Mel Henke born August 4, 1915

Mel Henke (August 4, 1915 – March 31, 1979) was an American jazz pianist, Chicago bandleader, composer, arranger and jingle writer.

Henke was born in Chicago. Illinois and studied at the Chicago College of Music. He began to work professionally in music playing piano in the house band at the Chez Paris nightclub in Chicago, then working in small combos in clubs around the city in the late 1930s with Mitch Todd, Frank Snyder, Stephen Leonard and others. He recorded his first solo record "Henke Stomp / Lady Be Good" for the Collectors Item label in 1939, then recorded a few sides with Bill Davison during February 1940. In 1943 He joined Horace Heidt's band, replacing Frankie Carle, who left to form his own group. He worked in radio and television after World War II, and performed on camera on George Gobel's and Gary Moore's variety shows. He also worked behind leaders such as saxophonist Bud Freeman.

By the early '40s he had settled in Los Angeles, and for ten years or so continued to work as a performer. Henke recorded many jazz standards with his own arrangements, including a 1946 piano solo on Bix Beiderbecke's 1928 "In a Mist". In 1947 he recorded a few sides with Vido Musso & His Orchestra. Henke usually led a trio with Bill Newman on guitar and Bob Reed on bass, supplemented by Shelly Manne and Sammy Weiss on drums. This outfit landed a deal to make a pair of albums on the Contemporary label, which is where jazz buffs inevitably come across him. 

                                      

Henke's unusual career that included recording downright weird tunes such as "Shock Treatment," "Cocky Coo-Coo Clock," and "Frenzied Flight," as well as creating what might be one of the masterpieces in the genre of lounge music, although fans of the type of challenging jazz often presented on this label may find the concoctions of Henke a bit bubbly; his followers seem to drift in more from the aforementioned loungey or space age waiting rooms. just about the time he called his performing career quits.

In 1955, he joined the television department at Disney, where he composed most of their commercials and for a few television series, most notably , Disneyland, the first incarnation of Walt Disney's long-running series. He also became a partner at TV Spots, Inc., a production house that specialized in commercials. Unlike many musicians who dismissed commercial work as hack work, Henke took to the format immediately, and he was soon experimenting, adding sound effects and snatches of dialogue along with musical passages. He and graphic artist Eyvind Earle collaborated on numerous trailers for Hollywood movies, including "West Side Story." 

Inevitably, he created a series of albums in the early '60s combining these techniques with full-length musical performances and instrumental skullduggery. "La Dolce Henke", worth hunting down for its title alone, is considered his masterpiece.

Henke shows up in the rhythm section on some Louis Armstrong records, and meanwhile over in Nashville, he once successfully placed a song with Conway Twitty. Henke was trained to please in writing ad copy, an influence that has been considered both a pro and con factor in his recorded works. Perhaps Henke's greatest influence as a musician was in the advertising field itself, as he was innovative in producing attention-grabbing commercials of the '60s. His best-known jingles from over 2000 that he reputedly composed, included the Ajax cleanser "stronger than dirt" jingle, for Colgate-Palmolive, and "See the USA in Your Chevrolet" jingle for Chevrolet.

By the way, that's not Henke pictured on the top album cover -  it's actually San Francisco radio DJ Tom Donahue. According to the liner notes by Brother Cleve of Combustible Edison, it was a "bizarre marketing move...undoubtedly hoping for airplay in return."

Mel Henke died in Canoga Park, Los Angeles, California, on March 31, 1979 (aged 63)

(Edited from AllMusic, Wikipedia & Space Age Pop)