James Taylor is the debut studio album by American singer-songwriter James Taylor. Released on December 6, 1968, it was the first recording by a non-British artist released by Apple Records, and would also be Taylor's only release on that label. The album was released under the title First Album on the South African market.
Douglas Clare Fischer was an American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader. After graduating from Michigan State University, he became the pianist and arranger for the vocal group the Hi-Lo's in the late 1950s. Fischer went on to work with Donald Byrd and Dizzy Gillespie, and became known for his Latin and bossa nova recordings in the 1960s. He composed the Latin jazz standard "Morning", and the jazz standard "Pensativa". Consistently cited by jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock as a major influence, he was nominated for eleven Grammy Awards during his lifetime, winning for his landmark album, 2+2 (1981), the first of Fischer's records to incorporate the vocal ensemble writing developed during his Hi-Lo's days into his already sizable Latin jazz discography; it was also the first recorded installment in Fischer's three-decade-long collaboration with his son Brent. Fischer was also a posthumous Grammy winner for ¡Ritmo! (2012) and for Music for Strings, Percussion and the Rest (2013).
The Hi-Lo's were a vocal quartet formed in 1953, who achieved their greatest fame in the late 1950s and 1960s. The group's name is a reference to their extreme vocal and physical ranges.
"I'm Getting Sentimental Over You" is a song recorded by Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra. The words were written by Ned Washington and the music was written by George Bassman. It was first performed in 1932. The original copyright is dated 1933 and issued to Lawrence Music Publishers, Inc. The copyright was assigned to Mills Music, Inc. in 1934. Noni Bernardi, a saxophonist with the Dorsey orchestra arranged this song.
"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.
"The Shadow of Your Smile", also known as "Love Theme from The Sandpiper", is a popular song. The music was written by Johnny Mandel with the lyrics written by Paul Francis Webster. The song was introduced in the 1965 film The Sandpiper, with a trumpet solo by Jack Sheldon and later became a minor hit for Tony Bennett. It won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year and the Academy Award for Best Original Song. In 2004 the song finished at number 77 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs poll of the top tunes in American cinema.
The Family is a 1985 album released on Prince's Paisley Park Records label by the band of the same name.
Lawrence Benjamin Bunker was an American jazz drummer, vibraphonist, and percussionist. A member of the Bill Evans Trio in the mid-1960s, he also played timpani with the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra.
Vincent Ned DeRosa was an American hornist who served as a studio musician for Hollywood soundtracks and other recordings from 1935 until his retirement in 2008. Because his career spanned over 70 years, during which he played on many film and television soundtracks and as a sideman on studio albums, he is considered to be one of the most recorded brass players of all time. He set "impeccably high standards" for the horn, and became the first horn for Henry Mancini, Lalo Schifrin, Alfred Newman, and John Williams, among others, with Williams calling him "one of the greatest instrumentalists of his generation." DeRosa contributed to many of the most acclaimed albums of the 20th century, including some of the biggest-selling albums by artists as diverse as Frank Sinatra, Barry Manilow, Frank Zappa, Boz Scaggs, Ella Fitzgerald, Harry Nilsson, Stan Kenton, Henry Mancini, The Monkees, Sammy Davis Jr., and Mel Tormé.
George Greeley was an Italian-American pianist, conductor, composer, arranger, recording artist and record producer who is known for his extensive work across the spectrum of the entertainment industry. Starting as an arranger and pianist with several notable big bands in the 1940s, he segued into the Hollywood radio scene, working on several nationally broadcast variety programs. After conducting an Army Air Force Band during World War II, he was hired by Columbia Pictures as a staff pianist and orchestrator. He worked as pianist on several hundred motion pictures, worked with many famous composers orchestrating their soundtrack compositions, and created original compositions of his own in several dozen movies. It was Greeley's hands that performed the piano parts that Tyrone Power mimed in The Eddy Duchin Story. Concurrent with his work at Columbia Pictures, George Greeley also worked at Capitol Records as music director, pianist, and conductor for many artists such as Gordon MacRae, Jane Powell, Jo Stafford, Frankie Laine, and Doris Day. He was hired in the late 1950s by the newly established Warner Brothers Records. George Greeley arranged, orchestrated and performed as primary artist for a series of hit recordings entitled "Popular Piano Concertos." As music tastes changed in the late 1960s, Greeley had already moved into television, composing themes and music for popular TV series like My Favorite Martian,The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,Nanny and the Professor, and Small Wonder. He performed as featured piano soloist and as guest conductor in concert appearances around the world. He died from emphysema at age 89 in Los Angeles, California.
