  |
|
|
 |
|
CD |
| 4.551 Ft
|
|
| 1. | I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm
|
| 2. | On the Alamo
|
| 3. | Perfidia
|
| 4. | Moonlight in Vermont
|
| 5. | The Continental
|
| 6. | Midnight Sun
|
| 7. | Lover
|
| 8. | Harlem Nocturne
|
| 9. | The Piccolino
|
| 10. | Shine on Harvest Moon
|
| 11. | Tangerine
|
| 12. | Ridin' High
|
| 13. | Nina Never Knew
|
| 14. | My Blue Heaven
|
| 15. | Stardust
|
| 16. | Tea for Two
|
| 17. | Swingin' Down the Lane
|
| 18. | Younger Than Springtime
|
| 19. | This Nearly Was Mine
|
| 20. | Invitation
|
| 21. | The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi
|
| 22. | Frenesi
|
| 23. | Just You, Just Me
|
| 24. | Leap Frog
|
| 25. | Goodnight Sweetheart
|
Jazz / Blues
Abe Aaron Reeds
Adam Varon Licensing
Bill Richmond Drums
Billy Usselton Reeds
Bob Burgess Trombone
Bobby Pring Trombone
Bobby Styles Trumpet
Bryan Kelley Producer
Butch Stone Reeds
Cheryl Pawelski A&R
Conrad Gozzo Trumpet
Darren Wong Illustrations, Design, Art Direction
Dave Pell Reeds
David Grupp Percussion
Dick Collins Trumpet
Dick Kenney Trombone
Dick Shreve Piano
Don Bagley Bass
Don Fagerquist Trumpet
Don Smith Trumpet
Don Wood Liner Notes
Donn Trenner Piano
Frank Collura A&R
Frank Comstock Arranger
Frank Lopez Licensing
Geoff Clarkson Piano
J. Hill Trombone, Arranger
Jerry Kadowitz Trumpet
John Banister Piano
Larry Hathaway Liner Notes, Compilation Producer, Producer, Compilation
Les Brown Reeds, Arranger
Les Brown & His Band of Renown Performer
Lloyd Morales Drums
Matt Utal Reeds
Melvin Pollan Bass
Michelle Azzopardi A&R
Mickey McMahon Trumpet
Ralph LaPolla Reeds
Ray Sims Trombone
Ray Triscari Trumpet
Roland Bundock Bass
Ron McMaster Mastering
Ronnie Lang Reeds
Roy Main Trombone
Skip Martin Arranger
Sonny Burke Arranger
Stan Stout Trumpet
Stumpy Brown Trombone
Tom Cartwright Executive Producer
Tony Rizzi Guitar
Vern Friley Trombone
Vernon Polk Guitar
Wendy Brueder Project Manager
Wes Hensel Trumpet
By the time that Les Brown signed with Capitol Records in the mid-'50s he had already become an internationally acclaimed clarinet and sax player as well as bandleader for nearly two decades. This single CD compilation gathers over two dozen tracks cut during the brief three-year stint (1955-1958) that Brown and his Band of Renown spent recording for Capitol Records. Although primarily known as a big band dance combo, Brown and company were much more jazz-oriented and improvisational than their swing contemporaries. However, they never lost their ability to keep dancers on their feet, as evidenced by their innumerable accolades from the popularity polls in Downbeat and Metronome magazines as well as the coveted Ballroom Operators Association. Much of the unqualified success that Brown retained during the burgeoning days of the rock & roll revolution was due to his association with arrangers such as Ben Homer, Wes Hensel, Skip Martin, and his primary collaborator, Frank Comstock. They keep the arrangements of pop standards "My Blue Heaven," "Tangerine," "Moonlight in Vermont," and "Shine on Harvest Moon," as well as the show tune "This Was Nearly Mine" -- from South Pacific -- light, easy, and deceptively unencumbered. The prowess of the various incarnations of the Band of Renown should not be underestimated either. The laid-back solo styles of Donn Trenner (piano) and Brown (clarinet) carry the combo with a sophisticated air borne in the spirit of the big bands. For example, "Frenesi" retains the large, elegant orchestration while simultaneously bearing the loose, metronomic quality of a jazz band. The same can be said of Comstock's tight brass arrangements, most specifically on "Just You, Just Me" and the definitive reading of "Harlem Nocturne." Also notable is the crystalline sound quality throughout the package, which is the first in the CD realm to have accessed the original session tapes and remastered them with an ear for the audiophile's attention to detail and nuance. ~ Lindsay Planer, All Music Guide
Les Brown
Active Decades: '30s, '40s, '50s and '60s
Born: Mar 14, 1912 in Reinerton, PA
Died: Jan 04, 2001 in Pacific Palisades, CA
Genre: Jazz
Styles: Big Band, Swing, Traditional Pop, Sweet Bands
The leader of a first-class jazz-oriented dance band for over 60 years, Les Brown's music was never innovative but was generally quite pleasing. Brown was born in Reinerton, PA, into the family of a baker. He got started in music early, taking up the saxophone at age seven with the strong encouragement of his father, who played the trombone. He knew how to sight-read before he was ten, and was playing alongside his father by that time at local dances. Brown left high school after one year, choosing instead to attend the Ithaca Conservatory of Music, where he studied theory, harmony, and composition. He passed through the New York Military Academy before landing at Duke University, where he joined the Duke Blue Devils, the university's official dance band, in 1935. Their sound was modeled after the Casa Loma Orchestra, which was then one of the most popular dance bands in the country, especially among college audiences.
