Milton Delugg, Accordionist, Composer and ‘Tonight Show’ Bandleader, Dies at 96

Milton DeLugg (December 2, 1918 – April 6, 2015) was an American musician, composer and arranger. Delugg accompanied Al Jolson, worked with the game show producer Chuck Barris and was a longtime musical director for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. A talented accordionist, he appeared in short Soundies musicals and occasional movies (like 1949's Jolson Sings Again). He quickly became a successful arranger and composer and worked as band leader at Slapsy Maxie's Wilshire location in Hollywood. His clients ranged from the American Junior Miss Pageant to Jackie Wilson, and he was a musician on such radio programs as The Abe Burrows Show. One of his best-known tunes is an arrangement of the song "The Happy Wanderer", and his brassy polka "Hoop Dee Doo" became a game show staple. He is also the composer of "Hooray for Santy Claus", the catchy theme song for the low-budget motion picture Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

He also composed "Roller Coaster" - recorded by Henri Rene Orchestra on RCA Victor. It was used as the closing theme for the popular Goodson-Todman panel show What's My Line? from the early 1950s until its cancellation in 1967. In 1950 and 1951, Delugg was musical director, bandleader, and accordionist on Broadway Open House an NBC late-night television program which has been considered a forerunner to The Tonight Show. He often played a song he co-wrote, titled, "Orange Colored Sky", which was best remembered as a hit for Nat King Cole. In 1950, Delugg was also orchestra conductor for the short-lived Abe Burrows' Almanac. In 1953, he played accordion, leading the Milton Delugg Trio on the short-lived The Bill Cullen Show. Four years later, in 1957, Delugg joined the cast of the Winchell and Mahoney Show. In 1958, Milton Delugg produced Buddy Holly's single, "Rave On!". For decades, Delugg has been associated with NBC as a musical director. In 1966, he was briefly musical director of The Tonight Show Band during the tenure of Johnny Carson.

WIKIPEDIA                         Oral History Video

 VIDEO: Broadway Open House 1951 feat. The Mellowlarks singing Yesterday... Before David Letterman and Jay Leno there was Johnny Carson and Jack Paar. Before them there was Broadway Open house with Jerry Lester. It was network television's first late night comedy, variety series. Clip includes a catchy Blatz Beer jingle. Also the shows vocal group, the Mello Larks, sing Yesterday (not the Paul McCartney song). The accordion player who puffs on a big cigar, Milton DeLugg, is still in the music business! He's musical director of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Made with public domain material from archive.org

 

Conductor Ray Charles has died, age 96

Ray Charles, an Emmy-winning choral director, lyricist and composer who worked with Perry Como for three decades, sang the theme song for the television sitcom "Three's Company" and didn't mind being known as "the other Ray Charles," died Monday 6 April 2015, at his Beverly Hills home. He was 96. 

 Charles Raymond Offenberg (September 13, 1918 – April 6, 2015), better known as Ray Charles, was an American musician, singer, songwriter, vocal arranger and conductor who is best known as organizer and leader of the Ray Charles Singers. The Ray Charles Singers were featured on Perry Como's records, radio shows and television shows for 35 years. The Ray Charles Singers are also known for a series of 30 choral record albums produced in the 1950s and 1960s for the Essex, MGM, Decca and Command labels. As a vocalist, Charles, along with Julia Rinker Miller, is known for singing the theme song to the television series Three's Company ("Come and Knock on Our Door"). As a songwriter, Charles is best known for the choral anthem "Fifty Nifty United States," in which he set the names of the states to music in alphabetical order. It was originally written for The Perry Como Show. He is also known for "Letters, We Get Letters," also originally written for The Perry Como Show and later used on Late Show with David Letterman. In his later years, he continued to serve as a musical consultant to television programs, most notably for 31 years on the Kennedy Center Honors. Charles was acknowledged as an authority on American popular music.

WIKIPEDIA          

Andrew Porter, New Yorker Classical Music Critic, Dies at 86

Mr. Porter, who also pieced together a restored version of Don Carlos, directed operas as well, and translated librettos from the many languages he knew. Andrew Porter (26 August 1928 – 3 April 2015) was a British music critic, scholar, organist, and opera director. He studied organ at University College, Oxford University, in the late 1940s, then began writing music criticism for various London newspapers, including The Times and The Daily Telegraph. In 1953 he joined The Financial Times, where he served as the lead critic until 1972. Stanley Sadie, in the 2001 edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, wrote that Porter "built up a distinctive tradition of criticism, with longer notices than were customary in British daily papers, based on his elegant, spacious literary style and always informed by a knowledge of music history and the findings of textual scholarship as well as an exceptionally wide range of sympathies."WIKIPEDIA

Lew Soloff, Trumpeter for Blood, Sweat and Tears, Dies at 71

Mr. Soloff played across many genres, leading the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, but he reached a broader audience as a member of the jazz-rock band Blood Sweat and Tears. Jazz Times...|...NYTimes VIDEO: The Manhattan Brass Quintet (Lew Soloff - trumpet, Wayne du Maine - trumpet, R.J. Kelley - French horn, David Taylor - bass trombone, Michael Seltzer - trombone) perform Wynton Marsalis' "Spiritual & Blues" on December 9, 2009 at the Lyric Chamber Music Society of New York. LewSoloff.com to learn more about Lew's career, recordings and upcoming performances and more. 