Romantically is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on November 18, 1963, by Columbia Records and was also the final original studio album recorded by Mathis for the label prior to his moving to Mercury Records. Mathis had recorded exclusively for Columbia from 1956 to 1963. After a brief stint with Mercury, he returned to Columbia in 1967. His first Mercury project, Sounds of Christmas, was actually released six weeks before this one, on October 4.
Frank G. Comstock was an American composer, arranger, conductor and trombonist. For television, Comstock wrote and arranged music for major situation comedies and variety shows; his theme and incidental music for Rocky and His Friends (1959–1964) are probably his best-remembered works. Additionally, his music for Adam-12 earned him a 1971 Emmy nomination.
A Portrait of Duke Ellington is an album featuring trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and orchestra performing compositions associated with Duke Ellington, recorded in 1960 and released on the Verve label. All of the orchestral arrangements were provided by then Hi-Lo's accompanist – and sometimes arranger – Clare Fischer, hired on the basis of a previously recorded but unreleased album with strings, arranged by Fischer for erstwhile University of Michigan classmate Donald Byrd. Byrd played the tape for Gillespie; Gillespie liked what he heard. Unfortunately for Fischer, especially in light of the critical accolades given the eventual fruit of his, and Gillespie's, labor, Fischer's name was nowhere to be found on the finished LP; widespread awareness of his participation would have to await the CD reissue almost 2½ decades later.
"Pensativa" is a bossa nova jazz standard by American pianist/composer/arranger Clare Fischer, first recorded in 1962 by a quintet under the joint leadership of Fischer and saxophonist Bud Shank, and released that year as part of an album entitled Bossa Nova Jazz Samba, comprising music in this style, as per its title, all of it arranged by Fischer, and, with the exception of Erroll Garner's "Misty", composed by him as well. In retrospect, this would prove to be just the first of countless forays by Fischer into various areas of Latin music. This particular song was one of the first, and almost certainly the most famous, of all the foreign-born - i.e. non-Brazilian - bossa novas. Its form, though extended (64 mm.), is standard A-A-B-A, with each section consisting of 16 measures instead of eight.
West Side Story is an album featuring American vibraphonist Cal Tjader, consisting of musical numbers from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story in jazz arrangements, by Tjader's pianist and musical director Clare Fischer, without vocals. It was recorded in October 1960 and released on the Fantasy label in January 1961 as Fantasy 3310 / 8054. On July 30, 2002, Fantasy would reissue it – along with the 1962 LP Cal Tjader Plays Harold Arlen – on CD as Cal Tjader Plays Harold Arlen and West Side Story.
2+2 is an eponymous album of a vocal quartet called 2+2 with music by the Latin jazz ensemble known as Salsa Picante that was led by the American keyboardist/composer-arranger Clare Fischer. It was recorded in September 1980 and released in February 1981 by Pausa Records, and in Germany on the MPS label, as Foreign Exchange – The First Album. Tracks 1, 2, 3, 6 and 7 would be reissued on CD in 1999, and as a digital download in 2012, as Latin Patterns, a compilation of remastered highlights from four of Fischer's MPS LPs from this period.
First Time Out is the debut album by American composer/arranger/keyboardist Clare Fischer, recorded and released in 1962 by Pacific Jazz Records.
Surging Ahead is the second album by American composer/arranger/keyboardist Clare Fischer, released in 1963 by Pacific Jazz Records.
Extension is the third album by composer/arranger/keyboardist Clare Fischer, and his first for big band, recorded and released in 1963 on the Pacific Jazz label, reissued on CD in 2002 as America the Beautiful, and, under its original name, in 2012.
This is the discography for American jazz musician Clare Fischer.
You may listen to "America the Beautiful" here