BLUE IN GREEN

MILES DAVIS
SONGWRITERS: BILL EVANS & MILES DAVIS
COUNTRY: U. S. A.
ALBUM: KIND OF BLUE
LABEL: COLUMBIA RECORDS
GENRE: INSTRUMENTAL
YEAR: 1969
 
            Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926– September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of musical directions in a five-decade career that kept him at the forefront of many major stylistic developments in jazz.
          Born in Alton, Illinois, and raised in East St. Louis, Davis left to study at Juilliard in New York City, before dropping out and making his professional debut as a member of saxophonist Charlie Parker's bebop quintet from 1944 to 1948. Shortly after, he recorded the Birth of the Cool sessions for Capitol Records, which were instrumental to the development of cool jazz. In the early 1950s, Miles Davis recorded some of the earliest hard bop music while on Prestige Records but did so haphazardly due to a heroin addiction. After a widely acclaimed comeback performance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1955, he signed a long-term contract with Columbia Records and recorded the 1957 album 'Round About Midnight. It was his first work with saxophonist John Coltrane and bassist Paul Chambers, key members of the sextet he led into the early 1960s. During this period, he alternated between orchestral jazz collaborations with arranger Gil Evans, such as the Spanish music-influenced Sketches of Spain (1960), and band recordings, such as Milestones (1958) and Kind of Blue (1959). The latter recording remains one of the most popular jazz albums of all time, having sold over five million copies in the U.S.
       Davis made several lineup changes while recording Someday My Prince Will Come (1961), his 1961 Blackhawk concerts, and Seven Steps to Heaven (1963), another mainstream success that introduced bassist Ron Carter, pianist Herbie Hancock, and drummer Tony Williams. After adding saxophonist Wayne Shorter to his new quintet in 1964, Davis led them on a series of more abstract recordings often composed by the band members, helping pioneer the post-bop genre with albums such as E.S.P (1965) and Miles Smiles (1967), before transitioning into his electric period. During the 1970s, he experimented with rock, funk, African rhythms, emerging electronic music technology, and an ever-changing line-up of musicians, including keyboardist Joe Zawinul, drummer Al Foster, and guitarist John McLaughlin. This period, beginning with Davis' 1969 studio album In a Silent Way and concluding with the 1975 concert recording Agharta, was the most controversial in his career, alienating and challenging many in jazz. His million-selling 1970 record Bitches Brew helped spark a resurgence in the genre's commercial popularity with jazz fusion as the decade progressed.
        After a five-year retirement due to poor health, Davis resumed his career in the 1980s, employing younger musicians and pop sounds on albums such as The Man with the Horn (1981) and Tutu (1986). Critics were often unreceptive but the decade garnered Davis his highest level of commercial recognition. He performed sold-out concerts worldwide, while branching out into visual arts, film, and television work, before his death in 1991 from the combined effects of a stroke, pneumonia and respiratory failure. In 2006, Davis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which recognized him as "one of the key figures in the history of jazz". Rolling Stone described him as "the most revered jazz trumpeter of all time, not to mention one of the most important musicians of the 20th century", while Gerald Early called him inarguably one of the most influential and innovative musicians of that period.
          "Blue in Green" is the third tune on Miles Davis' 1959 album, Kind of Blue. One of two ballads on the LP (the other being "Flamenco Sketches"), the melody of "Blue in Green" is very modal, incorporating the presence of the Dorian, Mixolydian, and Lydian modes. This is the only tune on which Cannonball Adderley sits out.

MY HEART WILL GO ON

ANDRÉ RIEU
SONGWRITERS: JAMES HORNER & WILL JENNINGS
COUNTRY: NEETHERLANDS
ALBUM: CROISIERE ROMANTIQUE
LABEL: UNIVERSAL MUSIC
GENRE: INSTRUMENTAL
YEAR: 2002
 
          André Léon Marie Nicolas Rieu (born 1 October 1949) is a Dutch violinist and conductor best known for creating the waltz-playing Johann Strauss Orchestra.
          He and his orchestra have turned classical and waltz music into a worldwide concert touring act, as successful as some of the biggest global pop and rock music acts. He resides in his native Maastricht.
        The name Rieu is of French Huguenot origin. André was born to Andries Antonie Rieu and is the third of six children. He has two older sisters (Teresia and Cilia), two younger brothers (Robert and Jean-Philippe), and a younger sister (Gaby Buirma-Rieu).
         Rieu's father was conductor of the Maastricht Symphony Orchestra. Showing early promise, André began studying violin at the age of five. From a very early age, he developed a fascination with orchestra. He studied violin at the Conservatoire Royal in Liège and at the Conservatorium Maastricht, (1968–1973), studying under Jo Juda and Herman Krebbers.
         From 1974 to 1977, he attended the Music Academy in Brussels, studying with André Gertler. He completed his training with the distinction "Premier Prix" from the Royal Conservatory of Brussels.
      He married Marjorie Kochmann in 1975. She has been a language teacher and has written compositions. They have two sons, Marc and Pierre.
         He speaks six languages: Dutch, English, German, French, Italian and Spanish.

