Atlanta native Gene Howard took singing lessons in high school and began his career with popular Southern orchestra leader Francis Craig as a vocalist in 1939.[1] By September 1940, Howard was a staff vocalist for Nashville station WSM, where he sang alongside Kitty Kallen on the nationally-broadcast Sunday Down South program with Beasley Smith’s orchestra. In January 1941, bandleader Bob Chester heard him on the radio, liked him and hired him, sight unseen, to replace the departing Bill Darnell, who had left for the army. Howard remained with Chester’s band until early 1943. By late February of that year he had joined Gene Krupa, where he was initially billed as Bob Davis, probably to avoid confusion with having the same first name as the bandleader, but was soon back to Gene Howard again. When Krupa was arrested in June on trumped-up marijuana charges in San Francisco and had to disband, Howard quickly found work with Teddy Powell.
In April 1944, Howard joined Stan Kenton, where over the next two years he sang alongside Anita O’Day and June Christy. Also a guitarist, he wrote all his own arrangements while with Kenton, making him the only vocalist to do so in the big band era. His time with Kenton wasn’t always pleasant however. According to Howard in a 1954 interview, after recording “How Many Hearts Have You Broken,” released on the flipside of O’Day’s “And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine,” which became the band’s first commercial hit, Capitol Records passed word to Kenton that he wasn’t to use Howard on any further recordings. Whether true or not, Howard continued to sing with the band and occasionally record until late 1946, when he departed. No official reason was given for the departure, however Howard noted that it had been because Kenton was planning to shift his focus to concert jazz, and Howard did not fit into those plans. Kenton offered him the position of the band’s advanced publicity agent. He was reluctant to take the job at first, but having a family to support he accepted. For Christmas that year, Kenton bought him a new 1947 Chrysler.
Howard left Kenton’s organization in late 1948 to work as a freelance publicity agent for other artists, including Woody Herman and Freddy Martin, though he ended up back with Kenton at some point by mid-1950. As part of his publicity job, Howard took up photography and soon began to gain a reputation in that field as a celebrity photographer. Finally, in 1954, Howard decided to leave his job with Kenton and focus full-time on photography, opening a new studio in Los Angeles. Howard explained his decision:
I couldn’t do the job properly without traveling with the band, and in advance of tours, and a guy with a wife and kids just doesn’t want to be away from home that much. And in photography I’ve found something at last to help me get over the fact that I didn’t make it as a singer. Of course, I know now that I was pretty bad, but it’s not easy for a singer—or a musician—to face up to it. I took it pretty hard at the time.
Howard went on to have a successful career as a photographer. His brother, Bob Johnston, sang with Shep Fields in 1948.
Notes
Some modern sources say Howard was born in Nashville, but a 1943 Down Beat profile states his birthplace as Atlanta, where he also went to high school. ↩︎