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BENT FABRIC
“ALLEY CAT”
(Jack Harlen, Frank “BENT FABRIC” Bjorn)
Atco 6226
No. 7 September 29, 1962
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Nineteen sixty-two was a goofy year. Two girls in Indiana standing two feet apart set some obscure
record by tossing an ice cube back and forth 4,477 times before it melted. Some character baked up a
25, 000-pound cake for the Seattle Fair. And a batch of instrumentals pervaded the airwaves of top
40 stations. KENNY BALL and his band of jazzmen gave us “Midnight In Moscow.” A trumpeter
named Herb Alpert scored his first of a string of hits, a tune about a “Lonely Bull.” A clarinetist named
MR. ACKER BILK presented us with “Stranger On The Shore.” And a Danish piano man named Bent
Fabricius-Bjerre picked out a memorable melody called “Alley Cat .”
Bent was born in Copenhagen on December 7, 1924, to a mom and dad who apparently knew just how
to raise a multi-talented lad. In the wink of an eye, Bent was a musician and a teenage bandleader.
Under his direction, Bent’s boys made some of what are claimed to be Denmark’s first jazz recordings.
In 1950, Bjerre became head of Metronome Records. He played a mean piano, and for a while was the
host of the Saturday-night Danish TV program “Around a Piano.” In addition to working as A&R man
for Metronome, he composed tunes under the pseudonym “Frank Bjorn.”