Remembering the late "Born Free" composer John Barry

Just added to our playlist- several selections from soundtracks composed by the late John Barry. He was one of the most celebrated film composers of modern times, winning five Academy Awards and four Grammy Awards, with scores for, among others, The Lion in Winter, Midnight Cowboy, Born Free, and Somewhere in Time. Barry was often cited as having had a distinct style which concentrated on lush strings and extensive use of brass. However he was also an innovator, being one of the first to employ synthesizers in a film score (On Her Majesty's Secret Service), and to make wide use of pop artists and songs in Midnight Cowboy. Because Barry provided not just the main title theme but the complete soundtrack score, his music often enhanced the critical reception of a film, notably in Midnight Cowboy, Out of Africa, and Dances with Wolves.

Official Site

Wikipedia | Search Amazon.com for John Barry

WTIC Radio remembers conductor Ray Conniff

Ray recalls his early days in Boston playing trombone with the Society Bands, including Dan Murphy’s Musical Skippers, performing in New York with Bunny Berrigan, Artie Shaw, and Bob Crosby and his eventual glory years at Columbia records...

DOWNLOAD Webpage

SHOP Ray Conniff

WEB LINKS

California Melodies 44

Faust Waltz
Amapola
I Guess It's Better That Way
MAXINE GRAY sings There'll Be Some Changes Made
Vienna Waltz
OFFENBACH Orpheus In The Underworld
MAXINE GRAY sings It All Comes Back to Me Now
Indefinate Ryhthm

Conductor Ray Ellis has died

Conductor/arranger Ray Ellis, who arranged such classics as "Chances Are" by Johnny Mathis, "Splish Splash" by Bobby Darin and "Standing on the Corner" by the Four Lads, died Monday, 27 October 2008, in Encino of complications from melanoma. He was 85. During a career that spanned almost 65 years, the Philadelphia native also arranged for acts including Tony Bennett, Doris Day, the Drifters, Connie Francis, Judy Garland and Ray Price.

MORE - Wiki Bio - SHOP Ray Ellis

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.

WEB - IMAGES - SHOP Neal Hefti

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.

WEB - SHOP Johnny Green

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

The Andre Kostelanetz papers

The papers of legendary conductor, arranger and broadcaster Andre Kostelanetz have been donated to the Library of Congress by his estate. Kostelanetz died in 1980. The gift is a veritable treasure trove for students of 20th century music and broadcasting. The archive of Kostelanetz' personal property, papers, clippings, letters, sound recordings, posters, and photographs spans some 73 crates. It documents in detail the career of one of America's most remarkable men of music. The gift from Kostelanetz' estate will complement the gift of scores and parts for many of his arrangements Kostelanetz made to the Library of Congress. His papers will join those of George and Ira Gershwin, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, Lorenz Hart, Frederick Loewe, Alan Jay Lerner, and Irving Berlin, among others in the Library's collection of material belonging to eminent American musicians.

MORE - Official Site - WEB - IMAGES - SHOP Andre Kostelanetz

Harry James 1944

Casino Gardens -
WIKI BIO - IMAGES - SHOP Harry James

Freddy Martin and Merv Griffin

Frederick Alfred (Freddy) Martin (December 9, 1906 – September 30, 1983) was an American bandleader and tenor saxophonist. Martin was born in Cleveland, Ohio. Raised largely in an orphanage and with various relatives, Martin started out playing drums, then switched to C-melody saxophone and later tenor saxophone, the latter the one he would be identified with. Early on, he had intended to become a journalist. He had hoped that he would earn enough money from his musical work to enter Ohio State. But instead, he wound up becoming an accomplished musician. Martin led his own band while he was in high school, then played in various local bands. After working on a ships band, Martin joined the Mason-Dixon band, then joined Arnold Johnson and Jack Albin. It was with Albin's "Hotel Pennsylvania Music" that he made his first recordings, for Columbia's Velvet Tone label in 1930...MORE Wiki Bio

WEB - IMAGES - SHOP Freddy Martin

Listen to Radio Remote:
Boomp3.com

Watch 1950's TV Show with Merv Griffin

birth anniversary Werner Muller

German conductor Werner Müller was born 2 August 1920 in Berlin, He died 28 December 1998, in Cologne, Germany. Müller was conductor of two of the most popular radio orchestras in Germany. From 1948 to 1967, he led the Tanzorchester for the powerful station RIAS in Berlin. During this period he was associated with the pop singer Caterina Valente, whose recording of "Malaguena" was popular all over the world. In 1967 Müller became the chief conductor of the Tanzorchester of radio station WDRP in Cologne.

LINK TO MORE BIO INFO and Salesroom of CDs

Jimmy Dorsey

James "Jimmy" Dorsey (February 29, 1904 – June 12, 1957) was a prominent American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, trumpeter and big band leader.

Jimmy Dorsey was born in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, the son of a music teacher and older brother of Tommy Dorsey who also became a prominent musician. He played trumpet in his youth, appearing on stage in a Vaudeville act as early as 1913. He switched to alto saxophone in 1915, and then learned to double on clarinet. While little-known now, Jimmy Dorsey played on a clarinet outfitted with the Albert system of fingering, as opposed to the more common Boehm system used by most of his contemporaries including Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw. With his brother Tommy playing trombone, he formed Dorsey’s Novelty Six, one of the first jazz bands to broadcast. On December 26, 1953, the brothers and their orchestra appeared on Jackie Gleason's CBS television program. The success of that television appearance led Gleason to produce a weekly variety program, Stage Show, hosted by the brothers on CBS from 1954 and 1956. Elvis Presley appeared on several of the telecasts. Jimmy took over leadership of the orchestra after Tommy's death. Jimmy survived his brother by only a few months and died of lung cancer, aged 53, in New York City. Broadcasts of Jimmy Dorsey and The Fabulous Dorsey Orchestra on NBC Bandstand survive from December 25, and December 31, 1956. At least two other extant broadcasts from the month of December 1956 are available as well.

Wiki Bio - WEB - IMAGES - SHOP Jimmy Dorsey

Robert Farnon

24 JULY 1917 Birth of Canadian-English composer Robert FARNON in Toronto, Ontario. d-Guernsey, 23 APR 2005.
Farnon was commissioned as a captain in the Canadian Army and became the conductor/arranger of the Canadian Band of the Allied Expeditionary Force sent overseas during World War II, which was the Canadian equivalent of the American Band of the AEF led by Major Glenn Miller. At the end of the war, Farnon decided to make England his home, and he later moved to Guernsey in the Channel Islands with his wife and children. He was considered by his peers the finest arranger in the world, and his talents influenced many composer-arrangers including Quincy Jones, all of whom acknowledge his contributions to their work. Conductor Andre Previn called him "the greatest writer for strings in the world." Robert Farnon died at the age of eighty-seven at a hospice near his home of forty years in Guernsey. He was survived by five children.


Farnon Society Biography | WEB | IMAGES | SHOP Robert Farnon

German conductor James Last honored

The former bass player and world-renowned pop big band leader James (originally Hans) Last will become honorary senator of the Hochschule fr Knste (University of the Arts) in his hometown of Bremen, Germany, next year as a tribute honoring his 80th birthday. In the 1950s Last had been an important jazz bassist who was regularly nominated Germany's number one bass player in jazz polls and recorded with the German All Stars. In the 1960s he formed his big band which moved away from jazz and became one of the most successful pop big bands. He developed a very specific big band sound that was loved by dancers from all over the world. He sold more than 80 million records and received 206 Golden and 16 Platin records.
ON THE WEB | IMAGES |

SHOP James Last