[Dixielandjazz] Fw: Billy May |Obit

[Stan Brager]

Here's a copy of Steve Voce's obit for Billy May.

Stan
----- Original Message ----- 

This is in to-day's The Independent:
Steve Voce

BILLY MAY

It wasn't surprising that when Frank Sinatra left the Capitol record company
to start his own label, Reprise, that he persuaded Billy May to defect with
him to become his resident bandleader. May was one of the most gifted and
versatile arrangers in jazz and popular music, and his skills were without
limit. From 1951 onwards he began recording with his own studio bands and
the series of LPs that resulted provided the "hip" dancing music for a
generation. His early scores for these bands were characterised by his
unusual writing for the saxophone section. He scored it in unison to produce
a wailing, glissando sound that was instantly recognisable even to the
untrained ear.

  It was not without good reason that one of May's impeccable albums was
called Bacchanalia for, in addition to being one of the most gifted Billy
was also a much-loved boozer and humourist who never harmed anyone but
himself.

  It seems unlikely that Charlie Barnet, a rich playboy bandleader who May
joined in 1938, was a decorous influence. On one occasion, when the Barnet
band had a day off while on tour in Buffalo, the musicians decided to take a
cruise on a river steamer.

  "We heard there was no liquor on board so we took our own supplies" said
May. "The drummer Cliff Leeman and his wife were celebrating their wedding
anniversary and we joined them, drinking champagne and throwing the glasses
overboard. Then Cliff threw the bottle and the ice bucket. Soon everybody,
including Charlie, caught Cliff's spirit. We threw overboard everything that
wasn't nailed down. There was a big stack of wicker chairs floating in the
moonlight.  At that point an irate purser came running up. 'My God, he
shouted. 'Whose band is this?'

  'Jimmy Dorsey's,' croaked Charlie."

  As a boy May first learned to play tuba but soon took up the trumpet and
trombone. He also taught himself to write arrangements for the bands he
worked for in his hometown, Pittsburgh. One night he heard Barnet's band for
the first time on the local radio station. "I couldn't believe it! I just
had to get out there to hear that band and ran out to the club that night."
May persuaded Barnet to let him write an arrangement for the band and Barnet
was so impressed with the result that he rented an apartment for May and
installed him in it simply to write four arrangements a week for the band.
One of them, of "Cherokee", became Barnet's greatest hit, and he played it
every night for the rest of his career. Barnet soon brought May into the
band to play in the trumpet section. He proved to be a good jazz soloist and
during the Forties made good jazz records with established soloists like
Jack Teagarden and Willie Smith.

  Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller both approached May to leave Barnet. He
went with Miller and many of the arrangements he wrote appeared with Miller
credited as arranger. This was common practice in the same way that when May
was later hired as a "ghost" writer much of his work appeared as being by
Paul Weston. Miller let May record some trumpet solos with the band and
these showed that, had he concentrated on the instrument instead of on his
writing, he could have been an outstanding player. He wrote arrangements of
"Serenade In Blue" and "Take The A Train" which were amongst Miller's
successes.

   Miller broke up the band in 1942 and enlisted. May went with him, but
failed the medical. Instead he joined the NBC radio band and then worked for
a short time with Woody Herman's Orchestra and then with Les Brown and his
Band of Renown.

  May was a great admirer of the Jimmy Lunceford Band and his writing always
showed the influence of that band. In later years he produced an album for
Capitol recreating Lunceford's original arrangements in the advanced high
fidelity that the company had developed.

  "I came out to Los Angeles after World War II with my first wife and
settled there," said May.  "I realised the industry was here with the movies
and everything. I got my card in the local union and began writing for John
Scott Trotter, Bing Crosby and Bob Crosby.

  "About 1950 Capitol had a tie-in with Arthur Murray and they asked me to
do some fox-trots. I was fooling around with the saxophones and the result
was so distinctive they decided to put them out as singles.

  "I treated the music lightly, with a good rhythm sound and two beats,
rather like Lunceford, and it swung pretty well." The band's hits included
two of his own compositions, "Fat Man's Boogie" and "Lean Baby". There were
half a dozen more, all featuring May's distinctive arrangements of
standards.

  May's success was such that in 1952 he formed a band to tour and went out
on the road

  to tour. He was very successful and made a lot of money. After 18 months
his marriage had broken down, he was drinking heavily and was heavily in
debt. He broke up the band and sold the name The Billy May Orchestra to
fellow bandleader and trumpeter Ray Anthony. Anthony had his own record
label and used the title there. From 1951 until 1957 May recorded regularly
for Capitol. One of his studio bands featured in the film short "Billy May
and his Orchestra" (1952). In 1956 he had an acting role in the film
Nightmare and also led his band. He wrote music for innumerable films and
television productions and accompanied every one of Capitol's stars from
Frank Sinatra to Nat "King" Cole, from George Shearing to Peggy Lee. He also
worked with Ella Fitzgerald, Rosemary Clooney, Hoagy Carmichael, Johnny
Mercer, Louis Armstrong, the Andrews Sisters, Bobby Darin, Jeri Southern and
anyone of merit on the West Coast. He also worked on Capitol's lucrative
children's catalogue and produced the best-selling "Sparky's Magic Piano"
and "I Taut I Taw A Puddy Tat."

  He had one failure. He wrote many albums for Frank Sinatra and when
Sinatra had Duke Ellington under contract to his Reprise label, he asked May
to write an album of vocals to be accompanied by the Ellington orchestra.

  May wrote a perfectly good set of arrangements but the Ellington band,
many of whom were not good readers, were used to the idiosyncratic ways of
the Duke, who was in the studio whilst May rehearsed and recorded.

  "The trumpet section really wasn't making it on the record session, but it
wasn't my place to say so. 'Let's try it again' was all I could keep
 saying."  May noticed that throughout the session one of the trumpeters was
reading a book on cameras.

  The album was not a success.

  May's first album for Sinatra was Come Fly With Me and he and the singer
remained good friends until May's last album for him, Trilogy in 1979.

  May continued to work until 1996, in his later years of course able to
pick and choose the work that he took on. He surfaced in that year with a
clutch of big band arrangements for the comic Stan Freberg's album "The
United States of America Vol. 2", 25 years after May had contributed to
"Vol. 1".


STEVE VOCE

Edward William May Jr., composer, arranger, trumpeter, bandleader: born
Pittsburgh 10 November 1916; twice married (four daughters); died San Juan
Capistrano, California 22 January 2004.