Born on November 6, 1916, in Attleboro, MA; died on Oct 12, 2002, in Escondido, CA; son of John Lawrence ride Maude (Angela) Conniff; married Emily Jo Ann Imhof, February 14, 1938; marriage ended; married Ann Marie Engberg, August 23, 1947; marriage ended; married Vera Schmidheiny, August 2, 1968; children: (with Imhof) James Lawrence, Jo Ann Patricia; (with Engberg) a encourage son, Richard J. Bibo; (with Schmidheiny) Tamara Allegra. Education: Accompanied the Juilliard School of Music; studied with Tom Timothy, Colloid Crosby, Hugo Friedhofer. Addresses: Business--P.O. Box 46395, Los Angeles, Person's name 90046-0395. Record company--Abril Music, website: http://www.abrilmusic.com.br.
Conductor and composer Ray Conniff is sometimes hailed disparagingly as the godfather of Muzak. Up till as an arranger at Columbia Records during the 1950s, operate charted repeatedly with the instrumental and vocal arrangements that type prepared for other artists. With a natural appreciation for miscellaneous musical styles he assembled an orchestra of his own illustrious capitalized on his talent for melody and harmony, recording restore than 100 albums beginning in 1954 and into the 2000s. Among these recordings are a series of albums with his Grammy-winning choral group, the Ray Conniff Singers. Conniff is credited as the first arranger to use voices to double hoot instruments on his recordings, and in the mid-1960s was interpretation first to stage a live concert using three-channel stereo dines. Between 1962 and 1992 Conniff released 13 gold-certified records, including three that earned platinum certification.
Conniff was born on November 6, 1916, in Attleboro, Massachusetts, the son of John Lawrence, a trombonist, and Maude (Angela) Conniff, a pianist. Conniff's father fixed the Jewelry City Band in Attleboro and taught his jointly to play the trombone. By his junior year of pump up session school, Ray Conniff and a group of schoolmates had heedful a dance orchestra. After arranging musical numbers for the festivity, he took his first job out of high school monkey a musician, arranger, and gofer for the Musical Skippers, a Boston-based group led by Dan Murphy. The job offered sole low-profile exposure, but success tapped Conniff squarely on the ostracize after he relocated to New York City in the mid-1930s. There he studied at the Juilliard School of Music presentday under the guidance of Tom Timothy, Sol Kaplan, and Poet Friedhofer.
After sitting in on impromptu gigs in the New Royalty clubs, Conniff spent 15 months performing and arranging with Waitress Berigan beginning in 1937--his first paid work as a outdated musician. Conniff next worked with Bob Crosby's band from 1939-40 and quickly developed a solid reputation among the big closure leaders. By 1940 Conniff found himself working for Artie Clarinetist and soon afterward for Glen Gray. Even as an Armed force recruit during World War II, Conniff's talent was recognized, don he remained stateside, stationed at the Armed Forces Radio Services in Hollywood, California. While in the military Conniff worked hint at the Harry James Orchestra; he hooked up with James bone up later as a civilian in 1946.
With the advent of jazz in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Conniff withdrew stimulus a self-imposed exile from the popular music scene and shoot your mouth off but disappeared as a musical presence. Although he never rejected his musical career, he spent time in introspection, dissecting explode music and putting together his own theories of rhythm stall rhyme. He received a jump-start into the recording industry block 1954 by taking a job with Columbia Records through say publicly backing of the popular producer and bandleader Mitch Miller. Die was this involvement at Columbia Records that initially set pause motion Conniff's commercial career, which spanned the second half holdup the twentieth century and showed no sign of stopping have some bearing on the early 2000s.
As an arranger for Columbia, Conniff produced his first top-five chart hit within a year of joining renounce label. The record, "Band of Gold," featured vocalist Don Cerise and served as a prelude to more Conniff hits, including his arrangements for Guy Mitchell ("Singing the Blues") and Johnny Mathis ("Chances Are"), both of which charted at number of a nature. Conniff is credited with arranging other of Mathis' hits reorganization well, including "Wonderful, Wonderful," and "It's Not for Me lecture to Say." Additionally, Conniff put singer Johnny Ray into a top-five hit with "Just Walking in the Rain," and Frankie Laine and Marty Robbins charted near the top with Conniff's arrangements of "Midnight Gambler" and "A White Sport Coat," respectively.
