The Pink Panther Theme

HENRY MANCINI & HIS ORCHERTRA
SONGWRITER: HENRY MANCINI
COUNTRY: U. S. A.
ALBUM: THE PINK PANTHER
LABEL: RCA VICTOR
GENRE: INSTRUMENTAL
YEAR: 1963
 
         Henry Nicola Mancini (born Enrico Nicola Mancini; April 16, 1924 – June 14, 1994) was an American composer, conductor, arranger, pianist and flautist. Often cited as one of the greatest composers in the history of film, he won four Academy Awards, a Golden Globe, and twenty Grammy Awards, plus a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995.
           His works include the theme and soundtrack for the Peter Gunn television series as well as the music for The Pink Panther film series ("The Pink Panther Theme") and "Moon River" from Breakfast at Tiffany's. The Music from Peter Gunn won the first Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Mancini enjoyed a long collaboration composing film scores for the film diretor Blake Edwards. Mancini also scored a No. 1 hit single during the rock era on the Hot 100: his arrangement and recording of the "Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet" spent two weeks at the top, starting with the week ending June 28, 1969.
         "The Pink Panther Theme" is an instrumental composition by Henry Mancini written as the theme for the 1963 film The Pink Panther and subsequently nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score at the 37th Academy Awards but lost to the Sherman Brothers for Mary Poppins. The eponymous cartoon character created for the film's opening credits by David DePatie and Friz Freleng was animated in time to the tune. The tenor saxophone solo was played by Plas Johnson.

ONE O'CLOCK JUMP

BENNY GOODMAN
SONGWRITER: COUNT BASIE; Eddie Durham & Buster Smith
COUNTRY: U, S. A.
ALBUM: COUNT BASIE
LABEL: DECCA RECORDS
GENRE: INSTRUMENTAL
YEAR: 1937
 
          Benjamin David Goodman (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American jazz clarinetist and bandleader known as the "King of Swing".
         In the mid-1930s, Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in the United States. His concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City on January 16, 1938, is described by critic Bruce Eder as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history: jazz's 'coming out' party to the world of 'respectable' music."
          Goodman's bands started the careers of many jazz musicians. During an era of racial segregation, he led one of the first integrated jazz groups. He performed nearly to the end of his life while exploring an interest in classical music.
        "One O'Clock Jump" is a jazz standard, a 12-bar blues instrumental, written by Count Basie in 1937.
        The melody derived from band members' riffs—Basie rarely wrote down musical ideas, so Eddie Durham and Buster Smith helped him crystallize his ideas. The original 1937 recording of the tune by Basie and his band is noted for the saxophone work of Herschel Evans and Lester Young, trumpet by Buck Clayton, Walter Page on bass, and Basie himself on piano. The song is typical of Basie's Early riff style.       
    The instrumentation is based on "head arrangements" where each section makes up their part based on what the other sections are playing. Individuals take turns improvising over the top of the entire sound. Basie recorded "One O'Clock Jump" several times after the original performance for Decca in 1937, for Columbia in 1942 and 1950 and on a number of occasions in the fifties. "One O'Clock Jump" became the theme song of the Count Basie Orchestra. They used it to close each of their concerts for the next half century. It was reportedly titled "Blue Ball" at first but a radio announcer feared that title was too risqué.

IT HAD TO BE YOU

ARTIE SHAW
SONGWRITER: ISHAM JONES
COUNTRY: U. S. A.
ALBUM: THE CHRONOLOGICAL CLASSICS: ARTIE SHAW AND HIS ORCHESTRA 1938
LABEL: CRONOLOGICAL CLASSICS
GENRE: INSTRUMENTAL
YEAR:1938
 
