Pete Rugolo die - arranger of Stan Kenton

Pete Rugolo, the chief arranger for the Stan Kenton Orchestra in its late-1940s heyday and a prolific composer and arranger for television and film, including the series “Richard Diamond, Private Detective,” “The Fugitive” and “Run for Your Life,” died on Sunday in Sherman Oaks, Calif. He was 95.

[Portrait of Stan Kenton, Pete Rugolo, and Bob Graettinger, Richmond, Va.(?), 1947 or 1948] (LOC)

His death was confirmed by his daughter, Gina Rugolo Judd.

Mr. Rugolo (pronounced ROO-guh-lo) was still in uniform, leading the Army band at Fort Scott in San Francisco, when he handed a half-dozen arrangements to his idol Stan Kenton at the Golden Gate Theater. When he left the service, he was hired by Kenton and went on to write more than a hundred arrangements for that big band, helping establish the progressive sound of its peak years.

After Kenton dissolved the group in 1949, Mr. Rugolo became the music director of Capitol Records in New York. There, in addition to producing Harry Belafonte’s early pop records and the Four Freshmen, he signed the Miles Davis Nonet, which played arrangements by Gil Evans, Gerry Mulligan and others.

In three days of sessions, he helped produce a dozen 78s by the group that introduced a cooled-down interpretation of bebop. The records sold poorly at the time, but Mr. Rugolo lobbied Capitol to release nearly all of them in 1957 on a 12-inch LP, “Birth of the Cool,” one of the landmark albums in jazz.

Mr. Rugolo also recorded dozens of his own albums and wrote arrangements for a long list of singers that included Nat King Cole, June Christy, Dinah Washington and Mel Tormé. He later became a highly sought-after composer and arranger for television and film.

He made his mark in television at a time when noirish urban detective series and Henry Mancini’s groundbreaking music for “Peter Gunn” opened the way for jazzy big-band scores. He wrote the theme music for “The Thin Man,” “Richard Diamond, Private Detective,” “The Fugitive” and “Run for Your Life,” and the scores for many episodes of shows as varied as “Leave It to Beaver,” “The Bold Ones: The Lawyers,” “Alias Smith and Jones” and “M*A*S*H.”

Pietro Rugolo was born on Dec. 25, 1915, in San Piero Patti, Sicily. His father, who played the baritone horn, took the family to the United States five years later and settled in Santa Rosa, Calif., where his son learned to play French horn and classical piano and listened intently to the big bands of Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa and Ray Noble on the radio.

Mr. Rugolo earned a bachelor’s degree in music education from San Francisco State College in 1939 and planned to become a teacher, but pursued graduate work at Mills College in Oakland when he found out that the avant-garde composer Darius Milhaud would be teaching there.

After receiving a master’s degree from Mills and working as a composer and arranger for a band led by the guitarist Johnny Richards, he was drafted into the Army, where the band members at Fort Scott included Paul Desmond, later the saxophonist in the Dave Brubeck Quartet.

The first Stan Kenton records came out while Mr. Rugolo was in the service. “When I heard them, I just loved the sound of the band,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1993. “I started copying the music down from the records and began writing that way; my band sounded like a young Stan Kenton Orchestra.” Mr. Rugolo’s arrangements, building on the orchestra’s aggressive, blasting style, moved into the complex harmonic and rhythmic territory that defined the Kenton sound of those years.

In the early 1950s, Mr. Rugolo was a staff composer and arranger for MGM studios and the West Coast musical director of Mercury Records. While at Mercury, he recorded several albums under his own name using unusual combinations of instruments, including “Reeds in Hi-Fi,” “Ten Trumpets and Two Guitars” and “Ten Saxophones and Two Basses.”

In the 1960 film “Where the Boys Are,” an experimental combo plays several compositions by Mr. Rugolo, which the group’s way-out leader, Frank Gorshin, dubs “dialectic jazz.” The readers of Down Beat magazine voted Mr. Rugolo best arranger five times between 1947 and 1954.

In addition to his daughter, Gina, of Beverly Hills, Calif., he is survived by his wife, the former Edye Gaffney; two sons, Peter Rugolo Jr. and Tony Rugolo, both of Sherman Oaks; and three grandchildren.

