JACK
MELICK
A Career...............
A Life................
Dedicated to Making Music
In 2003, popular band leader Jack Melick celebrated his 50th year
as a full-time professional musician! His career started in his hometown,
North Plainfield, NJ, when his mother started him on piano lessons
at the age of five. By age seven he had announced that he wanted to
be a band leader, and from that time on there was no doubt as to what
he would do with his life.
Starting his own band when he was 13 years old, by the age of 16 he
was leading that band at Sagamore, a summer resort in the Pocono Mountains
where the band played for three seasons. After graduating from Oberlin
Conservatory of Music and serving in the army during the Korean War,
Jack went on the road, playing the piano with such bands as Leo Peeper,
Jimmy Palmer and Art Mooney. The year 1955 found him in Hollywood
playing featured piano with Orrin Tucker's band on KTLA-TV, a show
which was on the air for two years. Then it was off to Reno with his
own band, and the Jack Melick band was in residence at the Mapes Hotel
there for three years, where they played for such luminaries as Milton
Berle, Betty Grable, Rowan & Martin, Sammy Davis, Mickey Rooney,
Jack Carson and many others. When the hotel closed in late 1960, Jack
became musical conductor for comedian Dick Shawn and had the pleasure
of leading Freddy Martin's fine band at the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles
when Mr. Shawn entertained there.
Then, a stint as
one of the "Twin Pianos" in the orchestra of Guy Lombardo
before once again leading his own group and opening at a new club
in Dallas, called the Chaparral Club. This engagement became the first
of 34 consecutive annual engagements at the club, appearing there
until it closed in 1994. For the first ten years of his Dallas engagement
he alternated between the Warwick Club in Houston, the Dunes Hotel
in Las Vegas and the Chaparral Club, settling in "Big D"
in 1968. Dallas is still the home of the Jack Melick Orchestra.
Starting in 1986, Jack
and his musicians have hosted a yearly "Jack Melick Dance Cruise"
on many of the world's great cruise ships, including the QE2 in 2002.
On these cruises, the band plays for private dances which are open
only to those passengers traveling in his dance cruise group. These
trips are still taken annually.
Jack Melick is proud be
a Charter Member of the Big Band Academy of America in Hollywood and
to have been inducted into his high school alumni Hall of Fame, along
with his classmate, jazz pianist Bill Evans.
Currently, Jack is "semi-retired",
living a few months each year in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. However,
he assures everyone that: "as long as I am able, there will periods
of every year when the Jack Melick Orchestra will be playing in Dallas/Fort
Worth and on the road, helping to keep the music from the Golden Era
of of American Popular Music (especially the Big Band Sound) from
ever dying."