Ezra Laderman,Weaver of Eclectic ‘Marilyn’ Opera, Dies at 90

Ezra Laderman (29 June 1924 – 28 February 2015) was an American composer of classical music. He was born in Brooklyn. Laderman has been commissioned three times by the Philadelphia Orchestra, twice by the National, Louisville and Chicago Symphonies as well as from the New York Philharmonic, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth, Syracuse, Denver, Columbus, Albany, and New Haven Symphony Orchestras. In addition he has written for such distinguished artists as Jean-Pierre Rampal, Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, Sherrill Milnes, Aldo Parisot, Samuel Baron, David Shifrin, Ransom Wilson, Judith Raskin, Elmar Oliveira, Erica Morini, Nathaniel Rosen, Stephen Kates, Toby Appel, and Leonard Arner, among many others. In 1991 he was elected into the membership of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and, in 2006, he was elected president for a three-year term ending in 2009. Up thru June 2014 Laderman taught music composition at Yale University's School of Music. A resident of Teaneck, New Jersey, Laderman was named as Dean at the Yale School of Music in 1989 and served in that position to 1995 WIKIPEDIA

VIDEO (Audio): Ezra Laderman (1924-2015): The second movement from "Parisot" for 'Cello Ensemble- The Yale Cellos directed by Aldo Parisot from Albany TROY454 (2001) 

Clark Terry, jazz virtuoso with Basie, Ellington and ‘Tonight Show,’ dies

Washington Post Obit...|...WIKIPEDIA

 Clark Terry (December 14, 1920 – February 21, 2015)

He was an American swing and bebop trumpeter, a pioneer of the flugelhorn in jazz, educator, and NEA Jazz Masters inductee. He played with Charlie Barnet (1947), Count Basie (1948–1951), Duke Ellington (1951–1959) and Quincy Jones (1960). Terry's career in jazz spanned more than seventy years and he is among the most recorded of jazz musicians. VIDEO: Clark Terry's performance of "Mumbles" from The Legends of Jazz episode "The Golden Horns"

British Composer/Pianist John McCabe Dies

John McCabe, CBE (21 April 1939 – 13 February 2015) was a British composer and pianist. He created works in many different forms, including symphonies, ballets, and solo works for the piano. He served as principal of the London College of Music from 1983 to 1990. Guy Rickards described him as "one of Britain’s finest composers in the past half-century" and "a pianist of formidable gifts and wide-ranging sympathies.

"WIKIPEDIA



VIDEO (Audio) John McCabe : Three Folk Songs op.19 (1963) Dörte Blase, soprano - Wilfried Berk, clarinet - Elisabeth Berk-Seiz, piano

 

John Fox, conductor, arranger

Beautiful music's legendary arranger/conductor/composer John Fox passed away 10 February, 2015 in a hospital near his lifelong home in Surrey, England, at the age of 91.

John Fox's natural talents for composing, arranging and conducting were tenderly nurtured in London's Royal College of Music where he achieved ARCM (Associate of Royal College of Music). John's undeniable genius forged in the crucible of toil, study and unremitting search for perfection has long been recognised by his peers. This autobiography contains the ups and downs of a lifetime in music some sad times, emotional and happy and some tragic disasters. Millions of listeners in the USA, Great Britain, Japan, South Africa and Germany, plus many other countries throughout the world, have found much pleasure and exhilaration in John's wonderful music including radio networks, his many record albums and live performances. Determination and hard work have seen him through some hard times, but it proves that if you have a talent (not only in music) that with a lot of hard study and love, the world will be at your feet!

 --Chris Morgan, BBC Executive Producer via amazon.com

Anita Darian, a Singer With an Eclectic Range, Dies at 87

A City Center regular, Ms. Darian performed Natalie in Strauss’s “Die Fledermaus” and Pitti-Sing in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado” there in 1959, and played Julie in “Show Boat” in 1961. She also played Lady Thiang in several different City Center productions of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The King and I.” Ms. Darian was a session singer and stage performer when she was asked by the producers Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore and the songwriter George David Weiss to provide backing vocals for “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” which Mr. Weiss had adapted from a South African song. Her soaring, high-pitched vocal provided a counterpoint to the lead vocals and the harmonized lower-register “wimowehs,” and the record spent three weeks atop the Billboard pop chart.

