Robert Dukoff (October 11, 1918 – May 3, 2012), known as Bobby Dukoff, was an American
Big Band
A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s and ...
tenor saxophonist, clarinetist, composer, audio engineer and saxophone mouthpiece maker. He is known for his Dukoff Mouthpieces, which he began producing commercially in
Los Angeles
Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...
in 1945, and later in
Miami
Miami is a East Coast of the United States, coastal city in the U.S. state of Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade County in South Florida. It is the core of the Miami metropolitan area, which, with a populat ...
from the mid-1970s.
During the
Swing Era, Dukoff worked in the bands of
Jerry Wald
Jerome Irving Wald (September 16, 1911 – July 13, 1962) was an American screenwriter and a producer of films and radio programs.
Life and career Early life
Born to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, he had a brother and sons who were act ...
,
Jimmy Dorsey
James Francis Dorsey (February 29, 1904 – June 12, 1957) was an American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, composer and big band leader. He recorded and composed the jazz and pop standards " I'm Glad There Is You (In This World of Ordinary Peopl ...
and
Benny Goodman
Benjamin David Goodman (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American clarinetist and bandleader, known as the "King of Swing". His orchestra did well commercially.
From 1936 until the mid-1940s, Goodman led one of the most popular swing bi ...
. He married singer
Anita Boyer
Anita Blanch Boyer Dukoff, known as Anita Boyer (25 October 1915 in Carmi, Illinois – 17 March 1985 in South Miami, Florida) was an American singer of the Big Band Era, described by ''Billboard'' as "one of the music business's most proficient c ...
in 1943. In the 1950s he was signed to
RCA Victor
RCA Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside Columbia Records (its former longtime rival), Arista Records and Epic ...
where he made a number of albums, such as ''
Sax in Silk'', which was in the top-ten best selling albums of the label in 1956, ''
Sax and Satin'', ''
Pure Sax'' and ''