American jazz and swing guitarist, trumpeter, bandleader, and radio and television host.
When he was twenty-two, he replaced Eddie Lang as the guitarist for Bing Crosby in 1933 and remained with Crosby until the early 1940s. He worked as a studio musician in Hollywood for MGM. Beginning on 2 October 1940, he was the bandleader for Eddie Cantor’s radio program on NBC.
He started a big band that included Dave Pell and Kitty Kallen and signed with Capitol Records. The band’s first single, “The Elk’s Parade”, was a million seller. He dabbled in acting but led his big band through the 1940s.
In the mid-1940s, he hosted the radio program Bobby Sherwood Orchestra on the Mutual Broadcasting System. In 1953, he had a daily early morning program on WJZ in New York City.
He hosted the DuMont Television Network variety show Stars on Parade (1953–1954), was the announcer for DuMont’s The Morey Amsterdam Show, and the host for the game show Quick as a Flash from March to May 1953. In the mid-1950s, he was host of Step This Way, a dance-oriented program broadcast on Saturday evenings on WABC-TV in New York City.
Sherwood married Dorothy Virginia Gumm, the sister of Judy Garland. He died of cancer on 23 January 1981, aged 66, at his home in Auburn, Massachusetts. His sons Billy and Michael are both musicians, and his nephew is trumpeter Carl Saunders.
Link to Wikipedia biography