Lawrence Welk - The Green Hornet Theme

Mr. Roger Williams - goodbye to the great pianist

Pianista Roger Williams morre de cancro aos 87 anos

Conhecido como o «pianista dos presidentes» por se ter apresentado para nove chefes de Governo americanos, o músico Roger Williams morreu no sábado (08/10/2011), aos 87 anos, vítima de um cancro no pâncreas, informou o seu assessor.

Além das exibições na Casa Branca, o pianista também obteve vários sucessos na sua carreira, como o álbum «Autumn Leaves», de 1958, que vendeu 2 milhões de cópias. O disco foi o único de caráter instrumental que chegou ao topo da lista da Billboard.

Williams, que começou a tocar piano aos três anos de idade, lançou em 1966 o álbum «Born Free», banda sonora do filme homónimo, e chegou novamente ao 1º lugar.

O músico também era um veterano da Segunda Guerra Mundial. Em 1942, aos 18 anos, teve que deixar o piano de lado para servir na Marinha. Após a guerra, o artista obteve um título de mestrado em música da Universidade de Drake.

O «pianista dos presidentes» também estudou jazz na conceituada Julliard School of Music de Nova Iorque antes de iniciar a sua bem-sucedida carreira e consolidar-se com os seus aclamados concertos e temas musicais como «The Impossible Dream», «Yellow Bird» e «Theme from Somewhere in Time».

Roger Williams, the pianist whose lush versions of familiar tunes like “Autumn Leaves” and “Born Free” became hit recordings in the 1950s and ’60s and who continued to perform into his 80s, died on Saturday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 87.

The cause was complications of pancreatic cancer, his secretary and personal assistant, Jacque Heebner, said.

Seven singles by Mr. Williams made it onto the Billboard Top 40, perhaps the best known of which — and the one that brought him stardom — was “Autumn Leaves.” Over his long career he recorded more than 100 albums, among them “Roger Williams Plays Your All-Time Favorites” and “The Greatest Popular Pianist.”

Mr. Williams “virtually transformed the piano into a harp,” Joseph Lanza, a music historian, wrote in 1994 in his book, “Elevator Music,” adding that he “cultivated a flair for making dramatic sweeps from classical to jazz to country to soft rock-and-roll.”

He performed on stages across the United States, from Carnegie Hall to the Hollywood Bowl, and headlined for many years at the MGM Grand and the Tropicana in Las Vegas. Nine presidents, including Harry S. Truman and George W. Bush, brought him to the White House to provide soothing sounds for dinner guests.

Certainly “Autumn Leaves” was among his most soothing, with its cascading arpeggios evoking falling leaves. Mr. Williams’s instrumental version of that song, written in 1945 and originally known as “Les Feuilles Mortes” (“The Dead Leaves”), with music by Joseph Kosma and French lyrics by Jacques Prévert (Johnny Mercer wrote the English lyrics), was No. 1 on the Billboard singles chart for four weeks in 1955 and stayed in the Top 40 for 26 weeks.

Accompanied by orchestra and chorus, Mr. Williams captured the expanse of the African savanna with his version of the theme from the 1966 movie “Born Free,” about a lioness raised as a pet in Kenya, and the No. 7 spot during the record’s 14 weeks in the Top 40 in 1966. His other Top 40 hits were “Wanting You” (1956); “La Mer,” or “Beyond the Sea” (1956); “Almost Paradise” (1957); “Till” (1957); and “Near You,” which reached the Top 10 in 1958.

In 1960, Mr. Williams was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Many critics were less than enamored with the kind of “easy listening” Mr. Williams embodied, deriding his approach as bland and unchallenging. But audiences all over the world embraced his music enthusiastically.

Though his musicality was apparent even when he was a toddler, Roger Williams was not always Roger Williams.

He was born Louis Jacob Weertz in Omaha on Oct. 1, 1924, and grew up in Des Moines, the only child of Frederick and Dorothea Weertz. His father was a Lutheran minister who had once been a professional boxer; his mother was a music teacher. (It was only after the founder of Kapp Records, David Kapp, signed him to a contract in 1954 that he changed his name, at Mr. Kapp’s insistence.)

“I could play ‘Home Sweet Home’ on the harmonica when I was 3,” Mr. Williams told The Daily Mirror in 1955. By the time he was in high school he was proficient on 12 other instruments. “Everything but the oboe and bassoon,” he said, “but I finally settled for what I liked best — the piano.”

