STEVE'S MILESTONES
1947, Steve is born
1953, Steve takes 5 piano lessons for 50 cents each, but only uses a cardboard keyboard. He wouldn't play on a real piano for many years to come but he learned to read music, both bass and treble clef.
1955, Steve sees the first nationally televised Lawrence Welk Show and a few seeds are planted.
1956 & 1959, Steve sees the Welk band in person in Chicago, further igniting his passion for music.
1956, Steve is given a dozen piano lessons by his musically gifted and self-taught father on a real piano.
1957, Steve gets sheet music for his 10th birthday for "Bubbles in the Wine", Lawrence Welk's theme song. He learned to play it in ONE day! 1958, Steve takes up the clarinet after being inspired by Pete Fountain on Welk. The first day of practice he's able to play "Jada". 1959, the "impressionable" Steve sees the film, The 5 Pennies, about the life of trumpet & cornet player Red Nichols and decides that the trumpet is his calling.
Interesting tidbit: When Steve was a young boy, he didn't own a record player, so his mother would take him to a local record shop so that he could listen to records in the listening booth (remember those?) "His mother once told Steve that he might wind up being a "music bum", sitting on the floor listening to records all day. Now he sometimes does it but gets paid to transcribe arrangements & solos off those records!" He now owns thousands of them!
1961, New Year's Eve, Steve tunes into and tape records a live band remote featuring Jimmy Palmer & His Orchestra and more seeds are planted.
1963, Steve becomes 1st chair trumpet in his high school band.
1963, Steve teaches himself big band arranging. In high school, Steve starts a 4 piece band and plays for 125 weddings and parties each year.
After graduating from Chicago's Teacher's College, where Steve majored in music education he becomes a junior high school music teacher working 80-90 hours per week for very little pay. Later on in his teaching career, Steve became a soccer coach and now confesses that he never really did understand the game or knew all the rules! He must have been MY teacher because I don't know the rules either :-)
Side note: For those of you who don't know, Steve's teaching ability quickly turned a band of 4th and 5th graders into budding big band artists. I know, I have heard recordings of his kids and the result of untold hours of practice is very much in evidence! Forget "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". These kids could swing!!
While teaching, Steve continues with his wedding band and at about this same time, Steve got to play with Bob Crosby and Sammy Kaye's bands, which Steve considered the highlight of his early career.
In 1976, Steve purchased the music library of Jimmy "Dancing Shoes" Palmer and also acquired a number of charts of other well-known dance bands.
1979, Steve begins playing in ballroom bands and a few years later he forms his first big band with George Lescher (pianist) and Dottie Bee (singer who sings like Wee Bonnie Baker--songs like Oh Johnny).
At this time Steve began playing with Stanley Paul's society band, the #1 party band in Chicago! He's been with Stanley now for 22 years. The guy can't hold a job, can he? :-)
Steve marks his 15th year as band leader of his own big ballroom band in 2004 and is one of the most highly sought after big bands in the Midwest!
Steve became the "house band" at the famed Como Inn for 17 years.
Steve also has a Dixieland band called, "The Dixie Patrol" and plays all the music of Red Nichols and Bob Crosby. Steve plays 150 jobs each year with all of the various bands.
To date, Steve has arranged over 20,000 pages of music for his own band as well as many others across the country.
Steve taught music for 30 years but now only teaches a few advanced students who want to learn the "ins & outs" of the music business.
A few years ago Steve arranged and played music on the Oprah Winfrey Show in Chicago devoted to ballroom music.
Steve has played parties for many notable celebrities. Such as, Mary Tyler Moore, Liza Minelli, Carol Channing, Steve Allen, Jim Belushi, Robert Wagner & Stephanie Powers, Larry King and the cast of "Frasier" and many others.
1993, Steve married Mary Little (no relation to Big Tiny Little) and their only "child" is a wonderful female dog named, Tiger. Tiger is the most intelligent member of the family!! Tiger plays hide and seek with treats and has a vocabulary greater than Steve's and has an award winning smile! Learn more about Mary later on in this biography.