NYTimes Obit...|...WIKIPEDIA



VIDEO: Anita Darian, a voice that all of us have heard singing the music of our lives, sings "Love Look Away" from the Broadway production of "Flower Drum Song." She was doing the role on Broadway, and this was a live TV appearance that was found in some amazing archives.


Next VIDEO (AUDIO ONLY)... Here is The Tokens hit, The Lion Sleeps Tonight. Opera singer Anita Darian was brought in for the soprano during and after the sax solo. Her voice almost sounds like an instrument on the record.

 

Aldo Ciccolini Dies at 89; Pianist Interpreted Satie

Aldo Ciccolini (Italian pronunciation: [ˈaldo tʃikkoˈlini]; 15 August 1925 – 1 February 2015) was an Italian-French pianist. WIKIPEDIA
Aldo Ciccolini was born in Naples. His father, who bore the title of Marquis of Macerara, worked as a typographer. He took his first lessons with Maria Vigliarolo d'Ovidio, and entered Naples Conservatory in 1934 at the age of 9, by special permission of the director, Francesco Cilea. There he studied piano with Paolo Denza, a pupil of Ferruccio Busoni, and harmony and counterpoint with Achille Longo. He began his performing career playing at the Teatro San Carlo at the age of 16. However, by 1946 he was reduced to playing in bars to support his family. In 1949, he won, ex-aequo (tied) with Ventsislav Yankov, the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition in Paris (among the other prizewinners were Paul Badura-Skoda and Pierre Barbizet). He became a French citizen in 1969 and taught at the Conservatoire de Paris from 1970 to 1988, where his students included Akiko Ebi, Géry Moutier, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Artur Pizarro, Nicholas Angelich, André Sayasov and Jean-Luc Kandyoti. Among his students were also Roberto Cominati, Andrea Padova, Filippo Faes, Francesco Libetta, Domenico Piccichè and Jean-Marc Savelli.

 

VIDEO: Aldo Ciccolini: Gymnopedie n.1 (Satie) Dal concerto per festeggiare gli 85 anni (2010) 

Rod McKuen 1933 - 2015

Rodney Marvin "Rod" McKuen (April 29, 1933 – January 29, 2015) was an American poet, songwriter, composer, and singer. He was one of the best-selling poets in the United States during the late 1960s. Throughout his career, McKuen produced a wide range of recordings, which included popular music, spoken word poetry, film soundtracks, and classical music. He earned two Oscar nominations and one Pulitzer nomination for his serious music compositions. McKuen's translations and adaptations of the songs of Jacques Brel were instrumental in bringing the Belgian songwriter to prominence in the English-speaking world. His poetry deals with themes of love, the natural world, and spirituality, and his thirty books of poetry have sold millions of copies. McKuen had recently been hospitalized and died Thursday, January 29, 2015, at a Beverly Hills rehabilitation center of respiratory arrest after suffering from pneumonia.

  WIKIPEDIA...|...LATimes Obit

VIDEO: Rod McKuen ~ IF YOU GO AWAY ~ song by Jacques Brel. English lyrics by Rod McKuen. McKuen and Jacques Brel collaborated on many songs that became hits. For this reason the two formed a close friendship. McKuen says: "When news of jacques death came I stayed locked in my bedroom and drank for a week."

 

Ward Swingle, musician who made Bach swing, dies at 87

Ward Lamar Swingle (September 21, 1927 – January 19, 2015) was an American vocalist and jazz musician who founded The Swingle Singers in France in 1962. Swingle then moved to France in 1951 on a Fulbright scholarship, where he studied piano with Walter Gieseking and also worked as a rehearsal pianist for Les Ballets de Paris. In 1959, he was a founding member of Les Double Six of Paris, which specialised in scat singing of jazz standards. Swingle subsequently applied the scat singing idea to the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. This concept was the foundation for The Swingle Singers, which became fully established by 1962. The Swingle Singers released their albums Jazz Sebastian Bach and Bach's Greatest Hits in 1963. Their early recordings won five Grammy Awards.

  WIKIPEDIA


VIDEO: BACH & friends - A two-hour Documentary with Joshua Bell, Bobby McFerrin, Béla Fleck, Philip Glass, Chris Thile, Hilary Hahn, Edgar Meyer, Simone Dinnerstein, Emerson String Quartet, Manuel Barrueco, Swingle Singers, Glenn Gould...

