Roy Ross

Probably because this versatile musician happened to blow on a Frankie Laine recording session, enough of a western vibe was established to make some listeners assume he is the same Roy Ross who played mandolin on some obscure regional country singles in the '40s and '50s, as well as backing up bluegrass legend Hylo Brown in the '60s. A toss-up (or should we say Ross-up?) could even take place over the names of bands these musicians led. While the mandolinist Ross fronted a band called Roy Ross and His Ramblers, the subject of this essay led a group named Roy Ross and His Ragamuffins, enough of a coincidence to seal the case for anyone who has worked too long in a filing bureau. Nonetheless, this Ross was certainly not sneaking off to Appalachia in his spare time to trill on a mandolin. He did lead several successful dance bands through the '40s and '50s before establishing an innovative business as a composer and creator of advertising jingles, a move that while lining a player's pockets aplenty, usually serves to make them even more obscure in terms of name recognition than they already might be. Perhaps his most well-known recordings are the ones done in 1947 in New York for V-Disc, credited to Louis Armstrong with Roy Ross and His Ragamuffins. However one interprets "ragamuffin," it surely doesn't describe some of the players that took part on these dates, on which Ross played accordion as well as supposedly leading the session. The other musicians include the wonderful drummer Big Sid Catlett, trombonist Jack Teagarden, clarinetist Edmond Hall, and tenor saxman Flip Phillips. Perhaps these players applied pressure on Ross to come up with a less insulting name, because eventually Ross would stick to the bland Roy Ross and His Orchestra for future projects, including a series of big band singles for the Coral label. The decline of the big band scene and his involvement in both recording studios and radio broadcast media led to Ross developing some of the first radio jingles while hosting his own program on New York radio in the '50s. Radio stations were still willing to invest in having their own house bands during this time, and the concept of teaching these groups to play musical commercial themes took off bigtime. Ross had a knack not only for inventive themes but for commercial jargon; in an era when air conditioning was a trendy status symbol, he came up with the term "ear conditioned" to promote one radio station. ~ Eugene Chadbourne