LOOK FOR A STAR

BILLY VAUGHN & ORCHESTRA
SONGWRITER: M. ANTHONY
COUNTRY: U. S. A.
ALBUM: BLUE HAWAII/LOOK FOR A STAR
LABEL: DOT RECORDS
GENRE: INSTRUMENTAL
YEAR: 1959
 
            Richard Smith Vaughn (April 12, 1919 – September 26, 1991), known as Billy Vaughn, was an American singer, multi-instrumentalist, orchestra leader, and A&R man for Dot Records.
         Vaughn was born in Glasgow, Kentucky, United States, where his father, Alvis Radford Vaughn, was a barber who loved music and inspired Billy to teach himself to play the mandolin at the age of three, while suffering from measles. He went on to learn a number of other instruments.
           In 1941, Vaughn joined the United States National Guard for what had been planned as a one-year assignment, but when World War II broke out, he was in for the duration as a valued musician and composer at Camp Shelby, Mississippi. Major General Daniel I. Sultan decided that Vaughn was too valuable to the base's Thirty-Eighth Division big band, and kept him at Camp Shelby for the duration of the war. He decided to make music a career when he was discharged from the army at the end of the war, and on the GI Bill, attended Western Kentucky State College, now known as Western Kentucky University, majoring in music composition. He had apparently learned barbering from his father, because he did some while studying at Western Kentucky to support himself financially, when he was not able to get jobs playing the piano at local night clubs and lounges. While he was a student there, three other students, Jimmy Sacca, Donald McGuire, and Seymour Spiegelman, who had formed a vocal trio, the Hilltoppers, recruited Vaughn to play the piano with them. He soon added his voice to theirs, converting the trio to a quartet. As a member of the group, he also wrote their first hit song, "Trying", which charted in 1952.
             In 1954, he left the group to join Dot Records in Gallatin, Tennessee, as music director. He subsequently formed his own orchestra which had a hit single in that same year with "Melody of Love." It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. He went on to have many more hits over the next decade and a half, and, based purely on chart successes, was the most successful orchestra leader of the rock era.
           Vaughn charted a total of 42 singles on the Billboard charts, often based on the sound of two alto saxophones. He also charted thirty six albums on the Billboard 200, beginning with 1958's Sail Along Silv'ry Moon and ending with 1970's Winter World of Love. He also had nineteen Top 40 hits in (Germany), beginning with the chart-topping "Sail Along, Silv'ry Moon", also a gold record, which was a cover of a 1937 Bing Crosby hit. He had two more number ones in Germany: "La Paloma" and "Wheels" (all three were reportedly million sellers). Billy Vaughn's recording of "Wheels" was No. 1 for 14 weeks in Germany (Hit Bilanz) as well as No. 1 in India, New Zealand, and Italy (Billboard hits of the world, various issues 1961). Vaughn also charted in Australia, Latin America, and Japan. "Pearly Shells" was a major success in Japan. Vaughn's tours of that country began about the time "Pearly Shells" was a hit in 1965. Many songs which were not US hits or even singles releases there, were major hits in other countries. These included "Lili Marlene", "Zwei Gitarren am Meer", "Blueberry Hill" (Germany), and "Greenfields". Also successful were "Song of Peace", "It's a Lonesome Old Town" (Japan), "Michelle" (No 1 in Argentina and Malaysia), "Mexico" (No. 1 in the Philippines), and "Bonanza" (a major success in Brazil and Italy [Billboard Hits of the World, 1960s]) plus "Theme from the Dark at the Top of the Stairs" (various Latin American countries). The album La Paloma was a success throughout Latin America. He also had a number one album in Germany in the early 1980s with Moonlight Melodies, which consisted of 20 of Billy's biggest hits (original Dot recordings, original LP notes and credits).
         The Billy Vaughn Orchestra began touring in 1965 with numerous sell-out tours throughout Japan, Brazil, and South Korea.
           In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Vaughn lived in Palm Springs, California. He died of peritoneal mesothelioma at Palomar Hospital in Escondido, California, on September 26, 1991, aged 72. He and his wife Marion are buried at the Oak Hill Memorial Park in Escondido.
           On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Billy Vaughn among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire. The Billy Vaughn Orchestra, co-owned and managed by his son, Richard Smith Vaughn Jr., is still a touring big band. The Billy Vaughn Orchestra, produced by the Tate Corporation, Japan, toured Japan in 2013, 2014, and again in 2018 to sell-out audiences.

