California Melodies 43

My Heart at Thy Sweet Voice
DELIUS Dance for Harpsichord
Carry Me Back to Old Virginny
Do I Worry? vocalist maxine Gray
Cari Mia Rhumba
RUBINSTEIN Melody in F
Come Down To Earth, My Angel Maxine Gray
Plantation Moods

Neal Hefti dies

Neal Hefti (born October 29, 1922, Hastings, Nebraska Died October 11, 2008)

...American jazz trumpeter, composer, tune writer, and arranger. He began arranging professionally in his teens, when he wrote charts for Nat Towles. He became a prominent composer and arranger while playing trumpet for Woody Herman; while working for Herman he provided new arrangements for "Woodchopper's Ball" and "Blowin' Up a Storm," and composed "The Good Earth" and "Wild Root." After leaving Herman's band in 1946, Hefti concentrated on arranging and composing, although he occasionally led his own bands. He is especially known for his charts for Count Basie such as "Li'l Darlin'" and "Cute". The wikipedia bio goes on...In the 1960s and later he composed and arranged mainly for movies and television. He wrote the background music for movies such as Sex and the Single Girl, How to Murder Your Wife, Synanon, Boeing Boeing, Harlow, Lord Love a Duck, Duel at Diablo, Oh Dad Poor Dad Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad, and Barefoot in the Park. His best-known contributions of this period are the themes for the TV series Batman and The Odd Couple.

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Tony Bennett Robert Farnon 'Snowfall'

Tony Bennett says it was the genius of the late Toronto-born composer Robert Farnon that led to his long break from producing Christmas albums.
Bennett's new record "A Swingin' Christmas," being released this week, is just his second holiday album. The first was 1968's "Snowfall: The Tony Bennett Christmas Album," and the iconic crooner says the 40-year gap is a result of Farnon's superb orchestrations on that disc...MORE - WEB - IMAGES - Available Here

Happy Birthday Nana Mouskouri

NANA MOUSKOURI born 12 or 13 OCTOBER 1934. The pop singer from Greece became an international singing sensation and is credited with selling more records worldwide than any other female singer. She recorded for Philips, Polydor. Nana Mouskouri (in Greek, Nάνα Μούσχουρη), born as Ioanna Mouskhouri, in Chania, Crete, Greece. She was known as Nana to her friends and family as a child. (Note that in Greek her surname is pronounced with the stress on the first syllable rather than the second.) She has recorded in many different languages, including Greek, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Welsh, among others.

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Johnny Green birth centennial

Johnny Green was born October 10, 1908, in New York. He entered Harvard at age 15, and while there, played piano and saxophone and led the Gold Coast Orchestra. Guy Lombardo heard the band and hired Green to write arrangements for his own band. This he did during summer vacations while eventually earning a master’s degree in English literature, and it was while working for Lombardo that he wrote his first hit song, “Coquette”. At his father’s insistence, Green got a job as a stockbroker, but soon left Wall Street to pursue a full time music career. In the early 30's, he worked as an accompanist for Ethel Merman, Gertrude Lawrence and James Melton, and also worked as a pianist for Leo Reisman. He was pianist and assistant conductor for Buddy Rogers, spent much of 1933 in London writing for musical productions at the London Hippodrome and for the BBC, then had his own band back in the U.S. (1933-41). With this band, he frequently appeared on radio, on his own show as well as the shows of Ruth Etting (1934), Ethel Merman (1935), Jack Benny (1935-36), Fred Astaire (1936-37) and the Philip Morris Show (1939-40). Beginning in 1942, he settled into the Hollywood studios, and was musical director for MGM from 1949 into the 60's. He won an Oscar in 1968 for his work on the movie Oliver!. As chairman of the music branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures Art and Sciences, he conducted the orchestra for 17 Oscar telecasts. He also guest conducted several symphony orchestras. Among the songs he wrote are “Body and Soul”, “Out of Nowhere”, “I Cover the Waterfront”, “Weep No More My Baby”, “You’re Mine You” and “I Wanna Be Loved”. He died in 1989.

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David Rose 'California Melodies 42'

Juanita
Years From Now
SIBELIUS: Valse Triste
Cantcha Tell with vocalist Maxine Gray
La Paloma
Ruby
Frenesi with Maxine Gray
Opus 6, Number 6 aka Jitterbug Fantasie