When Steve and Mary first met, Mary asked Steve if he'd ever heard of Red Nichols. Steve's reply, "Heard of him??? I own and perform most of his music!!!"
In September of 2000, Steve produced a 3 hour Lawrence Welk concert using a 24-piece orchestra, and featured a half dozen original members of Welk's band. Among Steve's many valued friends, he counts among them 20 of the original Lawrence Welk musicians and keeps in touch through emails and by phone and of course, meets with them in person whenever possible.
You might all like to know if you don't that Welk trumpet player and vocalist, Rocky Rockwell is featured on Steve's last CD as well as 1959 guest Champagne Lady Patty Clark. Steve's band has 8 tapes and 2 CDs available and has over 1,000 arrangements & would love to do more recording in the future. He plays all kinds of music on weekends, including a lot of Rock & Roll but enjoys the old dance band and Dixieland music the most. "It's REAL music, not noise!" Steve proclaims.
Steve can play any band instrument pretty well and also can play guitar, bass, drums and piano. Steve has taught over 5,000 students over the years but mostly plays the trumpet now. Steve says that it's a full-time job staying in practice!
Steve's band is currently being featured at the Chevy Chase Country Club and the Willowbrook Ballroom.
HOBBIES
Steve enjoys golfing and when he was 9-18 years of age he enjoyed playing baseball and played on all the Little League teams. He also enjoys reading, self-improvement and investing his hard earned money. Steve has read hundreds of books on self-improvement, books on quantum physics and books on spiritual matters and has been written about in 3 books about the many coincidences and synchronicities he's had in his life. He's had some truly amazing coincidences!
Another of Steve's passions is bowling and enjoys collecting historical memorabilia relating to the vintage days of the sport and enjoys the history of bowling as it relates to Americana. He has many vintage bowling films with quaint old bowling alleys and pinboys. When Steve began bowling at the age of 6, they still had pinboys and now laments the demise of the older bowling alleys which are such a part of this country's heritage.
At the age of 33, Steve takes up flying and at 35 he gets his pilot's license. He flew all around the Midwest for the next ten years. He now just flies on his computer Flight Simulator. It's safer that way!
PARENTS
Steve's father worked for the government and enjoyed playing Ragtime piano. Steve learned a great deal of music from his father who enjoyed playing the music from the 20's through the 40's. Steve tells us that his father played the piano just like those old Ragtime piano rolls!
His mother was an English & Latin teacher.
WIFE
Steve's beautiful wife Mary works as a librarian and enjoys creative writing, video collecting and is a rabid fan of Jack Benny! She even won a radio script competition last year featuring the cast of the Jack Benny Program. When you read the script you can hear the cast members in your head! Mary is one of 9 children and is a fraternal triplet. She has two brothers filling out the threesome. This is a stark difference between Mary and Steve, as he is an only child.
EARLY INFLUENCES
Many of Steve's early life influences have already been mentioned but one of Steve's pre-school recollections was watching The Kate Smith Show with the Benny Goodman band 5 days a week while his mother ironed and also Your Hit Parade with Dorothy Collins and Snooky Lanson. No doubt he was greatly inspired by this wonderful music. He was also a very young fan of Jackie Gleason and Howdy Doody.
IN SUMMARY
Those of you who are already members of Steve's fan club know what a great musician, arranger and band leader he is, but for those who might only know Steve through his music, I can tell you that he is also one of the finest and most interesting people you'll ever want to meet!
He's not only a wonderful person but all of his band members agree that Steve is the best possible boss. He's a pleasure to work with and of course, that comraderie shows up on the smiling faces of his dancing audience. Steve's great enthusiasm for what he does is one of his finest attributes and it's heard in every note that he and the band play! We all thank you Steve for being all that you are.
Biographical information compiled by Tom Heath, Vice-President of the Steve Cooper Fan club.
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4th GRADE
