Trumpeter and bandleader Charlie Spivak was born Spender Spivakovsky on February 17, 1904 in the city of Kiev, now the capitol of Ukraine. He arrived at Ellis Island in New York Harbor with his family in 1910 and they soon settled in New Haven, Connecticut. Charlie learned to play trumpet in his high school band and soon after graduation he was playing with Johnny Cavallaro’s orchestra.

Spivak spent six years as a member of Paul Specht’s band in the 1920s before stints with some of the best-known ensembles of the era including those led by Ben Pollack, the Dorsey Brothers, Ray Noble, Bob Crosby and Glenn Miller. He first tried to start his own group in 1939, but it didn’t work out and the band broke up within a year. Shortly thereafter, though, Spivak took over the band that had been led by Bill Downer and it became one of the more successful orchestras of the 1940s. That group continued performing until 1959 and included Davey Tough, Les Elgart, Jimmy Knepper and Nelson Riddle, who also wrote arrangements for the band. Charlie Spivak’s tone on the trumpet earned him the nickname “The Man Who Plays the Sweetest Trumpet in the World.”

Charlie Spivak continued to play and record until shortly before his death in his adopted home of Greenville, South Carolina in 1982.

Here is a link to Charlie Spivak and his Orchestra from a 1944 movie:

"TIME ALONE WILL TELL"