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Top Brass
''Top Brass'' (subtitled ''Featuring 5 Trumpets'') is an album by American jazz composer and arranger Ernie Wilkins featuring performances recorded in 1955 and first released on the Savoy label.Savoy Records Catalog: 12000 series accessed February 5, 2016 accessed February 5, 2016 The album consists of five original selections with trumpeters , |
Ernie Wilkins
Ernest Brooks Wilkins Jr. (July 20, 1922 – June 5, 1999) was an American jazz saxophonist, conductor and arranger who spent several years with Count Basie. He also wrote for Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, and Dizzy Gillespie. He was musical director for albums by Cannonball Adderley, Dinah Washington, Oscar Peterson, and Buddy Rich. Early career Ernest Brooks Wilkins Jr. was born on July 20, 1922 in St. Louis, Missouri. Wilkins grew up in a city rich with jazz blues where he was exposed to music early on. St. Louis in the 1930s shared many cultural influences with Kansas City, where mob-run clubs shaped a lively blues-centric sound. The music prioritized high quality over more experimental styles. Wilkins developed as a strong musician when he initially learned how to play piano and violin before taking up tenor saxophone in his teenage years. Ernie played tenor sax and clarinet with his brother Jimmy Wilkins, trombonist on "The Sumner High School Swingsters." Through band competi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ann Ronell
Ann Ronell (née Rosenblatt; December 25, 1905 – December 25, 1993) was an American composer and lyricist. She was best known for the standards " Willow Weep for Me" (1932) and "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" (1933). Early life Ronell was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to Morris and Mollie Rosenblatt, and graduated from Omaha's Central High School in 1923. She enrolled in Wheaton College, in Massachusetts, but transferred after her sophomore year to pursue a serious music education.Benjamin Sears"Ann Ronell" ''American National Biography Online'', 2000 She graduated from Radcliffe College, where she studied music under Walter Piston. While at Radcliffe, Ronell wrote music for college plays and contributed reviews and interviews to the school's music publication. After interviewing George Gershwin, she struck up a friendship with the composer, who hired her as a rehearsal pianist for his show '' Rosalie''. Gershwin suggested that she change her name from Rosenblatt to Ronell. Musi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John La Touche (lyricist)
John Treville Latouche (La Touche) (November 13, 1914, Baltimore, Maryland – August 7, 1956, Calais, Vermont) was a lyricist and bookwriter in American musical theater. Biography John Treville Latouche was born in Baltimore, Maryland. His family moved to Richmond, Virginia, when he was four months old. There he attended John Marshall High School before going north to Columbia University. He became involved in music and theater, writing for the Varsity Show and joining the Philolexian Society. He did not graduate. In 1937 Latouche contributed two songs in the revue ''Pins and Needles''. For the show ''Sing For Your Supper'' (1939), he wrote the lyrics for "Ballad for Uncle Sam", later retitled " Ballad for Americans", with music by Earl Robinson. It was featured at both the 1940 Republican Convention and the convention of the American Communist Party, and was extremely popular in 1940s America. This 13-minute cantata to American democracy was written for a soloist and as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ted Fetter
Theodore Fetter (June 10, 1906 – March 13, 1996) was a Broadway lyricist who contributed material to such revues as ''The Show Is On'' (1936) and ''Billy Rose's Aquacade'' (1939), but is best remembered for co-writing the song " Taking a Chance on Love," introduced in the 1940 musical comedy '' Cabin in the Sky''. Biography Fetter started as an actor, appearing in the 1928 revival of ''Peter Pan'' and in Cole Porter's 1935 musical comedy, ''Jubilee''. Fetter was Porter's second cousin and later wrote additional lyrics for some of Porter's songs. Beginning in 1936, he wrote lyrics for a number of revues, melodramas and burlesques in collaboration with composers, Richard Lewine, Hoagy Carmichael and Vernon Duke. In 1940, Duke was working on ''Cabin in the Sky'' with lyricist John Latouche and needed a new number for star Ethel Waters. He pulled out an old "trunk song" that he had written years earlier with Fetter, called "Fooling Around With Love". With Fetter's permissio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vernon Duke
Vernon Duke ( 16 January 1969) was a Russian-born American composer and songwriter who also wrote under his birth name, Vladimir Dukelsky. He is best known for " Taking a Chance on Love," with lyrics by Ted Fetter and John Latouche (1940), "I Can't Get Started," with lyrics by Ira Gershwin (1936), " April in Paris," with lyrics by E. Y. ("Yip") Harburg (1932), and "What Is There To Say," for the '' Ziegfeld Follies'' of 1934, also with Harburg. He wrote the words and music for " Autumn in New York" (1934) for the revue '' Thumbs Up!'' In his book, ''American Popular Song, The Great Innovators 1900-1950'', composer Alec Wilder praises this song, writing, “The verse may be the most ambitious I’ve ever seen." Duke also collaborated with lyricists Johnny Mercer, Ogden Nash, and Sammy Cahn. Early life Vladimir Aleksandrovich Dukelsky ( Russian: Владимир Александрович Дукельский) was born in 1903 into a Belarusian noble family in the village ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taking A Chance On Love