Mr. Williams graduated from Idaho State University in 1949, earned a master’s degree in music from Drake University in Des Moines a year later and then came to New York to study at the Juilliard School, where the renowned jazz pianist Teddy Wilson took him under his wing.

At Mr. Wilson’s urging, he competed on Arthur Godfrey’s “Talent Scouts” in 1952, and won. That led to many nightclub bookings and his first album for Kapp, which did not sell very well. Then came “Autumn Leaves.”

What followed was a meandering path through many of the most nostalgia-inducing melodies of the last half of the 20th century, among them “A Time for Us,” “The Impossible Dream,” “On a Clear Day,” “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” and “Lara’s Theme” from “Dr. Zhivago.”

Mr. Williams is survived by two daughters, Laura Fisher of Carmel, Calif., and Alice Jung of New York, and five grandchildren.

Throughout his career, Mr. Williams was unabashed about his inclination for sentimentality.

“If a song’s lyrics say ‘I love you,’ then I mean just that when I play the notes,” he told The Christian Science Monitor in 1970. “The audience, live or at home, can sense if an artist really means what he plays. I purposely choose music which is warm and which I know I can get across. I know myself.”

Ron Grainer

Ron Grainer was one of the outstanding composers of music for British television. He was born in a small town called Atherton, Queensland, Australia on 11th August 1922, where his father owned the local milk bar. His mother played piano and Ron was on the keyboard from the age of two and considered a child genius, playing concerts for the local community by the age of six. He also showed the first sign of his versatility at the tender age of four when he began to learn the violin, practicing for two hours before and after school. In order to develop this talent further, he also studied the piano to such a level that, by his early teens he was a proficient performer on both instruments. He was never allowed to play any games which might injure his fingers so led a pretty lonely life. During these years he was an excellent scholar who also had to complete homework assignments. Maths was his special subject, which helped enormously in his orchestrations later on. Read more ...

Bobby Byrne Orchestra

Orchestra leader Bobby Byrne is best remembered for his romantic but forceful trombone style. He was and is considered by many critics to be the definitive trombonist of his era. ''Brilliant'' and ''amazing'' were words often used to describe his playing. Byrne's one fault, though, was that he tried too hard. He was serious and dedicated, and he was a perfectionist. His band was capable of producing some of the best music of the swing era but was often held back by the tension Byrne created in his drive for exactitude.

A child prodigy on his instrument, Byrne was hired by the Dorsey Brothers in 1934 at only 16 years of age. When Tommy Dorsey walked out on the band and formed his own orchestra Byrne remained with Jimmy and took over as lead trombone. He soon began to receive great critical acclaim for his musicianship, and in 1939, with Jimmy's backing, he formed his own orchestra.

Byrne's group struggled at first. His big break finally came in 1941 when the orchestra landed a spot at the Glen Island Casino. Meadowbrook owner Frank Dailey, always ready to one up the Casino, heard about the booking and immediately offered Byrne a spot at his ballroom prior to the Casino engagement. Suddenly Byrne was hot property. Regular radio broadcasts opened the door to more bookings and a record contract with Decca.

Problems plagued the group, however. Its talented female vocalist, Dorothy Claire, left in 1941 to replace Marion Hutton in Glenn Miller's band, and Byrne himself was forced to take time off due to severe appendicitis during an engagement at the Strand Theater in New York. In danger of losing his booking, other area bandleaders came to the rescue and took turns fronting his orchestra in their free time. Things eventually began to turn around, however, when Claire returned in April 1942. The very capable Stuart Wade was also brought in on vocals, and Don Redman joined the orchestra to provide arrangements.

However, despite all the talent that graced his band Byrne was never satisfied with his musicians or himself. He was a tense and dedicated orchestra leader. He worked his men seven days a week and would not tolerate wrong notes. Instead of having the desired effect of producing a perfect band his methods and personality kept his orchestra from achieving true success. This tendency to overachieve also prevented him from fully integrating Redman's complicated and relaxed charts. He soon fired him and brought in Sid Brantley, who wrote simpler yet still strong arrangements that better fit Byrne's method of bandleading. Powered by Brantley's charts the group finally seemed to be hitting its stride when in late 1942 Byrne disbanded it to accept a commission in the Army Air Force. He had long expressed an interest in flying and served as both a bandleader and a pilot during the war.

