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David Jay Weiss, known as David Was, is an American musician, music producer and journalist. With his stage-brother Don Was, he was the founder of the 1980s pop group Was (Not Was).
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David Jay Weiss, known as David Was, is an American musician, music producer and journalist. With his stage-brother Don Was, he was the founder of the 1980s pop group Was (Not Was).
Was was born in Detroit, Michigan to a Jewish family. A graduate of Oak Park High School in the Detroit suburb of Oak Park, Michigan, and later the University of Michigan, Was left his native Detroit for California, and found employment as the jazz critic for the now-defunct Hearst daily the Los Angeles Herald Examiner , where he forged friendships with Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis and Mel Tormé.
With his childhood friend Don Was he went on to form Was (Not Was), composing the lyrics and music and playing various instruments, primarily flute, keyboards and harmonica. Reviewed by The New York Times in 1980 as "the funkier art-funk band," Was (Not Was) used members of Funkadelic, alongside jazz musicians like trumpeter Marcus Belgrave; and singers Mel Tormé and Ozzy Osbourne. They released five albums and enjoyed four Top 10 singles worldwide. Their most recent album, Boo! , was issued in 2008 and ranked among that year's top ten releases on many critics'[ who? ] lists. Their 1989 release, What Up, Dog? featured two top 10 singles, the latter of which, "Walk the Dinosaur," has been re-recorded by Queen Latifah for the animated feature Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and has been licensed for use in a half-dozen other feature films.
In other projects, Was produced two soundtrack albums for the X-Files TV show and feature film, as well as music supervised features for Fox and Disney. He joined network music composers on CBS's The Education of Max Bickford , starring Richard Dreyfuss, and also did the music for ABC's That Was Then. His theme music introduced Fox Sports' "NFL Pregame Show" for many years, and another composition precedes every NBA, NHL and MLB game on Fox Sports outlets. As a record producer, he has worked with Bob Dylan, Rickie Lee Jones, Roy Orbison, k.d. lang, Wayne Kramer (of MC5 fame) and the Holly Cole Trio of Canada.
Was has been a regular contributor to National Public Radio's Day to Day and All Things Considered, where he writes and records culturally themed features. As a journalist, he has had bylines in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Detroit News, Seattle Post, Entertainment Weekly, Golfweek, Golf and Travel & Golf. He writes a column for Newsweek and contributes to Men's Journal and the LA Daily News.
Melvin Howard Tormé, nicknamed "The Velvet Fog", was an American musician, singer, composer, arranger, drummer, actor, and author. He composed the music for "The Christmas Song" and co-wrote the lyrics with Bob Wells. Tormé won two Grammy Awards and was nominated a total of 14 times.
Rickie Lee Jones is an American singer, musician and songwriter. Over the course of a career that spans five decades and 15 studio albums, she has recorded in various musical styles including rock, R&B, pop, soul, and jazz. A two-time Grammy Award winner, Jones was listed at No. 30 on VH1's 100 Greatest Women in Rock & Roll in 1999. AllMusic stated: "Few singer/songwriters are as individual and eclectic as Rickie Lee Jones, a vocalist with an expressive and smoky instrument, and a composer who can weave jazz, folk, and R&B into songs with a distinct pop sensibility."
Sir George Albert Shearing was a British jazz pianist who for many years led a popular jazz group that recorded for Discovery Records, MGM Records and Capitol Records. Shearing was the composer of over 300 songs, including the jazz standards "Lullaby of Birdland" and "Conception", and had multiple albums on the Billboard charts during the 1950s, 1960s, 1980s and 1990s.
John Alfred Mandel was an American composer and arranger of popular songs, film music and jazz. The musicians he worked with include Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Anita O'Day, Barbra Streisand, Tony Bennett, Diane Schuur and Shirley Horn. He won five Grammy Awards, from 17 nominations; his first nomination was for his debut film score for the multi-nominated 1958 film I Want to Live!