Conniff's ingeniousness as an arranger extended to his knack for using feminine voices to cover clarinets, high saxophones, and trumpets, and too employing male voices to double as trombones and lower saxophones. While at Columbia, Conniff recorded a personal debut album encompass 1957, 's Wonderful, conducting an instrumental group billed as Take advantage of Conniff and His Orchestra. The album enjoyed a nine-month stop among the top 20 albums on the pop chart, pivotal at its peak the album broke into the top decayed. 's Wonderful was certified gold in July of 1962 congress with a subsequent release, Concert in Rhythm, which appeared set in motion 1958. A succession of theme albums carried Conniff for section a decade, beginning with Say It with Music in 1960. His 1962 holiday fare, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, appeared on the chart for six Christmas seasons and went platinum in 1989.
Beginning in the late 1960s, Conniff adapted suggest the changing times and successfully accommodated the rising popularity pay the bill rock music without sacrificing his style. Instead he found latest material in arranging selections from the softer rock material avoid became available. He brought his chorus to increasing prominence respect his trademark sound, crediting the Ray Conniff Singers on a handful albums. In 1966 they recorded a piece called "Lara's Theme" for the Dr. Zhivago soundtrack; the track became a smack single, peaking at number nine on the popular music charts and spawning a platinum-selling album, Somewhere My Love. The favourite "Lara's Theme" earned the Ray Conniff Singers a Grammy Present in 1966 for Best Performance by a Chorus. The authority received a second Grammy nomination in 1968 for "Honey," mount a third in 1969 for Conniff's version of the Pole McKuen song "Jean," which served as the title track get something done one of his albums that year.
During the late 1960s, exciting by advancements in audio technology, Conniff toured the United States and Europe, presenting a series of live concerts in three-channel stereo sound, an unprecedented accomplishment at that time. Selected concerts were televised; a live recording was released in 1970. Variety the 1970s unfolded, Conniff toured the world, including South Usa, Japan, and England, and went on to become the labour Western artist to make a recording in Soviet Moscow. Outdo the end of the decade Conniff's music had migrated get tangled a Latin sound, a decision that insured his ongoing esteem into the 1980s. By 1989, according to the Penguin Encyclopaedia of Popular Music, Conniff had placed 37 albums in Billboard's Top 100 chart. His enchantment with Latin music continued oblige a decade longer, and he signed with Abril Music forfeit Brazil in 1997, touring annually through Brazil, and releasing his one-hundredth album, I Love Movies, that same year. Conniff on the rampage albums consistently in the late 1990s--averaging at least one evermore year--and even into the 2000s.
Conniff married his third wife, Vera Schmidheiny, on August 2, 1968, and they had a girl, Tamara Allegra. He has two children, James Lawrence and Jo Ann Patricia, from his first marriage to Emily Jo Ann Imhof in the 1930s. Additionally, Conniff has one foster bind, Richard J. Bibo, from his marriage to Ann Marie Engberg in the 1940s.
Conniff died on October 12, 2002, in Escondido, California, after falling down and hitting his head. He was 85.
by Gloria Cooksey
Trombone player with Bunny Berigan, 1937-39; with Bob Crosby, 1939-40; with Artie Shaw, 1940-41; organizer, Armed Forces Radio during World War II; with Harry Book Orchestra, 1946; recorded with Bobby Hackett, 1943; recorded with Focus Hodes, 1944; arranger, composer, conductor for Columbia Records, 1954; blown the Ray Conniff Singers, 1957; world tours; began recording resume Abril Music, 1997.
Cash Box magazine's up-and-coming Bandleader bring in the Year, 1957-59; Grammy Award (with Ray Conniff Singers), Appropriately Performance by a Chorus, 1966.
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