Talk:Van Alexander
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Chubbles (I am putting this note here; I hope it is on your watchlist and you will see it; your own talk page had some spam filter block my adding my note there, complaining of a "blacklisted hyperlink"; unless my username is blacklisted, that must be an error)...
Your connection of Shelly Manne and Van Alexander is interesting. Big-band aficionado George T. Simon makes the same connection between the two as Eugene Chadbourne does. Unfortunately, this is likely to be a mistake. Chadbourne has Manne performing with Alexander when Manne was 16; yet he didn't learn to play the drums until he was 18! Simon puts him in Alexander's newly formed band in 1938--again unlikely, as Manne was still in high school and only just barely learning the drums at that time. I wonder how this notion came to be. I have combed the pages on Manne's early life in Jack Brand's biography pretty thoroughly and find no mention of Van Alexander. And Brand bases what he writes on material provided by Manne's widow, Flip Manne. The only possibility I see for a connection was that when Manne was in the Coast Guard during World War II, he briefly sat in with Van Alexander's band on 52nd Street, where he was known to sit in wherever he could. But I'm just guessing. I don't even know that Alexander even performed on 52nd Street. I find no evidence for any definite connection with Alexander. And Chadbourne is completely mistaken when he has Manne on drums at age 16. In view of all this, I've made some changes in both the Alexander and Manne articles, leaving these speculations in just a footnote on the Manne page. Regards, Alan W (talk) 03:18, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
