Alvino Rey
American swing era musician (1908–2004)
Alvin McBurney (July 1, 1908 – February 24, 2004), known by his stage name Alvino Rey, was an American jazz guitarist and bandleader.
Career
Alvin McBurney was born in Oakland, California, United States, but grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. Early in life, he had a knack for music and electronics. In his teens, he was given a banjo as a birthday present. His professional career began in 1927, when he got a job playing banjo with Cleveland bandleader Ev Jones. During the following year, he became a member of the Phil Spitalny Orchestra. He switched from banjo to guitar, then changed his name to Alvino Rey to take advantage of the popularity of Latin music in New York City at the time.
From 1932 to 1938, he was a member of Horace Heidt and His Musical Knights. He drew attention to himself and the band when he started playing steel guitar. The Gibson corporation asked him to develop a pickup for the first electric guitar, the ES-150.
The public source identifies “Alvino Rey” as american swing era musician (1908–2004). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Alvino, American and swing.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q432562. VIAF identifies the subject as 7575114. The Library of Congress control number is n82144269. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1908, 2004, 1927 and 1932.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alvino Rey” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.