American arranger, composer, and pianist
Gordon Jenkins
|
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Birth name
| Gordon Hill Jenkins
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Born
| (
1910-05-12
)
May 12, 1910
Webster Groves, Missouri
, U.S.
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Died
| May 1, 1984
(1984-05-01)
(aged 73)
Malibu, California
, U.S.
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Genres
| Popular music
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Occupation(s)
| Composer, arranger, conductor, musician
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Instrument(s)
| Piano
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Years active
| 1930s?1980s
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Musical artist
Gordon Hill Jenkins
(May 12, 1910 ? May 1, 1984) was an American arranger, composer, and pianist who was influential in popular music in the 1940s and 1950s.
[1]
Jenkins worked with
The Andrews Sisters
,
Johnny Cash
,
The Weavers
,
Frank Sinatra
,
Louis Armstrong
,
Judy Garland
,
Nat King Cole
,
Billie Holiday
,
Harry Nilsson
,
Peggy Lee
and
Ella Fitzgerald
.
[1]
Biography
[
edit
]
Career
[
edit
]
Gordon Jenkins was born in
Webster Groves, Missouri
.
[1]
He began his career writing arrangements for a radio Station in St. Louis.
[1]
He was hired by
Isham Jones
, the director of a dance band known for its ensemble playing, which gave Jenkins the opportunity to develop his skills in melodic scoring.
[1]
He also conducted
The Show Is On
on
Broadway
.
[2]
After the Jones band broke up in 1936, Jenkins worked as a freelance arranger and songwriter, contributing to sessions by Isham Jones,
Paul Whiteman
,
Benny Goodman
,
Andre Kostelanetz
,
Lennie Hayton
, and others.
[1]
In 1938, Jenkins moved to Hollywood and worked for
Paramount Pictures
and
NBC
, and then became
Dick Haymes
' arranger for four years.
[3]
In 1944, Jenkins had a hit song with "San Fernando Valley". In the 1940s, he was music director for the radio version of the program
Mayor of the Town
,
[4]
and his orchestra provided the music for
Ransom Sherman's
program on
CBS
.
[5]
In 1945, Jenkins joined
Decca Records
.
[1]
In 1947, he had his first million-seller with "
Maybe You'll Be There
" featuring vocalist
Charles LaVere
[6]
and, in 1949, had a hit with
Victor Young
's film theme "
My Foolish Heart
", which was also a success for
Billy Eckstine
. At the same time, he regularly arranged for and conducted the orchestra for various Decca artists, including Dick Haymes ("
Little White Lies
", 1947), Ella Fitzgerald ("
Happy Talk
", 1949, "
Black Coffee
", 1949, "Baby", 1954),
Billie Holiday
("Crazy He Calls Me", "
You're My Thrill
", "Please Tell Me Now", "Somebody's on My Mind", 1949, and conducted and produced her last Decca session with "
God Bless the Child
", "This Is Heaven to Me", 1950),
Patty Andrews
of the Andrews Sisters ("
I Can Dream, Can't I
", 1949) and Louis Armstrong ("
Blueberry Hill
", 1949 and "
When It's Sleepy Time Down South
", 1951).
Jenkins wrote the score for the Broadway revue,
Along Fifth Avenue
, starring
Nancy Walker
and
Jackie Gleason
, which ran for 180 performances in 1949.
The liner notes to
Verve Records
' 2001 reissue of one of Jenkins' albums with Armstrong,
Satchmo In Style
, quote Decca's A& RDirector
Milt Gabler
, saying that Jenkins "stood up on his little podium so that all the performers could see him conduct. But before he gave a downbeat, Gordon made a speech about how much he loved Louis and how this was the greatest moment in his life. And then he cried."
During this time, Jenkins also began recording and performing under his own name. One of his enduring works while at Decca was a pair of Broadway-style musical vignettes,
Manhattan Tower
and "California" which saw release several times (78s, 45s, and LP) in the 1940s and 1950s.
[1]
The two were paired on a very early Decca LP in 1949, and Jenkins was given the Key to New York City by its mayor when Jenkins's orchestra performed the 16-minute suite on
The Ed Sullivan Show
in the early 1950s.
