Charles Agnew

Charles Agnew (June 22, 1901 – October 25, 1978) was a popular dance-band leader. Most popular in the 1930s as a midwestern territory band appearing in a sequence of hotel ballrooms, he enjoyed a long career that extended into the 1960s.

Biography Agnew was raised in New Jersey. Agnew's band was primarily based in the Chicago area, where he was often engaged at the Aragon Ballroom, and the Stephens Hotel. With co-composers Charles Newman and Audree Collins, he wrote a song called "Slow but Steady" which was copyright in 1931. He appeared, alongside the Paul Whiteman and Gus Edwards orchestras, at the "Marathon Opera" which benefitted the Chicago Herald and Examiner Milk Fund. Through the 1930s his orchestra was heard nationally in the United States on the NBC Radio network. On July 25, 1933, he recorded several songs for Columbia Records, the most popular of which was "Don't Blame Me." Represented by the Musical Corporation of America, he spent the summer of 1936 playing at the Colonial Hotel in Indiana, where featured vocalists were Lon Saxon and Emrie Ann Lincoln. He continued to lead his dance band into the 1940s. During World War II he actively toured the country, playing for the benefit of enlisted personnel While many big band leaders disbanded, Agnew kept his unit together until the late 1950s. At that point he downsized to a smaller group, until retiring about 1968.