Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Musician, author and entertainer known for his singing and arranging.
On the island
Eight records
Gerry Mulligan and his Tentette
This would remind me of my old neighborhood. I live in Beverly Hills, California, which is adjacent to Westwood Village. And since Jerry Mulligan to me is sort of the latter-day Duke Ellington and a superb arranger and composer, I've chosen Jerry Mulligan and his Tentette and Westwood Walk.
My Robin is to the Greenwood Gone
Eastman Rochester Pops Orchestra conducted by Frederick Fennell
Well, this is a great favourite of mine. Percy Granger, the Australian composer, who is uh one of the great modernists in finding folk songs and turning them into little classics, as I say, is very close to my heart musically. And he found an old English music hall ballad called My Robin is to the Greenwood Gorn. And I feel that this would be in keeping, apropos, since I'm on a desert island with perhaps not a great amount of green.
Jimmy Lunceford and His Orchestra
Frédéric Chopin (arr. Willie Moore Jr.)
Well, this is a combination, really, of uh the love, first of all, of a great composer, Chopin. With a great jazz orchestra from America, particularly in the mid and late thirties and early 40s, Jimmy Lunceford and his orchestra. And this is particularly appealing to me because Willie Moore Jr., a superb arranger, wrote this arrangement of Chopin's Prelude No. 7, and it has been sort of a guideline to me from a standpoint of arranging.
Well, I wouldn't be able to do much about that on a desert island, but I might be able to at least recall what Christmas was like. By playing first a record by a man whom I tremendously admired and who was a great friend of mine, Nat King Cole. And a song that I have to admit I am guilty of writing, along with a man named Bob Wells. This is called the Christmas Song, and I I guess it would do as well as anything to remind me of what Christmas is like in colder climes.
On Hearing the First Cuckoo in SpringFavourite
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham
I thought that after the Christmas song I'm sitting there on that island waiting for spring to come. And what better piece of Frederic Delius's to pick than his beautiful tone poem On hearing the first cuckoo in spring.
The drummer on this is Buddy Rich. The greatest drummer that ever lived, and that ever will live. We've worked together a great deal recently, and one is astounded that a man fifty eight years old can absolutely play drums head, shoulders, armpits, and everything else over any other drummer in the world. ... Jerry Gray's arrangement of the karaoke.
One of the things, if not the favourite Ellington piece, that I've played again and again and again until I know I think every note of it sideways. was the first extended work that he wrote. Now we can't obviously play all of it. It runs about twelve minutes. But he wrote this in 1935. in memory of his mother, who had just passed away. It's called Reminiscing in Tempo, and it's far and away among many Ellington favourites, my favourite Duke Ellington work.
Light Music Society Orchestra conducted by Sir Vivian Dunn
I would imagine that probably the loveliest time of day on a desert island would either be sunrise or sunset, or what we call dusk. And on thinking about that, I think I would be delighted to end every day listening to a beautiful piece of music by an English composer named Armstrong Gibbs. I didn't know about this piece of music for a long time. And I'm in love with it. It's called simply Dusk.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:53Just can you think of any one thing that you would be really delighted to have got away from?
The telephone.
Presenter asks
1:01How did you set about choosing this miserable allowance of eight records?
Well, I think that what one must do if you're placed in this sort of uh hypothetical situation is to think about things that are deathless, timeless, and also things that remind you of where you were and what it was like when you were not on the desert island.
Presenter asks
5:12Did you study formally music?
No, I wish I had, because I write all my own arrangements now, and they're they come very hard to me, because I am not a a studied musician in the in that sense of the word. Everything is instinctive.
Presenter asks
5:19Has there ever been any time in your life when you wanted to do anything else apart from music?
The keepsakes
The book
The New York Times Film Directory
Because I'm a great film fan, a great movie buff... I would see in my mind's eye and remember the great films that I had seen throughout my life... a constant source of joy to me.
The only thing that uh really interested me was to become an airline pilot. I am a pilot. And uh the the joy of flying would seem to me to be a great way to live, to fly airliners all over the world. But that's one of those Walter Mitty-ish kind of dreams that I indulge myself in.
Presenter asks
6:49What's the most satisfying arrangement job you've ever done?
Well, from a standpoint of arranging, uh I was just recently nominated for a Grammy Award for an arrangement that I wrote that took seventeen minutes of a Gershwin medley, sort of a tribute to George Gershwin. And I would reckon that that is the most rewarding thing that's happened to me as an arranger.
Presenter asks
7:17Every solo singer, to be a success, has got to have one great big smash disc to really take him into the news. What was yours?
Well, in this country it was mountain greenery, obviously. In America it was basically Blue Moon. Blue Moon, of course, I sang in Words and Music, an MGM picture about the life story of Rogers and Hart, the songwriting team. And I was to have sung mountain greenery in that film. It was assigned to me, then taken away from me. And it is rather ironic that years later, not that many years later, as a matter of fact, just a few years later, I made a disc of it on my own. It came to England and God bless the English. They picked it up and clasped it to their collective bosoms. And it became number one for many, many, many weeks, to my everlasting gratitude.
“I'm married to a beautiful English lady named Janet Scott, and I would be missing her and the children terribly.”
“I write all my own arrangements now, and they come very hard to me, because I am not a studied musician in the in that sense of the word. Everything is instinctive.”
“The only thing that uh really interested me was to become an airline pilot. I am a pilot. And uh the the joy of flying would seem to me to be a great way to live, to fly airliners all over the world. But that's one of those Walter Mitty-ish kind of dreams that I indulge myself in.”
“It came to England and God bless the English. They picked it up and clasped it to their collective bosoms. And it became number one for many, many, many weeks, to my everlasting gratitude.”
“I think that Judy had a a very difficult period, quite a long time prior to that, and she was to be loved and pitied. and incidentally sometimes censured, because she was of all things a human being. I mean, she was a tremendously human being. And I think that all of her flaws and her forts and her foibles. I would made her the Miss Steak that we knew as Judy Garland.”
“I would take the New York Times Film Directory. Because I'm a great film fan, a great movie buff. And the New York Times book is a voluminous book of almost every film ever made with reviews on it, commentary, and I would see in my mind's eye and remember the great films that I had seen throughout my life. And I think that would be a great companion and uh a constant source of uh of joy to me.”