Manhattan Tower
was also a
Patti Page
LP album, issued by
Mercury Records
as catalog number MG-20226 in 1956. It is her version of Gordon Jenkins' popular 1948/1956
Manhattan Tower
suite and the album charted at No. 18 on the Billboard charts. The album was reissued, combined with the 1956 Patti Page album
You Go to My Head
, in compact disc format, by Sepia Records on September 4, 2007. Jenkins also made a rare excursion into film work in 1952 when he scored the action film
Bwana Devil
, the first
3-D
movie shot in color.
[1]
His
Seven Dreams
released in 1953 included "
Crescent City Blues
", which was the source for
Johnny Cash
's popular recording, "
Folsom Prison Blues
". In 1956, he expanded
Manhattan Tower
to almost three times its length, released it (this time on
Capitol Records
), and performed it on an hour-long television show. (Both versions of "Manhattan Tower" are currently available on CD.) His final long-form work was
The Future
, which made up the entire third disk of
Frank Sinatra
's 1980 Grammy-nominated
Trilogy
album. Although the piece was savaged by critics, Sinatra reportedly loved the semi-biographical work and felt that Jenkins was treated unfairly by the media.
Jenkins headlined New York's Capitol Theater between 1949 and 1951 and the Paramount Theater in 1952. He appeared in
Las Vegas
in 1953 and many times thereafter.
[7]
He worked for NBC as a TV producer from 1955 to 1957, and performed at the
Hollywood Bowl
in 1964. By 1949, Jenkins was musical director at Decca, and he signed ? despite resistance from Decca's management ?
the Weavers
, a
Greenwich Village
folk ensemble that included
Pete Seeger
among its members. The combination of the Weavers'
folk music
with Jenkins' orchestral arrangements became popular. Their most notable collaboration was a version of
Lead Belly
's "
Goodnight Irene
" (1950) backed by Jenkins' adaptation of the Israeli folk song, "
Tzena, Tzena, Tzena
".
[1]
Other notable songs they recorded together are "
The Roving Kind
", "
On Top of Old Smoky
" (1951), and "
Wimoweh
" (1952).
Also while at Decca Records Jenkins arranged and conducted several songs for
Peggy Lee
including her 1952 major hit recording of
Rodgers and Hart
's "Lover," which she also performed in the Warner Bros. remake of
The Jazz Singer
(1952 film)
. Lee also had chart successes with the Jenkins-arranged "Be Anything (But Be Mine)" and "Just One of Those Things".
After a brief stint with RCA's "X" Records
[8]
which produced the album
Gordon Jenkins' Almanac
in 1956, Jenkins was hired by
Capitol
, where he worked with
Frank Sinatra
, notably on the albums
Where Are You?
(1957) and
No One Cares
(1959), and Nat King Cole, with whom he had his greatest successes; Jenkins was responsible for the lush arrangements on the 1957 album
Love Is the Thing
(Capitol's first stereo release, which included "
When I Fall in Love
", and "
Star Dust
" two of Cole's best-known recordings), as well as the albums
The Very Thought of You
(1958) and
Where Did Everyone Go?
(1963).
[1]
Jenkins also wrote the music and lyrics for Judy Garland's 1959 album
The Letter
which also featured vocalist
Charles LaVere
, and conducted several of Garland's London concerts in the early 1960s.
Whilst most of Jenkins' arrangements at Capitol were in his distinctive string-laden style, he continued to demonstrate more versatility when required, particularly on albums such as
A Jolly Christmas From Frank Sinatra
(1957), which opens with a swinging version of "
Jingle Bells
", and Nat King Cole's album of spirituals,
Every Time I Feel The Spirit
(1960), which includes several tracks with a pronounced
beat that might almost be described as rock. He also produced a diverse set of charts for his critically acclaimed 1960 album
Gordon Jenkins Presents
Marshal Royal
, a jazz-pop crossover project with Count Basie's alto saxophonist which included both strings and a swinging rhythm section.
