Larry Elgart | Big-band leader, 95

Larry Elgart, 95, a saxophonist who formed a popular big band with his older brother, Les, cowrote the theme song to

American Bandstand

, and had his biggest hit album in 1982, a disco-pulsing medley of 1940s standards called

Hooked on Swing

, died Tuesday at a hospice center in Sarasota, Fla. His wife, Lynn, confirmed the death but did not cite a cause.

A precociously talented musician, Mr. Elgart was traveling with bands at 15 to support his family during the Great Depression. He played alto sax in orchestras led by Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman, Red Norvo, and Charlie Spivak, some of the biggest-name outfits of the day, and was an adventurous-minded player who also helped compose ballet scores and musical tone poems.

The brothers were traveling widely to promote the radio success of one of their first albums, Sophisticated Swing (1953), when they landed in Philadelphia and met Bob Horn, who hosted a local TV dance show called Bandstand.

"My brother said to him, 'If we record a theme for you, would you use it?,' " Larry Elgart told the Longboat Observer in Florida. "Our next recording date, we recorded 'Bandstand Boogie.' . . . If you hear Barry Manilow at times, he'll say he wrote 'Bandstand Boogie.' It's not true. He just wrote the lyrics" decades later.

The song, cut in 1954, remained the anthem for what became American Bandstand, which soon had a youthful new host, Dick Clark, and Mr. Elgart enjoyed royalties from the song for the next six decades.

An early marriage ended in divorce. Mr. Elgart's survivors include his wife of 54 years, Lynn Walzer Elgart; two sons from his first marriage; four grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. Les Elgart died in 1995.
- Washington Post