THE RAIN IN SPAIN

PERCY FAITH’S ORCHESTRA
SONGWRITERS: ALAN JAY LERNER & FREDERICK LOEWE
COUNTRY: CANADA
ALBUM: PERCY FAITH’S GRATEST HITS
LABEL: COLUMBIA
GENRE: INSTRUMENTAL
YEAR: 1987
 
            Percy Faith (April 7, 1908 – February 9, 1976) was a Canadian bandleader, orchestrator, composer and conductor, known for his lush arrangements of pop and Christmas standards. He is often credited with popularizing the "easy listening" or "mood music" format. Faith became a staple of American popular music in the 1950s and continued well into the 1960s. Though his professional orchestra-leading career began at the height of the swing era, Faith refined and rethought orchestration techniques, including use of large string sections, to soften and fill out the brass-dominated popular music of the 1940s.
           Faith was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He was the oldest of eight children. His parents, Abraham Faith and Minnie, née Rottenberg, were Jewish. He played violin and piano as a child, and played in theatres and at Massey Hall. After his hands were badly burned in a fire, he turned to conducting, and his live orchestras used the new medium of radio broadcasting. Percy moved from Canada to Great Neck, New York and became a U.S. citizen.
          Beginning with stations CKNC and CKCL, Faith was a staple of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's live-music broadcasting from 1933 to 1940, when he resettled in Chicago, Illinois. In the early 1940s, Faith was orchestra leader for the Carnation Contented program on NBC. From 1948-1949 he also served as the orchestra leader on the CBS radio network program The Coca-Cola Hour (also called The Pause That Refreshes). The orchestral accordionist John Serry Sr. collaborated with Faith in these broadcasts.
           In 1945, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He made many recordings for Voice of America. After working briefly for Decca Records, he worked for Mitch Miller at Columbia Records, where he turned out dozens of albums and provided arrangements for many of the pop singers of the 1950s, including Tony Bennett, Doris Day, Johnny Mathis for Mathis's 1958 Christmas album titled Merry Christmas, and Guy Mitchell for whom Faith co-wrote with Carl Sigman Mitchell's number-one single, "My Heart Cries for You".
           His most famous and remembered recordings are "Delicado" (1952), "The Song from Moulin Rouge" (1953) and "Theme from A Summer Place" (1959), which won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1961. Faith remains the only artist to have the best selling single of the year during both the pop singer era ("Song from Moulin Rouge") and the rock era ("Theme from A Summer Place"); and he is one of only three artists, along with Elvis Presley and The Beatles, to have the best selling single of the year twice. The B-side of "Song from the Moulin Rouge" was "Swedish Rhapsody" by Hugo Alfvén. In 1961 his fame in Sweden rose exponentially as his work Mucho Gusto became the theme music for the sports broadcasts of Sveriges Radio.
        Though Faith initially mined the worlds of Broadway, Hollywood and Latin music for many of his top-selling 1950s recordings, he enjoyed popularity starting in 1962 with his orchestral versions of popular rock and pop hits of the day. His Themes for Young Lovers album was a top seller during this era and introduced the Faith sound to a younger generation of listeners. With the success of Columbia record-mate Ray Conniff's chorus and orchestra during this same time, Faith began using a chorus (usually all female in most of his recordings, but used a mixed chorus on his albums Leaving on a Jet Plane and I Think I Love You, which were released in 1970 and 1971 respectively) in several popular albums from the mid-1960s on. Faith's first single with a female chorus, "Yellow Days," was a substantial hit in the MOR (Middle of the Road) easy listening radio format of the mid-1960s. Faith continued to enjoy airplay and consistent album sales throughout the early 1970s, and received a second Grammy award in 1969 for his album Love Theme from 'Romeo and Juliet'.
         Though best known for his recording career, Faith also occasionally scored motion pictures, and received an Academy Award nomination for his adaptation of the song score for the Doris Day musical feature, Love Me or Leave Me. His other film scores included romantic comedies and dramatic features such as Tammy Tell Me True (1961), I'd Rather Be Rich (1964), The Third Day (1965) and The Oscar (1966). Faith also composed the theme for the NBC series The Virginian.
          With the advent of harder rock sounds in the 1970s, Faith's elegant arrangements fell out of favour with the listening and record-buying public, although he continued to release albums as diverse and contemporary as Jesus Christ Superstar and Black Magic Woman. He released one album of country music and two albums of disco-oriented arrangements toward the end of his forty-year career, his last recording being a disco-style reworking of "Theme from a Summer Place", titled "Summer Place '76", which was a minor and posthumous hit. Faith died of cancer in Encino, California, and was interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California.