Was (Not Was) is an American band founded in 1979 in Detroit, Michigan, by David Weiss and Don Fagenson, who adopted the stage names David Was and Don Was. Their song catalog features an eclectic mix of pop and rock styles, often featuring guest musicians from across the musical spectrum. The band's most popular period was during the 1980s and early 1990s, with their highest-charting hit, the song "Walk the Dinosaur", released in 1987 as the lead single from their 1988 album What Up, Dog?, becoming a worldwide top-40 hit and peaking at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. The band went on indefinite hiatus in the mid-1990s, but has returned sporadically since the turn of the millennium. Their most recent release was the 2008 album Boo!.
WYCD is a commercial radio station licensed to Detroit, Michigan. It broadcasts a country music format and is owned by Audacy, Inc. WYCD's offices and studios are on American Drive in Southfield, Michigan.
"The Christmas Song" is a classic Christmas song written in 1945 by Robert Wells and Mel Tormé.
Gordon L. Goodwin is an American pianist, saxophonist, composer, arranger, and conductor. He is the leader of Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band. He has won four Grammy Awards and three Daytime Emmy Awards, and has received over twenty Grammy nominations for his compositions and arrangements.
2:00 AM Paradise Cafe is the tenth studio album by singer-songwriter Barry Manilow, released in 1984 on Arista Records. The album peaked at No. 28 on the Billboard 200 and went Gold in the United States.
Thomas William Keenlyside is a Canadian saxophonist and flautist from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Martin Louis Paich was an American pianist, composer, arranger, record producer, music director, and conductor. As a musician and arranger he worked with jazz musicians Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Kenton, Art Pepper, Buddy Rich, Ray Brown, Shorty Rogers, Pete Rugolo, Ray Charles and Mel Tormé. His long association with Tormé included one of the singer's earliest albums, Mel Tormé with the Marty Paich Dek-Tette. Over the next three decades he worked with pop singers such as Andy Williams and Jack Jones and for film and television. He is the father of David Paich, a founding member of the rock band Toto.
Dennis James Coffey is an American guitarist. He was a studio musician for many soul and R&B recordings, and is well known for his 1971 Top 10 hit single "Scorpio".
"I'm Beginning to See the Light" is a popular song and jazz standard, with music written by Duke Ellington, Johnny Hodges, and Harry James and lyrics by Don George and published in 1944.
Gerald Stanley Wilson was an American jazz trumpeter, big band bandleader, composer, arranger, and educator. Born in Mississippi, he was based in Los Angeles from the early 1940s. He arranged music for Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles, Julie London, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Carter, Lionel Hampton, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, and Nancy Wilson.
Donald Alton Fagerquist was a small group, big band, and studio jazz trumpet player from the West Coast of the United States.
David Pell was an American jazz saxophonist, bandleader and record producer. He was best known for leading a cool jazz octet in the 1950s.
"Harlem Nocturne" is a jazz standard written by Earle Hagen (music) and Dick Rogers (lyrics) in 1939 for the Ray Noble orchestra, of which they were members. The song was chosen by the big-band leader Randy Brooks the next year as his theme song.
"Comin' Home Baby" is a song originally written as an instrumental by Ben Tucker and first recorded by the Dave Bailey Quintet in 1961, and shortly thereafter by Herbie Mann. Lyrics were added by Bob Dorough, and the vocal version became a US Top 40 hit for American jazz singer Mel Tormé in 1962. The song has since been covered numerous times.
Steve March-Tormé is an American singer/actor/songwriter and radio host. He is the son of the singer Mel Tormé and actress Candy Toxton. They divorced and Toxton married actor/comedian Hal March who became Steve's stepfather.
Don Raffell was an American saxophonist, woodwind doubler (multireedist), studio musician and educator. Raffell recorded on hundreds of records, movies, and T.V shows dating from the 1940s all the way through the 1990s. His career as a studio musician was long and stylistically diverse having started in the big band era and playing all the way up through rock n' roll and other modern pop era acts. He had a long time close professional association with arranger and conductor Nelson Riddle.
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