Robert Leo “Bobby” Hackett  was a versatile American jazz musician who played swing music, Dixieland jazz and mood music, now called easy listening, on trumpet, cornet, and guitar. He played Swing with the bands of Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman in the late 1930s and early 1940. He played Dixieland from the 1930s into the 1970s in a variety of groups with many of the major figures in the field, and he was a featured soloist on the first ten of the numerous Jackie Gleason mood music albums during the 1950s. Hackett was born in Providence, Rhode Island on Jan. 31, 1915. His father was a blacksmith, and his mother a housewife. Robert Leo Hackett, the sixth of nine children, started playing guitar at the age of 8. He picked up the violin two years later and left school at 14 to play in an orchestra in a Chinese restaurant, where he worked three sessions a day, seven days a week, for $12 a week.

After he saw Louis Armstrong perform, he learned to play the trumpet. “I’ve never been the same since,” he told long-time New Yorker jazz critic Whitney Balliett in 1969. “That man was and is the greatest hot-trumpet player in jazz.” In Providence, he played in a couple of other local bands, then one in Syracuse, New York and another on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He spent a couple of seasons in a band in Boston and Providence with Brad Gowans and clarinetist Pee Wee Russell, then led another band in Boston. After jazz critic George Frazier praised him in several articles, he moved to New York City in 1937. First he played with clarinetist Joe Marsala (later a songwriter) and then spent a year playing at Nick’s, a Greenwich Village bar known for its Dixieland music. While there he became part of Dixieland musicians that included Pee Wee Russell, Brad Gowans, Zutty Singleton, Billy Butterfield, Dave Tough, Joe Sullivan, and Eddie Condon.

Hackett married Edna Lillian Lee Hackett in 1937. The Hacketts lived primarily in New York City and spent summers on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. They had a daughter, Barbara and a son, Ernie, who became a professional drummer. Although he always said he was a follower of Armstrong, he made his name as a follower of cornet player Bix Beiderbecke In 1938 Benny Goodman hired the talented 23 year old to recreate Bix’s “I’m Coming Virginia” solo at his (Goodman’s) 1938 Carnegie Hall concert.

In the late 1930s, Hackett played lead trumpet in the Vic Schoen Orchestra, which backed the Andrews Sisters. In the 1940 Fred Astaire movie, Second Chorus. Hackett can be heard on the soundtrack. He dubbed the trumpet playing of Fred Astaire in two numbers. In the movie, Astaire is a trumpet player in Artie Shaw‘s orchestra. In 1939, the talent agency MCA asked Bobby Hackett to form a big band with its backing. When the band failed, he was in substantial debt to MCA. He joined the bands of Horace Heidt and then Glen Miller in 1941 and 1942 to pay this debt. To make matters worse, his lip was in bad shape after dental surgery, making it difficult for him to play the trumpet or cornet. Glenn Miller offered him a job as a guitarist. Despite lip problems, Hackett could play occasional short solos, and he can be heard playing with the Glenn Miller Orchestra on the 1942 “A String of Pearls.”

In the mid-40s he was in Glen Gray‘s orchestra for two years. In 1946 he joined the music staff at ABC where he remained for 15 years. He continued his live performances and recordings while there. He was playing regularly at Eddie Condon’s and other clubs. A dream come true for Hackett was his inclusion in Louis Armstrong’s 1947 Town Hall Jazz Concert. He was music director for the concert and second cornet. In November 1947, he recorded two sides with Frank Sinatra. The first, on November 5, was “I’ve Got a Crush on You,” arranged and conducted by George Siravo with a small group. Released the same year, it reached number 21 on the pop charts. On November 9, he recorded “Body and Soul” with Sinatra and a large orchestra arranged and conducted by Alex Stordahl. This recording was held back until June 1949, when it was one of the eight recordings on Sinatra’s fourth Columbia album, Frankly Sentimental. Since then, two other takes have been released by Columbia.

Hackett took a leave of absence from ABC from 1951 to 1952 to organize a septet that played in several night clubs, including New York’s The Embers. Five years later he organized another sextet that played at the Henry Hudson Hotel and several jazz festivals. His profile increased after he was hired by Jackie Gleason as a cornet soloist for seven of Gleason’s mood music albums. Beginning in 1952, he appeared on Gleason’s first Capitol Records album, Music for Lovers Only. The record — as well as all of Gleason’s next 10 albums — went gold. He appeared on six more of Gleason’s albums. This association led directly to his signing with Capitol Records and performing trumpet and flugelhorn solos on several popular albums, including the best-selling concept albums of Frank Sinatra. In 2001, when Mosaic Records released The Complete Capitol Bobby Hackett Solo Sessions on a five-CD limited edition set, most of the tracks were from Gleason’s mood music albums.

In 1954, he appeared as a regular on the ABC variety show The Martha Wright Show, also known as The Packard Showroom. In 1965, he toured with the singer Tony Bennett. In 1966 and 1967, he accompanied Bennett on two European tours. In the early 1970s, he performed separately with Dizzy Gillespie and Teresa Brewer.

Hackett had his own philosophy of good music, which was

“Music should be pretty,” he said: “You should hear and recognize the melody. And real greatness is in simplicity. Simple things are the hardest to play and the easiest to listen to.”

In 1972, Bobby Hackett was inducted into The Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame. He died on June 7, 1976, after a heart attack at his home in West Chatham, Massachusetts. He had just returned from a two‐week stay in a hospital for the removal of fluid from his lungs. He had maintained a busy schedule of performances and was due to appear in Boston on June 17 with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops. He was inducted into the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame in 2012.

For additional reading:

1. Martin Williams (1991). Jazz In Its Time. Oxford University Press.
2. Colin Larkin, ed. (1992). The Guinness Who’s Who of Jazz(First ed.). Guinness Publishing.
3. Ciccolo, John (October 18, 2000). Bobby Hackett: Accomplished musician with a beautiful sound. Libertyhall.com, July 5,2018.
4. Whitney Balliett, “Maestro,” Ecstasy at the Onion, The Bobbs-Merrill Co, Indianapolis and New York, 1971.
5. Leonard Feather, “Hackett, Robert Leo (Bobby)”, The Encyclopedia of Jazz, De Capo, New York. Originally published by Horizon Press, 1960