Upon his discharge in 1945 Byrne began freelancing around the New York City area, often working with cornetist Bobby Hackett. He also formed a new orchestra in 1946, which featured saxophonist Larry Elgart. The group lasted only a few years however. Byrne himself remained active as both a musician and bandleader up through the 1970s. He worked often on television, leading a dixieland combo on Steve Allen's program from 1952 to 1954, appearing on The Lucky Strike Hit Parade, and performing on the shows of Milton Berle, Perry Como, and Patti Page. He also served as A&R director for Command Records and often performed as a studio musician for that label.

Two of your 60's records : Made in Paris and Promise Her Anything (1966)

In the early 1970s Byrne completely left the music industry for the business world, though he occasionally continued to perform. He retired permanently in the late 1980s. Aside from his trombone work, Bobby Byrne was a gifted musician on several instruments.

Speedy West

Wesley Webb West (January 25, 1924 – November 15, 2003), better known as Speedy West, was an American pedal steel guitarist and record producer. He frequently played with Jimmy Bryant, both in their own duo and as part of the regular Capitol Records backing band for Tennessee Ernie Ford and many others. He also played on Loretta Lynn's first single.

Born Wesley Webb West January 25, 1924 in Springfield, Missouri to parents, Finley G. and Sue Arthur West. Finley was a Linotype operator at a gospel publishing company, and in his spare time, played guitar and sang gospel songs.

At age nine, Wesley became interested in music because of his friends and neighbors, the Cline's boys, three brothers. One played steel guitar, another banjo and the other played guitar. The boys' parents suggested to Wesley's father, that he should buy him an inexpensive $12 Hawaiian guitar. Wesley spent all the time he could learning to play the instrument with the help of the Cline's as well as his father.

Wesley's interest in music continued to grow and he yearned for a more expensive instrument, namely, a National steel-bodied resonator model costing $125, which the West family could not afford. In order to give Wesley what he so desperately wanted, his father sold his own guitar in order to buy the National. In the 9th grade he won a prize in a school amateur contest. During a jam session sponsored by KWTO-AM, Slim Wilson introduced young Wesley as Speedy West and the name stuck.

Capitol Records and Jimmy Bryant

In 1948, West was working at Murphy's Club, located in the skidrow area of Los Angeles, when he first met Jimmy Bryant. Bryant was working down the street from Murphy's, at the Fargo Club. One night Bryant came to see West play and said to him: "I really like your playing -- why don't you come down to the Fargo Club and dig me". West was so impressed by Bryant's talent that he said, "he couldn't believe what he was hearing". That was the beginning of their long professional and personal relationship.

After 1956, Bryant was dropped by Capitol Records, so West cut a solo LP in 1958 called West of Hawaiï, and then teamed up with guitarist, Roy Lanham. Roy, along with Billy Strange, Billy Liebert and drummer Earl Palmer, played on West's last Capitol album in 1962, Guitar Spectacular, including the tracks "Double or Nothing", "Afternoon of a Swan" and "Reflections from the Moon". Strange and Lanham alternated on lead guitar.
Capitol Records and Jimmy Bryant

In 1948, West was working at Murphy's Club, located in the skidrow area of Los Angeles, when he first met Jimmy Bryant. Bryant was working down the street from Murphy's, at the Fargo Club. One night Bryant came to see West play and said to him: "I really like your playing -- why don't you come down to the Fargo Club and dig me". West was so impressed by Bryant's talent that he said, "he couldn't believe what he was hearing". That was the beginning of their long professional and personal relationship.

After 1956, Bryant was dropped by Capitol Records, so West cut a solo LP in 1958 called West of Hawaiï, and then teamed up with guitarist, Roy Lanham. Roy, along with Billy Strange, Billy Liebert and drummer Earl Palmer, played on West's last Capitol album in 1962, Guitar Spectacular, including the tracks "Double or Nothing", "Afternoon of a Swan" and "Reflections from the Moon". Strange and Lanham alternated on lead guitar.

