This article needs additional citations for verification .(June 2014) |
Percy Faith | |
---|---|
![]() Faith at work in 1949 | |
Background information | |
Born | April 7, 1908 Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
Died | February 9, 1976 67) Encino, California, U.S. | (aged
Occupation(s) | Bandleader, orchestrator, composer |
Website | www |
Percy Faith (April 7, 1908 – February 9, 1976) was a Canadian-American bandleader, orchestrator, composer and conductor, [1] known for his lush arrangements of pop and Christmas standards. He is often credited with popularizing the "easy listening" or "mood music" format. He became a staple of American popular music in the 1950s and continued well into the 1960s. [1] Though his professional orchestra-leading career began at the height of the Swing Era, he refined and rethought orchestration techniques, including use of large string sections, to soften and fill out the brass-dominated popular music of the 1940s.[ citation needed ]
Faith was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. [1] 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. He moved from Canada to Great Neck, New York and became a U.S. citizen. [2] [3]
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. [1] In the early 1940s, Faith was orchestra leader for the Carnation Contented program on NBC. [4] From 1948 to 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. [5]
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". [1]
His most famous and remembered recordings are "Delicado" (1952), "The Song from Moulin Rouge" (1953) and "Theme from A Summer Place" (1959), [1] 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 . [1] 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). [1] 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, [1] and was interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California.
Faith had two children, Marilyn and Peter, with his wife Mary (née Palange), whom he married in 1928. She died in Los Angeles in 1997.
Percy Faith placed 21 albums on the Billboard Hot 200 best sellers chart through 1972, making him one of the more successful easy listening acts sales wise. 1963's Themes for Young Lovers was by far his biggest seller, peaking at No. 32 on the chart and followed by three sequel albums "for young lovers".
Faith produced the following singles: [6] [7]
Bert Kaempfert was a German orchestra leader, multi-instrumentalist, music producer, arranger, and composer. He made easy listening and jazz-oriented records and wrote the music for a number of well-known songs, including "Strangers in the Night", “Danke Schoen” and "Moon Over Naples".
Joseph Raymond Conniff was an American bandleader and arranger best known for his Ray Conniff Singers during the 1960s.
John Allan Jones is an American singer and actor.
Percy Heath was an American jazz bassist, brother of saxophonist Jimmy Heath and drummer Albert Heath, with whom he formed the Heath Brothers in 1975. Heath played with the Modern Jazz Quartet throughout their long history and also worked with Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Wes Montgomery, and Thelonious Monk.
Annunzio Paolo Mantovani was an Anglo-Italian conductor, composer and light orchestra-styled entertainer with a cascading strings musical signature.
The Lettermen are an American male pop vocal trio. The Lettermen's trademark is close-harmony pop songs with light arrangements. The group started in 1959. They have had two Top 10 singles, 16 Top 10 singles on the Adult Contemporary chart, 32 consecutive Billboard chart albums, 11 gold records, and five Grammy nominations.
Percy Alfred Helton was an American stage, film, and television actor. He was one of the most familiar faces and voices in Hollywood of the 1950s.
Andre Kostelanetz was a Russian-born American popular orchestral music conductor and arranger who was one of the major exponents of popular orchestra music.
"It's April Again" is a popular song that first appeared in the 1952 film Moulin Rouge. It became a No. 1 hit in the UK Singles Chart when recorded by Mantovani. The music for the film was written by Georges Auric; the original French lyrics were by Jacques Larue, with the English words by William Engvick. The Auric-Engvick song was published in 1953.
Pietro "Pete" Rugolo was an American jazz composer, arranger and record producer.
American vocalist Frank Sinatra recorded 59 studio albums and 297 singles in his solo career, spanning 54 years. Sinatra signed with Columbia Records in 1943; his debut album The Voice of Frank Sinatra was released in 1946. Sinatra would achieve greater success with Capitol and Reprise Records, the former of which he released his final two albums on—Duets and Duets II. Eight compilation albums under Sinatra's name were released in his lifetime, with more albums released following his death in 1998.
Alexander Emil Caiola was an American guitarist, composer and arranger, who spanned a variety of music genres including jazz, country, rock, and pop. He recorded over fifty albums and worked with some of the biggest names in music during the 20th century, including Elvis Presley, Ray Conniff, Ferrante & Teicher, Frank Sinatra, Percy Faith, Buddy Holly, Mitch Miller, and Tony Bennett.
"Theme from A Summer Place" is a song with lyrics by Mack Discant and music by Max Steiner, written for the 1959 film A Summer Place, which starred Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue. It was recorded for the film as an instrumental by Hugo Winterhalter. Originally known as the "Molly and Johnny Theme", this lush extended cue, as orchestrated by Murray Cutter, is not the main title theme of the film, but an oft-heard secondary love theme for the characters played by Dee and Donahue.
Ferrante & Teicher were a duo of American pianists, known for their light arrangements of familiar classical pieces, movie soundtracks, and show tunes as well as their signature style of florid, intricate, and fast-paced piano playing performances.
Richard Taylor Nash is an American jazz trombonist most associated with the swing and big band genres.
Milton Holland was an American drummer, percussionist, ethnomusicologist, and writer in the Los Angeles music scene. He pioneered the use of African, South American, and Indian percussion styles in jazz, pop and film music, traveling extensively in those regions to collect instruments and learn styles of playing them.
The following is the discography for big band and traditional pop arranger Nelson Riddle (1921–1985).
Alfred V. De Lory was an American record producer, arranger, conductor and session musician. He was the producer and arranger of a series of worldwide hits by Glen Campbell in the 1960s, including John Hartford's "Gentle on My Mind", Jimmy Webb's "By the Time I Get to Phoenix", "Wichita Lineman" and "Galveston". He was also a member of the 1960s Los Angeles session musicians known as The Wrecking Crew, and inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2007.
Jack K. Pleis was an American jazz pianist, arranger, conductor, composer and producer. He recorded on London and Decca Records in the 1950s, and Columbia Records in the 1960s. During the course of his career, Pleis worked with many artists, including Louis Armstrong, Harry Belafonte, Bing Crosby, Sammy Davis Jr., Benny Goodman, Earl Grant, Brenda Lee, and Joe Williams. Between 1950 and 1976, more than 150 songs were arranged by Pleis. His surname is pronounced "Pleece".
Bouquet is a 1959 album by The Percy Faith Strings It was released in 1959 by Columbia Records. It debuted on Billboard magazine's pop album chart on January 11, 1960, peaked at the No. 7 spot, and remained on the chart for 17 weeks.