Brown made his first recordings as a member of the Blue Devils in 1936 for Decca, but by the following year they'd split up, as the members who were still undergraduates returned to school. Brown went to New York and spent a year working for Jimmy Dorsey, Isham Jones, and Larry Clinton as an arranger. His chance at forming a new band came in 1938 when an executive at RCA arranged a booking for him at the Hotel Edison in Manhattan, if he could put a group together. Brown secured a loan from his father to get the band off the ground and he soon had a 12-piece outfit playing at the hotel. A series of regular live radio broadcasts of the band soon had their reputation spreading far beyond the ranks of the hotel's dance patrons, and RCA Victor quickly signed them to its Bluebird imprint.
The group was doing well as the 1930s closed out, drawing a healthy dance audience and a substantial listenership. Their records weren't the most ambitious in the world -- mostly covers of standards and other bands' hits, interspersed with an occasional Les Brown original -- but they sold well enough to keep the recording industry interested in them. In the late '30s, most of their sound was built on ensemble playing, and they displayed a rich, full tone that came off well, both in person and over the air as well as on record. Brown insisted on a polished, precise sound and audiences seemed to devour it. But starting in 1940, he began altering their sound by allowing room for his soloists to go to work doing that they did best, and audiences liked it even better. Then he hired his first vocalist, a teenager named Doris Day, who sang with a depth and level of sophistication far beyond her 17 years, and their popularity soared. Day's first stay with the group wasn't long -- less than a year -- before she left to get married. Her replacement, Betty Bonney, was aboard when the band cut a song devoted to the then-current phenomenon of Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak -- "Joltin' Joe DiMaggio" became their first chart hit. When the smoke cleared, the band found itself ranked among the top ten most popular performing outfits in the country.
It was a radio show, Spotlight Band, that inadvertently played a big role in their subsequent history. The Les Brown band appeared regularly on the program, which went to service audiences around the country (and made them permanent favorites of millions of men in uniform). But it was a chance moment in 1942, when an announcer referred to them as "Les Brown & His Band of Renown," that proved a key to their future. The reference sounded great, and it stuck, and it became the band's permanent name. They came to occupy a peculiar niche in the musical world as it existed in those years -- although it wasn't really a jazz band, Brown's group employed enough elements of jazz, and enough high-quality soloists (and Brown seldom featured himself in the latter capacity, though he was a good player), that they were treated with a great deal of respect by jazz players and in the jazz journals of the period.
The next pivotal moment came in 1943 when Brown persuaded Doris Day, now divorced and raising a son (actually, future producer Terry Melcher), to return to the band. The result, in 1944, was one of the most enduring hits of World War II, "Sentimental Journey." It not only became one of the defining hits of the big-band era, but also Brown's signature tune (and, to a lesser degree, Day's signature tune) for the next 50 years, and even in the 21st century is totally identified with both of them. The song was written by Ben Homer, a composer and arranger who was also responsible for the various dance adaptations of classical works that Brown's band recorded. Brown spent most of the 1940s signed to Columbia Records, which was also the home of Doris Day as a solo act. Brown's career momentum was slowed only when the Second World War drew to a close, and he decided to spend more time with his wife and family, which meant giving up touring -- he'd had some excellent soloists in his band, including Abe Most and Ted Nash, but they soon began drifting away to other work once Brown settled down in Los Angeles.
In early 1947, Brown took on an extended engagement at the Hollywood Bowl, which resulted in his reactivating the band in a new incarnation, made up of freelancers -- he also discovered that there were enough truly high-caliber examples of the latter that the music didn't suffer at all. As a result of that engagement, he also picked up what proved to be the longest running gig of his career when he started working with Bob Hope. The association with Hope -- which resulted in Brown touring for many years in tandem with the legendary comedian's performances on behalf of American servicemen -- made it possible for the orchestra to stay together for many decades. The Dave Pell Octet, which was quite popular in the mid-'50s, was comprised of some of Brown's sidemen. In the late '50s, Brown became one of the founding members of the Recording Academy. Brown was signed to Capitol Records during this same period and enjoyed a fresh string of hit singles and successful LPs through the end of the decade -- such was his reputation that he was easily able to recruit top players (such a reedman Billy Usselton) for those later bands, and those Capitol recordings have found an enduring audience much as his earlier Columbia sides did. Additionally, his work with Hope helped to keep his name alive for several generations of television viewers, among others, well into the 1980s. Brown also occasionally toured throughout the last decades of his life, even performing within a year of his death on January 4, 2001, at the age of 88. His son, Les Brown, Jr., a musician who was primarily known as an actor, took over the Band of Renown during the 21st century and has kept it going since.
---Scott Yanow & Bruce Eder, All Music Guide |
|
CD bolt, zenei DVD, SACD, BLU-RAY lemez vásárlás és rendelés - Klasszikus zenei CD-k és DVD-különlegességek |  | | Webdesign - Forfour Design |
|
|
