Oswald George Nelson (March 20, 1906 – June 3, 1975)[1] was an American actor, filmmaker, musician, and bandleader.

Nelson was rejected to be the vocalist for the Rutgers Jazz Bandits, led by Scrappy Lambert and later Hawley Ades.

[1] Nelson made his own "big break" in 1930, when The New York Daily Mirror ran a poll of its readers to determine their favorite band.

Nelson's primary vocalist was Rose Anne Stevens, who appeared in the 1942 movie Down Rio Grande Way and Tomorrow We Live.

Nelson wrote and composed several songs, including "Wave the Stick Blues", "Subway", "Jersey Jive", "Swingin' on the Golden Gate", and "Central Avenue Shuffle".

Ozzie Nelson appeared with his band in feature films and short subjects of the 1940s, and often played speaking parts, displaying a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor, as in the 1942 musical Strictly in the Groove.

He shrewdly promoted the band by agreeing to appear in "soundies", three-minute musical movies shown in "film jukeboxes" of the 1940s.

Besides band appearances, Harriet and he had been regulars on The Raleigh Cigarette Program, Red Skelton's radio show.

The TV show starred the entire family, as America watched Ozzie and Harriet raise their boys.

Cultural historians have noted that the on-screen laid-back character was very different from the real-life Ozzie Nelson, who has been characterized as an authoritarian figure who monitored every aspect of his children's lives.

[12] He is interred with his wife and son Ricky in the Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.

When his elder son David died in 2011, he was cremated, having chosen a niche in Westwood Memorial Park's outdoor Garden of Serenity columbarium rather than interment in the Nelson family plot.