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When Bing Was King

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As a music-loving teenager from Massapequa, Ray Osnato haunted antiques shops and the offices of music publishers in Manhattan looking for original band arrangements from the era he loved most the 1920s and 1930s, when the syncopated rhythms of jazz insinuated themselves into the previously staid sounds of society dance music.

Some publishers “were rather amused that a young kid would come in and be interested in this stuff," Mr. Osnato, who owns some 700 band orchestrations of this preswing period, said in a telephone interview. As a youth, he added, he even sought out instruction from arrangers of the music, some of whom lived on Long Island. “They were thrilled that a young person would come to them," said Mr. Osnato, now 53.

Still, what do you do with 700 band arrangements, some original 78-r.p.m. recordings and the lessons of a few old-timers?

It took a while--nearly 30 years--but for Mr. Osnato the answer has come in the form of the South Shore Syncopators, a band of 10 instrumentalists and five singers that specializes in popular music written from 1925 to 1935. The orchestra, which performs throughout Long Island, uses the original arrangements or transcriptions made by Mr. Osnato from vintage recordings. The majority of the arrangements, he said, “comes from my collection."

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