             Artie Shaw (born Arthur Jacob Arshawsky; May 23, 1910 – December 30, 2004) was an American clarinetist, composer, bandleader, actor and author of both fiction and non-fiction.
      Widely regarded as "one of jazz's finest clarinetists", Shaw led one of the United States' most popular big bands in the late 1930s through the early 1940s. Though he had numerous hit records, he was perhaps best known for his 1938 recording of Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine." Before the release of "Beguine," Shaw and his fledgling band had languished in relative obscurity for over two years and, after its release, he became a major pop artist within short order. The record eventually became one of the era's defining recordings. Musically restless, Shaw was also an early proponent of what became known much later as Third Stream music, which blended elements of classical and jazz forms and traditions. His music influenced other musicians, such as Monty Norman in England, with the vamp of the James Bond Theme, possibly influenced by 1938's "Nightmare".
         Shaw also recorded with small jazz groups drawn from within the ranks of the various big bands he led. He served in the US Navy from 1942 to 1944, (during which time he led a morale-building band that toured the South Pacific amidst the chaos of World War II) and, following his discharge in 1944, he returned to lead a band through 1945. Following the breakup of that band, he began to focus on other interests and gradually withdrew from the world of being a professional musician and major celebrity, although he remained a force in popular music and jazz before retiring from music completely in 1954.
         Arthur Jacob Arshawsky was born on May 23, 1910, in New York City, he was the son of Sarah (née Strauss) and Harold "Harry" Arshawsky, a dressmaker and photographer. The family was Jewish; his father was from Russia, his mother from Austria. Shaw grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, where his natural introversion was deepened by local antisemitism. Shaw bought a saxophone by working in a grocery store and began learning the saxophone at 13. At 16, he switched to the clarinet and left home to tour with a band.

THE ST. LOUIS BLUES MARCH

GLENN MILLER AND THE ARMY AIR FORCE ORCHESTRA
SONGWRITER: W. C. HANDY
COUNTRY: U. S. A.
ALBUM: CHATTANOOGA CHOO CHOO
LABEL: V. DISC
GENRE: INSTRUMENTAL
YEAR: 1945
 
            Alton Glenn Miller (March 1, 1904 – disappeared December 15, 1944) was an American big-band trombonist, arranger, composer, and bandleader in the swing era. He was the best-selling recording artist from 1939 to 1942, leading one of the best-known big bands. Miller's recordings include "In the Mood", "Moonlight Serenade", "Pennsylvania 6-5000", "Chattanooga Choo Choo", "A String of Pearls", "At Last", "(I've Got a Gal In) Kalamazoo", "American Patrol", "Tuxedo Junction", "Elmer's Tune", "Little Brown Jug" and "Anvil Chorus". In just four years Glenn Miller scored 16 number-one records and 69 top ten hits—more than Elvis Presley (38 top 10s) and the Beatles (33 top 10s) did in their careers.
       In 1942, Miller volunteered to join the U.S. military to entertain troops during World War II, ending up with the U.S. Army Air Forces. On December 15, 1944, while flying to Paris, Miller's aircraft disappeared in bad weather over the English Channel. He was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star Medal.
           During World War II we lost many great men. The majority were ordinary men doing extraordinary things who died in combat. Among those who died in service of the United States during World War II was a music superstar. Trombonist and bandleader Glenn Miller had more top ten hit singles than either Elvis Presley or The Beatles. In 1942 he was making anywhere from $15,000 a week (that would be $233,728.71 today) to $20,000 a week (that would be $311,638.28 today).
            "St. Louis Blues" was initially arranged by W.C. Handy in 1914. Glenn Miller enjoyed the piece and often performed it with his initial orchestra in the United States. He then moved on to arrange it in such a way that its blues/jazz feel would intertwine with a standard military march tempo in order to play it with his Army Air Force Band during its time in England. To this day, Miller's arrangement of the "St. Louis Blues (March)" continues to be associated with the American War Effort in World War II. This video plays a sharp recording of the piece in the background of images from World War II, when the Air Force Band was oversea.
          "Saint Louis Blues" (or "St. Louis Blues") is a popular American song composed by W. C. Handy in the blues style and published in September 1914. It was one of the first blues songs to succeed as a pop song and remains a fundamental part of jazz musicians' repertoire. Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Bessie Smith, Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Guy Lombardo, and the Boston Pops Orchestra are among the artists who have recorded it. The song has been called "the jazzman's Hamlet." Composer William Grant Still arranged a version of the song in 1916 while working with Handy.
           The 1925 version sung by Bessie Smith, with Louis Armstrong on cornet, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1993. The 1929 version by Louis Armstrong & His Orchestra (with Red Allen) was inducted in 2008.
         Handy said he had been inspired by a chance meeting with a woman on the streets of St. Louis distraught over her husband's absence, who lamented, "Ma man's got a heart like a rock cast in de sea", a key line of the song. Handy's autobiography recounts his hearing the tune in St. Louis in 1892: "It had numerous one-line verses and they would sing it all night."
             The song was a massive and enduring success. The original published sheet music is available online from the United States Library of Congress in a searchable database of African-American music from Brown University.
         The St. Louis Blues of the National Hockey League (NHL) are named after the titular song.