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The Lombardo brothers. From left to right: Carmen, Guy, Lebert, and Victor- Wikimedia.

Top 10 Interesting Facts about Guy Lombardo

Guy Lombardo (1912-1977), a Canadian-born musician, was known for his festive technique to New Year’s Eve, and his band’s performance of eighteenth-century Scots poet Robert Burns’ heartfelt song Auld Lang Syne quickly became an American tradition.

In his prime, musician Lombardo pioneered a Big Band sound distinguished by an extravagant saxophone vibrato, clipped brass phrases, and the bandleader’s own vocal styling. Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians playing “Auld Lang Syne” on New Year’s Eve radio broadcasts became a yearly tradition for generations of Americans.

1. What is Guy famous for?

Lombardo’s New Year’s Eve Party became the longest-running yearly radio special, and between 1929 and 1952, Lombardo and the Royal Canadians charted at least one hit per year. Despite the fact that Lombardo died in 1977, his theme song “Auld Lang Syne” is still requested by North American audiences as they ring in the new year.

2. How it all started for Guy

The Lombardo brothers circa 1930-1931: left to right: Lebert, Carmen, Guy, and Victor- Wikimedia.

Gaetano Alberto Lombardo was born on June 19, 1902, to Gaetano and Lena Lombardo in London, Ontario, Canada. Lombardo senior, who had immigrated to Canada from Italy, worked as a tailor, and the family lived on Queens Avenue in London.

Lomardo was the eldest of seven children born between 1902 and 1924, five boys and two girls. Lombardo’s parents insisted that their children not speak Italian at home, believing that if they were not encumbered with a reliance on the Italian language, they would be better able to integrate into the English-speaking culture of pre-World War I Canada.

Five of the Lombardo children—Guy, Carmen, Lebert, Victor, and Rose Marie—would go on to have successful musical careers. Lombardo once stated that his father wanted all of his children to have knowledge of music, and because Guy was the eldest, he was offered violin lessons. As band leader was always the violinist, the young Lombardo was given the role he would later reprise.

3. The band’s very first performance

Lombardo’s band began in 1914, when brother Carmen, who played flute, joined Guy on violin for a duet for the local Mother’s Club. Brother Lebert finally joined the group, as did pianist Freddie Kreitzer.

The band was set to perform its first professional gig at the Lakeview Casino in Grand Bend on June 22, 1919.

After the club’s owner declined to give the band members an hour off for dinner, stating that his customers paid to hear the band perform, not to watch them eat, Lombardo’s father took his sons home and advised them to find another line of work.

Nevertheless, the affair was resolved, and the Lombardo brothers were out of school and working as full-time musicians within a few months.

Their father, who had always told them that “music is a light load to carry,” didn’t disagree with their career-paths!

4. Their first gig in a casino

Portrait of Guy Lombardo, Starlight Roof, Waldorf-Astoria, New York. Photo by: Gottlieb, William P- Wikimedia.

The Lombardo brothers were employed as the house band for the Hopkins Casino in Port Stanley, on Lake Erie, in the spring of 1923. Carmen Lombardo, who was playing saxophone with a Detroit band at the time, left to join his brothers.

Guy, 21, decided that the band was wasting its time in Canada after the band began its second season at London, Ontario’s Winter Gardens.

Within a few weeks, he had managed to obtain the contact information for a booking agent in Cleveland, Ohio, and had talked his way into a one-night stand at an Ohio Elk’s Club. All the while, he pretended to his London friends that he had booked an American vaudeville tour.

5. The band’s last performance together

Following the band’s final performance in London, Ontario, on November 24, 1923, about 100 fans greeted them at the train station. Despite the late hour, many people were prepared to sacrifice sleep to wish the local band luck. Lombardo was destined for success by the time the band returned to Ontario in 1927 as Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians.

6. The whole family was talented

Portrait of Carmen Lombardo, Rose Marie Lombardo, Guy Lombardo, and Don Rodney, Starlight Roof, Waldorf-Astoria, New York. Photo by: Gottlieb, William P.- Wikimedia.

Rose Marie Lombardo, the band’s youngest sister, joined as a song stylist in 1942. Singer Kenny Gardner married Elaine Lombardo a few years later. All whilst, one of the few siblings who had not become musicians, Joseph Lombardo, was hired to redecorate New York’s Roosevelt Hotel, where the band had spent the winter for 33 years.

Even so, one of the family members made running a family business more than a challenge. Victor Lombardo, the youngest of the musical brothers, frequently sparked fights with Guy and left the Royal Canadians on many instances to form his own band.

Guy was patient, bringing Victor back into the fold after each of the younger Lombardo’s failed Big Band forays.

7. Career heated up

Photo of Guy Lombardo and his brothers and sister. The family performed on CBS Radio’s Three Ring Time program. Clockwise from left: Guy, Victor, Lebert and Carmen. At center is sister Rose Marie. Photo by: CBS Radio- Wikimedia.

In the winter of 1923, as Lombardo drove south to Ohio, the chances of his band becoming famous were slim. The intensely competitive music industry in the United States was especially harsh on any new talent who had not set in place a unique sound.

Despite its talented musicians, Lombardo’s jazz band lacked a distinct sound that set it apart from the competition. Remembering their father’s advice to play music that people could “sing, hum, or whistle,” the three Lombardo brothers began performing dance music with pronounced melodies but no arrangement or creativeness.

The music was popular with well-to-do audiences in the late 1920s, as well as a few Prohibition-era gangsters.

8. Guy was also a producer

Guy began producing musical extravaganzas at the Jones Beach Marine Theater (near his home in Freeport, Long Island, NY) independently of the Royal Canadians and continued for over 20 years. He also competed in hydroplane races from 1940 to 1942 and 1946 to 1963, winning many across North America.

9. End of an era for the band

Each year between 1929 and 1952 Lombardo managed to place at least one record on the popular music charts, and 1953 marked the first time in a quarter century years that the Royal Canadians failed to release a best-selling record.

Other bad news for Lombardo came the same year, in the form of income tax problems with the Internal Revenue Service. To deal with these dual setbacks, Lombardo signed the band up for more tours, especially back home in Ontario.

By 1954, the band’s sun had almost set. Their recording of “Young at Heart” climbed to only number 24 on the charts. Rock ‘n’ roll now drove the North American music industry, eclipsing the music Lombardo specialized in.

10. The band members deaths

Carmen Lombardo, the band’s signature sound creator, died of cancer in 1971. Guy had been closer to Carmen than to any of his other siblings, so Carmen’s death devastated Lombardo both professionally and emotionally.

The Royal Canadians were stung by the first-ever negative review published in their hometown paper in 1974. The band’s final performance was in June 1977 in London, Ontario, at an event where no one on the dance floor appeared to be under the age of fifty.

Lombardo died on November 5, 1977, in Houston, Texas, at the age of 75. “Auld Lang Syne” has remained North America’s traditional musical accompaniment to the passing of each year in the years since Lombardo’s death.

Victor Lombardo, the last musical Lombardo brother, died in 1994.