Duke Ambassadors

The Duke Ambassadors was a student-run jazz big band, active at Duke University from 1934 to 1964. Student-run big bands began again in 1969 as the Duke Stage Band and from 1971 to 1974 as the Duke Jazz Ensemble. From 1974 to the present, professional musician-educators have led the Duke Jazz Ensemble.

Music instruction and performance played a relatively minor role in the early years of Duke University (known as Trinity College until 1924). While there was a Glee Club at Trinity in the late 19th century, music was not a part of the formal curriculum. As Trinity College thrived in the early 20th century, so did student music groups. By 1916 Trinity supported a "Music Council" that included three faculty members along with the student leaders of the three campus musical groups: the Glee Club, the University Band, and the Symphony Orchestra.

In 1926, the recently renamed Duke University hired George "Jelly" Leftwich Jr. as the university's first director of instrumental music, a post he would hold until 1933. Leftwich brought a compelling vision for musical performance to campus and quickly developed the Duke Symphony Orchestra into one of the best collegiate orchestras in the south. In addition to reviving the orchestra, Leftwich started additional groups including Jelly Leftwich and his Blue Devils and the University Club Orchestra.

Leftwich's ambition and success encouraged numerous students to form their own musical groups in the 1930s, including Johnny Long and the Duke Collegians (founded in 1931), Nick "the Crooning Half-back" Laney and his Blue Devil Orchestra (founded in 1932), Sonny Burke and The Duke Ambassadors (founded in 1934), and Les Brown and His Blue Devils (founded in 1933). The Ambassadors were the longest-lasting group of the four, continuing at Duke from 1934 until 1964, with a brief war-related sabbatical from 1943 to 1946. Other bands formed at Duke during this period were Swing Kings, Blue Dukes, Blue Imps, Grand Dukes, and the D-Men.

The Duke Collegians, under Johnny Long's direction, was considered by many to be the south's leading collegiate orchestra. Long, a violinist and band leader, achieved professional musical success after graduating from Duke through forming and leading The Johnny Long Orchestra. The group initially recorded for Vocalion Records, performing the hit "Just Like That" in 1937. Later in the 1930s, the band signed with Decca Records, for whom they recorded hits such as "In a Shanty in Old Shanty Town", which sold over one million copies, "My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time", and "Poor Butterfly". Long continued to lead the band until his retirements in the 1960s.

Nick Laney and His Blue Devil Orchestra played regularly on Duke's campus and throughout North Carolina in the early 1930s. One of the band's most significant accomplishments was its selection from over 150 college bands to play with Guy Lombardo at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City during the winter break of 1932–33. Previously, during a summer tour in the northeast in 1932, the band had met an up-and-coming saxophone player by the name of Les Brown. As Brown later recalled the meeting, "In the summer of 1932, I had the good fortune to meet Nick Laney and The Duke Blue Devils in Boston... Although I was headed for the University of Pennsylvania, Nick encouraged me to join his dance band on tenor sax. I did, and spent four wonderful years at Duke."

One year into his time at Duke, Brown took over leadership of the Blue Devils, which Laney had vacated upon graduating in 1933. Brown led the group Les Brown and his Blue Devils from 1933 to 1936, achieving prominence across the southeast through regular tours of the region. Brown took the band on a particularly successful regional tour during the summer of 1936, after which he relocated to New York City to pursue a professional career in music.

It was there a mere two years later, in 1938, that Brown formed the group Les Brown and His Band of Renown. The band achieved immediate success, performing such notable hit songs as "Sentimental Journey" (1945), whose release coincided with the end of World War II in Europe and became the unofficial homecoming theme for many veterans. The band recorded numerous other hit songs, including "My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time" (1945) and "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm" (1946). The band's featured vocalist during this period was Doris Day, who Brown had recruited to join the group in the 1940s. The band went on to perform for nearly fifty years with Bob Hope, while also serving as the house band for "The Steve Allen Show" (1959–61) and "The Dean Martin Show" (1963–72). In 1993–94 Brown received a Distinguished Alumni Award from Duke University. Upon Brown's passing in 2001, his son Les Brown Jr. became the leader of the Band of Renown.