several big bands. ``You have to start somewhere.''
For Bennet, the opening of the new museum can't come soon enough.
``I'll be glad to get my closets back,'' she says.
LENGTH: Medium: 86 linesby CNB