"Taking a Chance on Love" is a popular song from the 1940 Broadway musical '' Cabin in the Sky''. It was introduced by Ethel Waters playing the role of Petunia Jackson both on Broadway and later in the 1943 MGM musical Cabin in the Sky. The song was written by Vernon Duke with lyrics by John La Touche and Ted Fetter (see 1940 in music). It has become a standard. Several songs from the Broadway musical were released as a 3-record shellac set under the title "The Music of Cabin in the Sky featuring Ethel Waters" in 1940. Cover versions Since the original recording, "Taking a Chance on Love" has become part of the American Songbook and has been sung and recorded by many prominent performers, including Hazel Scott in the Vincente Minnelli 1943 film '' I Dood It'', Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett and Nancy Wilson on her 2006 Grammy Award-winning '' Turned to Blue'' album In 1943, a reissue of the Benny Goodman cover featuring Helen Forrest Helen Forrest (born H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ned Washington
Ned Washington (born Edward Michael Washington, August 15, 1901 – December 20, 1976) was an American lyricist born in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Life and career Washington was nominated for eleven Academy Awards from 1940 to 1962. He won the Best Original Song award twice: in 1940 for " When You Wish Upon a Star" in ''Pinocchio'' and in 1952 for " High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin')" in ''High Noon''. Washington had his roots in vaudeville as a master of ceremonies. Having started his songwriting career with '' Earl Carroll's Vanities'' on Broadway in the late 1920s, he joined the ASCAP in 1930. In 1934, he was signed by MGM and relocated to Hollywood, eventually writing full scores for feature films. During the 1940s, he worked for a number of studios, including Paramount, Warner Brothers, Disney, and Republic. During these tenures, he collaborated with many of the great composers of the era, including Hoagy Carmichael, Victor Young, Max Steiner, and Dimitri Tio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hoagy Carmichael
Hoagland Howard "Hoagy" Carmichael (November 22, 1899 – December 27, 1981) was an American musician, composer, songwriter, actor, author and lawyer. Carmichael was one of the most successful Tin Pan Alley songwriters of the 1930s and 1940s, and was among the first singer-songwriters in the age of mass media to utilize new communication technologies such as old-time radio broadcasts, television, microphones, and sound recordings (musical records). Carmichael composed several hundred songs, including 50 that achieved hit record status. He is best known for composing four of the most-recorded American songs of all time: " Stardust" (1927), with lyrics by Mitchell Parish, "Georgia on My Mind" (1930), with lyrics by Stuart Gorrell, " The Nearness of You" (1937), with lyrics by Ned Washington, and " Heart and Soul" (1938), with lyrics by Frank Loesser. He also collaborated with famed lyricist-songwriter Johnny Mercer (1909-1976), on " Lazybones" (1933), and later " Skylark" ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Nearness Of You
"The Nearness of You" is a popular song written in 1937 by Hoagy Carmichael (1899–1981), with lyrics by Ned Washington (1901–1976). Intended for an unproduced Paramount Pictures film titled Romance In The Rough, the studio's publishing division Famous Music reregistered and published the song three years later in 1940. It was first recorded by Chick Bullock (1898–1981) and his Orchestra on Vocalion. Despite numerous accounts to the contrary, the song was never scheduled for and does not appear in the production of the 1938 Paramount film Romance in the Dark. It is also heard in the later 1940 recording "In the Mood" by the famous Glenn Miller (1904–1944) and His Orchestra, with vocals by singer Ray Eberle (1919–1979), and by many others. The song is also on the Grammy-Award-winning album ''Come Away with Me'', by Norah Jones. Covers The first big-selling version was recorded on April 28, 1940, by the Glenn Miller Orchestra (1938–1942), with a vocal by Ray Eberle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oscar Hammerstein II
Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II (; July 12, 1895 – August 23, 1960) was an American lyricist, librettist, theatrical producer, and director in musical theater for nearly 40 years. He won eight Tony Awards and two Academy Awards for Best Original Song. Many of his songs are standard repertoire for vocalists and jazz musicians. He co-wrote 850 songs. He is best known for his collaborations with composer Richard Rodgers, as the duo Rodgers and Hammerstein, whose musicals include '' Oklahoma!'', '' Carousel'', '' South Pacific'', '' The King and I'', '' Flower Drum Song'', and '' The Sound of Music''. Described by his protégé Stephen Sondheim as an "experimental playwright", Hammerstein helped bring the American musical to new maturity by popularizing musicals that focused on stories and character rather than the lighthearted entertainment that the musical had been known for beforehand. He also collaborated with Jerome Kern (with whom he wrote the 1927 music ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Rodgers
Richard Charles Rodgers (June 28, 1902 – December 30, 1979) was an American Musical composition, composer who worked primarily in musical theater. With 43 Broadway theatre, Broadway musicals and over 900 songs to his credit, Rodgers was one of the best-known American composers of the 20th century, and his compositions had a significant influence on popular music. Rodgers is known for his songwriting partnerships, first with lyricist Lorenz Hart and then with Oscar Hammerstein II. With Hart he wrote musicals throughout the 1920s and 1930s, including ''Pal Joey (musical), Pal Joey'', ''A Connecticut Yankee (musical), A Connecticut Yankee'', ''On Your Toes'' and ''Babes in Arms.'' With Hammerstein he wrote musicals through the 1940s and 1950s, such as ''Oklahoma!'', ''Flower Drum Song'', ''Carousel (musical), Carousel'', ''South Pacific (musical), South Pacific'', ''The King and I'', and ''The Sound of Music''. His collaborations with Hammerstein, in particular, are celebr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