On November 15, 2003, at the age of 79, West died in his home in Tulsa due to long term health complications. He was preceded in death by his eldest son Don, and was survived by his wife Mary; son Gary who is also a musician and goes by the name Speedy West Jr.; his daughters Tauni and DeAnn; several grandchildren; and ex-wife Opal Mae.

The great hits of Speedy West : Afternoon of a swan, West of Samoa, Yodeling Guitar

Speedy West Jr. die - in may of 2011

The showroom staff wouldn't let him in to see the band because of the holes in his jeans.

The Tulsa guitarist, who had traveled to Oklahoma City after hearing that keyboardist Steve Hardin was looking for a Tulsa guitar player for his band, could see and hear, however, from where he was standing - the band already had a guitarist.

West almost turned around and walked out.
But he didn't, and when the band came out for a break, he introduced himself, told them who he had played with in Tulsa and who his father was.
"They fired their guitarist that night, and I got the best job in town," West told the Tulsa World years later.
West, better known by his stage name, Speedy West Jr., was on his way to establishing himself on a much wider stage.

The son of late steel-guitar legend and Broken Arrow resident Speedy West, Gary West, who graduated from Webster High School, died Wednesday in Oklahoma City of complications from lung cancer. He was 58.
A memorial service is set for 3 p.m. May 11 at St. Luke's United Methodist Church in Oklahoma City under the direction of Buchanan Funeral Service of Oklahoma City.

In the early 1990s, West, who grew up in Tulsa, started his own band, the Speedy West Jr. Band, and played local venues frequently.

His father, Speedy West, had been associated with a uniquely identifiable country sound, but Gary West went his own way musically, building a legacy grounded in rock and power blues.

Born in Hollywood, Calif., during his father's prolific days as a Capitol Records musician, West was 5 when he got his first guitar - a gift from legendary guitar innovator Leo Fender, a close friend of his father's.

Weary of the showroom circuit, Speedy West later moved to the Tulsa area and became the manager of a Fender guitar warehouse.

Gary West learned the guitar and played with various Tulsa groups, including the Sweat Band, before moving on.

After his introduction to Oklahoma City through Hardin, he later caught on with Maya, one of the city's top show bands.

He played lead guitar with Maya from 1976 to 1992, when he left to start his own band. Later he played with Wild Oats and, more recently, with the house band at Friends Restaurant and Club in Oklahoma City.

Although they differed in styles, Gary West, who also sang vocals, and his father had great respect for one another.

The elder West once offered his assessment of his son's skills:

"He's a real good player. He plays so clean," he told the Tulsa World. "He plays too damn loud, like the rest of 'em, but he sure plays clean."

The incredible Esquivel

Juan García Esquivel (January 20, 1918 – January 3, 2002) often simply known as Esquivel!, was a Mexican band leader, pianist, and composer for television and films. He is recognized today as one of the foremost exponents of a sophisticated style of largely instrumental music that combines elements of lounge music and jazz with Latin flavors. Esquivel is sometimes called "The King of Space Age Pop" and "The Busby Berkley of Cocktail Music." Esquivel is considered one of the foremost exponents of a style of late 1950s-early 1960s quirky instrumental pop that became known (in retrospect) as "Space Age Bachelor Pad Music".

He was born in Tampico, Tamaulipas, and his family moved to Mexico City in 1928 where he studied at the UNAM.

A very rare compilation with Combustible Edison & Esquivel - Miniskirt, Politecnico Rock & Roll, Aurora (Se você fosse sincera) and Universidad Rock & Roll.

Discography

(12" LP releases, US and Mexico)

Las Tandas de Juan Garcia Esquivel (1957, RCA Victor Mexico)
To Love Again (1957, RCA Victor)
Cabaret Tragico (April 1958, RCA Victor Mexico)
Other Worlds Other Sounds (October 1958, RCA Victor)
Four Corners of the World (December 1958, RCA Victor)
Exploring New Sounds in Hi-Fi/Stereo (May 1959, RCA Victor)
The Ames Brothers: Hello Amigos (1959, RCA Victor)
Strings Aflame (August 1959, RCA Victor)
The Merriest of Christmas Pops (1959, RCA Victor)
Infinity in Sound, Vol. 1 (August 1960, RCA Victor)
Infinity in Sound, Vol. 2 (April 1961, RCA Victor)
Latin-Esque (1962, RCA Victor)
More of Other Worlds Other Sounds (1962, Reprise Records)
The Living Strings: In a Mellow Mood (1962, RCA Camden)
The Genius of Esquivel (1967, RCA Victor)
1968 Esquivel!! (1968, RCA Mexico)
Burbujas (1979)
Odisea Burbujas (1980)
Vamos al Circo (1981)

Jerry Leiber die - author of 50's hits

From left, Mike Stoller, Elvis Presley and Jerry Leiber at MGM Studios in 1957.

