On Wednesday evening, December 12, 1962, the women of the Dublin Service League sponsored their annual charity ball. The ball and dance was held in the National Guard Armory on Telfair Street.
The organizers wanted an orchestra which would play music they had danced to when they were young.
Nearly every one's favorite was Glen Miller, but he was killed in plane crash during World War II. So they looked around and settled for Ray McKinley. Never heard of Ray McKinley? Well if you were around in the 1930s to the 1960s, you would certainly know Ray McKinley.
Ray McKinley was no Glenn Miller. He had played drums for the Dorsey Brothers and knew Glenn Miller as the best of friends. In 1943, McKinley traveled to England and joined Miller's Army Air Force Band as the drummer and manager . In 1956 and for the next decade, McKinley toured the country and the world leading the resurrected Glenn Miller Orchestra, which played the original Miller arrangements of dozens of the band's classic songs.
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