However, as
rock and roll
gained ascendancy in the 1960s, Jenkins' lush string arrangements fell out of favor and he worked only sporadically. However, Sinatra, who had left Capitol to start his own label,
Reprise Records
, continued to call upon the arranger's services at various intervals over the next two decades, on albums such as
All Alone
(1962),
September of My Years
(1965), for which Jenkins won a
Grammy Award
,
[1]
Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back
(1973), and
She Shot Me Down
(1981). Jenkins also worked with
Harry Nilsson
, arranging and conducting
A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night
(1973), an album of jazz standards. The Nilsson sessions, with Jenkins conducting, were recorded on video and later broadcast as a television special by the
BBC
.
Although best known as an arranger, Jenkins also wrote several well-known songs, including "
P.S. I Love You
", "
Goodbye
" (
Benny Goodman
's sign-off tune), "Blue Prelude" (with
Joe Bishop
), "
This Is All I Ask
", and "
When a Woman Loves a Man
". Jenkins also composed both the "Future" suite and the entire "Future" section of Sinatra's 1980
concept album
Trilogy: Past Present Future
, and scored the music for the 1980 film
The First Deadly Sin
, which starred Sinatra in his last major film role.
Personal life
[
edit
]
Jenkins married high school sweetheart Nancy Harkey in 1931 and had three children: Gordon Jr., Susan, and Page. In 1946, he divorced Harkey and married Beverly Mahr, one of the singers in his band. They had a son, Bruce. Jenkins also recorded an album with Beverly Jenkins for
Impulse!
in 1964, entitled
Gordon Jenkins Presents My Wife The Blues Singer
.
Toward the end of his life, he was in a near-fatal automobile accident, which left him debilitated. Nonetheless, he conducted a full orchestra for a recording session in spite of his pain.
Jenkins died of
Lou Gehrig's disease
in Malibu, California, eleven days shy of his 74th birthday.
[2]
His son, sports writer Bruce Jenkins, wrote a biography on his late father in 2005, titled 'Goodbye: In search of Gordon Jenkins' including a rare interview with Frank Sinatra among others for insights into Jenkins' process.
[9]
Jenkins' granddaughter, singer/songwriter Ella Dawn Jenkins, is a career musician in San Francisco.
[10]
Awards
[
edit
]
In 1966, Jenkins received a
Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)
for Frank Sinatra's rendition of the song "
It Was a Very Good Year
".
[7]
Discography
[
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]
Orchestrations for Nat King Cole
[
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]
Orchestrations for Frank Sinatra
[
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]
Capitol albums
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]
Reprise albums
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Orchestrations for others
[
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]
References
[
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]
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
Colin Larkin
, ed. (2002).
The Virgin Encyclopedia of Fifties Music
(Third ed.).
Virgin Books
. p. 221.
ISBN
1-85227-937-0
.
- ^
a
b
Wilson, John S.
(May 3, 1984).
"Gordon Jenkins, 73, is Dead; Grammy-Winning Arranger"
.
The New York Times
.
- ^
"Gordon Jenkins Biography"
.
Space Age Musicmaker
. Retrieved
December 2,
2014
.
- ^
Abbott, Sam (December 19, 1942).
"Hollywood"
.
Billboard
. p. 8.
ISSN
0006-2510
.
- ^
Cohen, Joe (February 21, 1942).
"Program Reviews: Ransom Sherman"
(PDF)
. Billboard. p. 8
. Retrieved
March 29,
2015
.
- ^
Murrells, Joseph (1978).
The Book of Golden Discs
(2nd ed.). London: Barrie and Jenkins. p.
39
.
ISBN
0-214-20512-6
.
- ^
a
b
Thackrey, Ted Jr. (May 2, 1984).
"Gordon Jenkins Obituary"
.
Los Angeles Times
.
- ^
Jenkins Shift from Decca to RCA in Works
. Billboard/Nielsen. December 18, 1954. pp. 11?
. Retrieved
March 13,
2020
.
- ^
Hamlin, Jesse (December 26, 2005).
"A son journeys into his father's musical heart to trace the rhythms of a quiet virtuoso"
.
SFGATE
.
- ^
Hamlin, Jesse (January 31, 2018).
"Half Moon Bay's Ella Jenkins: Harp that shimmers in a whole new way"
.
San Francisco Chronicle
.
External links
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]
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International
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National
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Academics
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Artists
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Other
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