Jerry Leiber, the lyricist who, with his partner, Mike Stoller, wrote some of the most enduring classics in the history of rock ’n’ roll, including “Hound Dog,” “Yakety Yak,” “Stand By Me” and “On Broadway,” died on Monday in Los Angeles. He was 78.

The cause was cardio-pulmonary failure, said Randy Poe, president of Leiber & Stoller Music Publishing.

The team of Leiber and Stoller was formed in 1950, when Mr. Leiber was still a student at Fairfax High in Los Angeles and Mr. Stoller, a fellow rhythm-and-blues fanatic, was a freshman at Los Angeles City College. With Mr. Leiber contributing catchy, street-savvy lyrics and Mr. Stoller, a pianist, composing infectious, bluesy tunes, they set about writing songs with black singers and groups in mind.

In 1952, they wrote “Hound Dog” for the blues singer Big Mama Thornton. The song became an enormous hit for Elvis Presley in 1956 and made Leiber and Stoller the hottest songwriting team in rock ’n’ roll. They later wrote “Jailhouse Rock,” “Loving You,” “Don’t,” “Treat Me Nice,” “King Creole” and other songs for Presley, despite their loathing for his interpretation of “Hound Dog.”

In the late 1950s, having relocated to New York and taken their place among the constellation of talents associated with the Brill Building, they emerged as perhaps the most potent songwriting team in the genre.

Their hits for the Drifters remain some of the most admired songs in the rock ’n’ roll canon, notably “On Broadway,” written with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, and “Stand By Me” with Ben E. King. With Phil Spector, Mr. Leiber wrote the Drifters hit “Spanish Harlem.”

They wrote a series of hits for the Coasters, including “Charlie Brown,” “Young Blood” with Doc Pomus, “Searchin’,” “Poison Ivy” and “Yakety Yak.”

Werner Muller and his great sucess

He contributed numerous albums to London's Phase Four label, the longest-running of the Space Age Bachelor Pad series. But thanks to London's standard approach to liner notes, although we know exactly what channelization was used and what other Phase Four records were available, we are left knowing nothing of Werner Müller.

Fortunately, we don't have to depend on London for details. European light music fans came to know Müller from his many years as director of two of the leading popular radio orchestras in Germany. From 1948 to 1967, he led the Tanzorchester for the powerful station RIAS in Berlin. Bear Family collected a number of RIAS Tanzorchester recordings from the 1950s on Blende Auf. While with RIAS, he became associated with the singer Caterina Valente, whose cover of "Malaguena" was an international success. In an odd flip-flop, several collections of French, Italian, and other national tunes Müller recorded for Decca were released in Europe under the name of "Ricardo Santos," but in the U.S. under Müller's own name, as part of a series of "Musical Holiday" albums tied-in with the travel magazine, Holiday.

In 1967, Müller moved to Cologne to take over the Tanzorchester of radio station WDR, which had an even larger audience. Müller ensured his tenure with a versatile and perfectionist approach to his material, and as a result, his recorded material can be bold or boring, based on what the contract called for. On Hawaiian Swing, for example, he plays with right-left separation and tosses in an enjoyable assortment of percussion effects to liven up the usual selection of Hawaiian standards. On Percussion in the Sky, he uses wordless vocals, sound effects, whistling, and other touches to lend an other-worldly feeling to numbers like "The Theme from The High and the Might." In contrast, on albums like Werner Müller Plays Leroy Anderson or Great Strauss Waltzes, there's not much to write home about.

"Bodybuilder," from one of Müller's later albums, The Strip Goes On, was sampled as the basis for the song "Bentley's Gonna Sort You Out" by Bentley Rhythm Ace, a big club hit in the U.K. in 1997.

Werner Muller and his great sucess

Pensylvannia 6-5000

Moonlight Serenade