Horace Kirby "Saxie" Dowell (May 24, 1904 –
July 22, 1974) was an American jazz and pop music bandleader and singer and
songwriter.
The saxophonist with the nickname all other saxophonists
are glad they didn't get stuck with was also extremely active as a songwriter
and music publisher during his career. Surely there was an impetus to replace
the stuffy sounding Horace K. Dowell he was given at birth in Raleigh, North
Carolina near the outset of the 20th century.
He became Saxie Dowell by the time he began his first
major professional affiliation, also his longest, with orchestra leader Hal
Kemp. The nickname most likely developed due to the fact that Horace got his
first saxophone at the age of 12 and carried it with him most everywhere.
The job with Kemp actually began in the campus setting as well, Kemp himself a UNCG graduate. By 1924 the band was well into touring and recording nationally and internationally. Covering tenor and alto saxophone, clarinet and flute, Dowell was in the Kemp band for the next 15 years. Dowell composed "I Don't Care", which was recorded by Kemp for Brunswick in 1928. When the band's style changed in the early 1930s to that of a dance band, Dowell became the group's comedic vocalist.
Dowell's U.S. Naval Air Station Band became one of the
most famous in history for staying on its set list even while the aircraft
carrier the band was serving on was in the process of sinking. After the war
managing not to associate band-leading with both war and sinking ships, Dowell
reorganized his orchestra and got some good bookings, mostly around the Chicago
area with the then 14-year-old Keely Smith as a singer He, appeared in a movie
short during 1946 and made a few recordings for the Sonora label. He became a
disc jockey for Chicago radio station WGN around 1949.
Saxie Dowell's song credits include "I Don't
Care", "Your Magic Kisses", "Three Little Fishies",
"Playmates" ("Come Out and Play With Me"), "The
Canasta Song", "Tonight I'm Thinking Of You", "All I've Got
Is Me" and "Turnabout is Fair Play".
Dowell kept his group going into the '50s, but eventually
got into the publishing end of the business. His own writing credits include
"Three Little Fishes." He was in his late sixties, and it was also
the late '60s, when doctors sent him out to Arizona for his health. He did some
part-time DJ work on KTAR in Phoenix during his retirement years. He died 22 July 1974, Scottsdale, Arizona, aged 70. (Info edited from Wikipedia & AMG)
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