Albert Leopold, 96, trombonist

Albert Leopold, 96, of Newtown Square, whose musical career reached from the big band era before World War II to Philadelphia society events in the 1980s, died of complications from lung cancer on Sunday, July 31, at Bryn Mawr Hospital.

Mr. Leopold was best known as a featured trombone player with Jan Savitt's orchestra in Philadelphia and New York City in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Leopold taught himself to play trombone well enough, his nephew Raymond Edwards said, that after dropping out of Upper Darby High School, he joined the New York orchestra of Smith Ballew.

A Ballew biography reports that his orchestra existed from the late 1920s to 1935, the year Mr. Leopold turned 20.

Ballew was a Texas singer who went on to a career in cowboy movies, but his orchestra at times included future bandleaders such as Glenn Miller.

An online biography of Savitt relies heavily on an interview with Mr. Leopold conducted when he was 90.

Members of big bands often played in tuxedos, but Savitt decided to go a step further by calling his band the Top Hatters.

"We would use full dress and top hat," Mr. Leopold said. "In other words, the long tails - white tie and tails."

Based in Philadelphia, Mr. Leopold recalled, the Savitt band "played colleges and ballrooms and different dances."

In 1938, the band played a heavy schedule, "on KYW [radio] during the day, and worked the Arcadia Restaurant in Philadelphia at night with airshots on the NBC . . . network Mondays at 12 midnight and Saturday afternoons between 4:30 and 6 p.m."

Savitt left Philadelphia in 1939, Mr. Leopold recalled, and the group became the house band at the former Hotel Lincoln in New York City.

The online interviewer Christopher Popa reported that Mr. Leopold "became known for his trombone solos on Savitt recordings such as 'Rose of the Rio Grande.' "

Mr. Leopold said Savitt "knew what I could do, and he gave me a free hand. And, of course, a lot of the arrangements were built around me because I was getting the most money, for one thing. And they wanted their money's worth."

The interviewer said Mr. Leopold "left Savitt's band in late 1941."

"A June 1942 Down Beat report placed him in the pit band at the Earle Theater in Philadelphia and running a music store in Upper Darby."

Edwards said that during World War II, his uncle served three years with the Coast Guard and returned to play in Atlantic City - for instance, at Miss America pageants.

In the 1950s, Edwards said, Mr. Leopold opened Al Leopold Studios in Newtown Square, a music shop that he sold in the 1980s.

He gave lessons there, Edwards said, but mostly he taught for decades in a studio at his home.

For seven years in the 1970s, he was music director at Camden Catholic High School in Cherry Hill.

But he had not retired from working a room.

Inquirer articles in 1984 and 1985 reported that Al Leopold's Dixieland Band - a five- to seven-piece group - was featured at the annual Moonlight and Roses party at the Morris Arboretum in Chestnut Hill.

Society-page items often mentioned his appearances.

He played to larger audiences - for instance, when his group was among the attractions outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art during Super Senior Sunday on the Parkway in 1980.

In 1976, Mr. Leopold became a member of the Musicians Hall of Fame of the American Federation of Musicians, his nephew said.

Mr. Leopold is survived by his wife of 75 years, Helen; a daughter, Karen Peters; and a brother.

The funeral was Thursday, Aug. 4.