Video > The Palomar > Dean Hudson: Moon Over Miami

From: The Palomar Add A Tag by Jack FortesMany remember the pretty tune, “Moon Over Miami” (I was born in that named town and have loved the song for many years), but many probably do not remember the band that used it as a theme: Dean Hudson, out of the University of Florida in the late 1930's and into the 1940's.Here’s what George T. Simon says about Hudson in his book, The Big Bands.“Dean Hudson, personable, handsome and ambitious, emerged from the University of Florida in 1941 with a good band, to which he soon added two impressive kid musicians, Tommy and Jimmy Farr, and a good singer, Ruthie Vale, and in 1944, after Dean, first of the leaders to enter the service, was discharged as an Army Captain, fronted another good unit, which spotted his singing and that of Francis Colwell.”A discography of recordings Hudson made included, in addition to his theme, “Stardust” and “Straighten Up and Fly Right.”The Flat Hat, a campus newspaper at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va., dated Oct. 7, 1947, had a banner headline: “Dean Hudson to Return for Homecoming.” The article went on to say that “Dean Hudson and his sidemen…will be making their seventh appearance at a William and Mary formal.”Little else about Hudson’s life could be found, but in a book, “The Biggest Boom in Dixie: the Story of Band Music at the University of Florida,” author and longtime University of Florida leader of the famous Gator marching band, Harold B. Bachman, said that when a college band leader graduated and perhaps later leaves the band business, the band continues under the same name but with a different leader. Perhaps such was the case with Dean Hudson.Jack FortesDeLand, FloridaEmail Me