Elena Obraztsova, diva of the Bolshoi Opera, Is Dead at 75

WIKIPEDIA...|...NYTimes Obit

Elena Vasiliyevna Obraztsova (Russian: Елена Васильевна Образцова; 7 July 1939 – 12 January 2015) was a Russian mezzo-soprano, widely recognised as one of the greatest opera singers of all time, thanks to her outstanding stage presence and vocal abilities.

VIDEO: From Bizet 's Carmen Act 1. Vienna State Opera. Carlos Kleiber conductor. December 9, 1978

Ervin Drake, Composer of Pop Songs, Dies at 95

Ervin Maurice Druckman (April 3, 1919 – January 15, 2015), better known as Ervin Drake, was an American songwriter whose works include such American Songbook standards...

Frank Sinatra’s “It Was a Very Good Year,” Billie Holiday’s “Good Morning Heartache” and the inspirational “I Believe,” sung by Frankie Laine.Mr. Drake wrote the words and music for the wistful “It Was a Very Good Year” in 1961 for Bob Shane of the Kingston Trio. Mr. Sinatra heard it on his car radio driving to Palm Springs, Calif., and his recording of it on a comeback album in 1966 hit the Top 10.His other songs include “Across the Wide Missouri,” “A Room Without Windows,” “Castle Rock” and “Father of the Girls.” Among the other stars who recorded his lyrics were the Andrews Sisters, Tony Bennett, Duke Ellington, Barbra Streisand and Sarah Vaughan. The Sinatra version has remained a staple on radio and sometimes on television. NYTimes Obit...|...WIKIPEDIA

VIDEO: Ervin Drake, the composer of 'It Was A Very Good Year' tells the story of how Sinatra came to record this song.

 

Polish-born conductor Jerzy Semkow passed away at the age of 86.

Jerzy Semkow (12 October 1928 – 23 December 2014)
was a Polish conductor.A longtime French citizen who resided in Paris, Semkow served as principal conductor of the National Opera in Warsaw (1959-1962), the Royal Danish Opera and Orchestra in Copenhagen (1966 to 1976), and as Music Director of the Orchestra of Radio-Televisione Italiana (RAI) in Rome. Between 1975 and 1979 he was Music Director of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. He was an assistant conductor with Evgeny Mravinsky with the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra. Semkow enjoyed long associations as a regular guest conductor with American orchestras, including the Detroit Symphony and the Rochester Philharmonic. His mentors included Erich Kleiber, Bruno Walter and Tullio Serafin.  Born in Radomsko Poland. WIKIPEDIA BIO

Claude Frank, Pianist Admired for Performances of Beethoven, Is Dead at 89

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI...DEC. 28, 2014, NYTimes...|...WIKIPEDIA BIO 

The American pianist Claude Frank, widely admired for his insightful, sensitive performances of the solo and chamber works of the Germanic masters, and an influential teacher to generations of pianists, died on Saturday, 27 December 2014,  at his home in Manhattan, three days after turning 89.

 Claude Frank (December 24, 1925 – December 27, 2014) was a German-born, American Jewish pianist whose career included appearances at major festivals, and in recital halls around the world.

Peter "Pete" Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an American folk singer and activist.

A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene", which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. Members of the Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, he re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, counterculture and environmental causes.

  WIKIPEDIA BIO

Janis Martin, Opera Star Who Stretched Her Range, Dies at 75

Ms. Martin, a mezzo-soprano who became a soprano, gained international recognition for her performances in Wagner and Strauss operas.
By DANIEL E. SLOTNIK, NYTimes...|...WIKIPEDIA
 Janis Martin (August 16, 1939 – December 13, 2014) was an American opera singer who sang leading roles first as a mezzo-soprano and later as a soprano in opera houses throughout Europe and the United States. She was particularly known for her performances in the operas of Richard Wagner and sang at the Bayreuth Festival from 1968 to 1997.

Big Band Legend Buddy DeFranco has died

Boniface Ferdinand Leonard "Buddy" DeFranco (February 17, 1923 – December 24, 2014) was an American jazz clarinet player. DeFranco began his professional career just as swing music and big bands — many of which were led by clarinetists like Artie Shaw, and Benny Goodman — were in decline. While most jazz clarinet players did not adapt to this change, DeFranco successfully continued to play clarinet exclusively, and was one of the few bebop clarinetists. In 1950, DeFranco spent a year with Count Basie's Septet. He led small combo in the early 1950s which included pianist Sonny Clark and guitarist Tal Farlow. In this period, DeFranco recorded for MGM Records, Norgran and Verve, the latter two labels were owned by Norman Granz. He was bandleader of the Glenn Miller Orchestra from 1966 to 1974, under the name, "The World Famous Glenn Miller Orchestra, Directed By Buddy DeFranco". He also performed with Gene Krupa, Charlie Barnet, Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson and many others, and released dozens of albums as a leader. WIKIPEDIA BIO