TV Jazz with Marterie, Rugolo and Martin

Craig Stevens as Peter Gunn being menaced by a projected shadow 

Big band jazz had an unlikely renaissance on American television in the late 1950s. Jazz scores seemed to go well with the "private eye" detectives then in vogue, whether they were busy being crime fighters, swinging bachelors or just being cool.

Similar to the way those private eyes drew their lineage from the Raymond Chandler - Dashiell Hammett hard-boiled school of the 1930s and 40s (much watered down and more upscale), so the musicians took their cues from certain film noir scores, along with the work of such composers as Elmer Bernstein on several movies, Leith Stevens and Shorty Rogers on The Wild One, and Kenyon Hopkins on The Strange One.

The catalyst for much of the interest, though, was the work of Henry Mancini on Peter Gunn, a huge television hit in 1958. Thereafter, big band jazz and detectives became inseparable. And the music filled any number of LPs.

Today we have three of those albums, all of which involve one or both of the famed arrangers Pete Rugolo and Skip Martin.

• Music for a Private Eye by Ralph Marterie and band, scored by Rugolo and Martin

• The Music from Richard Diamond, written and arranged by Rugolo

• TV Jazz Themes performed by the so-called "Video All-Stars," led by Martin

These are well worth hearing, each featuring the finest West Coast studio musicians, several of whom appear on more than one of the LPs.

Music for a Private Eye (Ralph Marterie)

I believe that Ralph was still leading a band at the time this LP was made in 1959, but here his "Marlboro Men" (presumably named for a sponsor) were some of Hollywood's finest (Don Fagerquist, Frank Rosolino, George Roberts, Bud Shank, Paul Horn, Bob Cooper, Jimmy Rowles, Al Viola and so on), all conducted by Pete Rugolo. The arrangements are by Pete, Skip Martin (another big band vet who went Hollywood) and reportedly Heinie Beau, a noted "ghost" orchestrator. 

Pete rose to prominence with Stan Kenton's band, but had branched out into the film and television field by the time this LP came about.

Pete Rugolo

For this album, despite the "private eye" branding, much of the music is not from detective shows. The contents include Pete's Richard Diamond and The Thin Man themes; Count Basie's music from M Squad, Lee Marvin's police show; Fred Steiner's catchy Perry Mason signature music; the theme from Alfred Hitchcock Presents, listed as by Stanley Wilson but based on a Gounod piece; Frank Comstock's music from The D.A.'s Man; and two ringers - Melvyn Leonard's Riff Blues and Private Eyeball by Peter Hanson and Marterie.

I transferred this from the Mercury Wing stereo budget reissue of the LP, which cut costs by chopping off Jay Livingston's 77 Sunset Strip music, which was on the full-price original. I have reinstated the track from a mono version of the full-price album.

By the way, it's not clear what Marterie does on the LP. He's not listed among the trumpet players and he didn't handle the arrangements or conducting. He does look good on the cover, however, lighting a Marlboro, accompanied by two streetwalkers.

LINK to Music for a Private Eye

Music from Richard Diamond (Pete Rugolo)

Richard Diamond is not the best remembered private eye show - those would be Peter Gunn and 77 Sunset Strip - but Pete Rugolo's music did merit a complete LP, which is less well known than such specimens as the Peter Gunn and 77 Sunset Strip albums.

The Richard Diamond theme is memorable big band swagger. This version is more or less the same arrangement as appears on the album above. The one on the LP below is somewhat different.

David Janssen as Richard Diamond, with his cool car phone and giant hat ribbon

The music on the album represents both recurring themes and music that Rugolo wrote specifically for certain shows.

The musicians are quite similar to those on the album above - Frank Rosolino, Bud Shank, Paul Horn, Bob Cooper, Al Viola and Jimmy Rowles among them.

The executive producer of the Richard Diamond TV show was Dick Powell, a Hollywood musical star who morphed into a hard-boiled detective type, including playing Diamond on the radio. He contributed to the sleeve notes on this LP.

LINK to Music from Richard Diamond

TV Jazz Themes (Skip Martin)

The clumsy cover above might lead you to think this is a budget LP. You would be correct, but it is quite a good one.

Leading the band is Skip Martin, a well-known Hollywood orchestrator. The musicians once again include Paul Horn, Bob Cooper, Jimmy Rowles, Frank Rosolino and others mentioned above.

Skip Martin

Martin programmed an entire side of music from Peter Gunn, and did well by Mancini's famed score. He includes its two best known melodies - the opening theme and "Dreamsville," which also had an afterlife as a ballad with lyrics by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston.

Otherwise, Martin programmed Rugolo's themes from Richard Diamond and The Thin Man, and Livingston's 77 Sunset Strip. These are all very well done and the sound is excellent - as it is on the other LPs. (Although it doesn't say so on the cover above, this LP is in stereo.)

LINK to TV Jazz Themes

Jazz on the Big Screen

Up top I mentioned several examples of jazz on the big screen. Here are several LPs that have appeared on this blog that might be of interest. Links to the original posts are in the subheads.

Elmer Bernstein - Movie and TV Themes. Bernstein was a giant in the field. This LP provides a good overview of some of his scores. If you want a complete LP of his famed Sweet Smell of Success music, it's also available via the link above. His Themes from the General Electric Theater album is here.

Leith Stevens and Shorty Rogers - The Wild One. A complete set of Leith Stevens and Shorty Rogers' recordings of the music from The Wild One (the one being Marlon Brando). This includes the 10-inch and 12-inch Stevens LPs and the Shorty Rogers EP. There are also links to two other Leith Stevens scores.

Kenyon Hopkins - The Strange One. Here's what I wrote back in 2009: "The title music is one of the best jazz-influenced tunes of the time, with a sinister edge that suits the film's theme very well." The "strange one" is Ben Gazzara. This score, which has not be re-released, is one of my favorites.

Heinie Beau - Moviesville Jazz. I mentioned the famed "ghost" arranger Heinie Beau above, who apparently contributed to the charts for the Ralph Marterie album. Beau recorded a set of his own compositions for Coral called "Moviesville Jazz" that made light of some of the conventions of film scoring, bearing such titles as "The Man with the Golden Embouchure."

A New Band on the Blog: Ralph Marterie

Ralph Marterie

Ralph Marterie, one of the most popular bandleaders of the 1950s, hadn't been featured here until today. A shame, because he had a disciplined band that made terrific records, even though the jazz content was nearly nil.

As the title above proclaims, Marterie's focus was on dancing. He led one of the most prominent bands on campus during the 50s, along with Les Elgart, Ralph Flanagan, Ray Anthony, Les Brown and a few others. 

This post includes:

• The 10-inch LP Dancing on the Down Beat from 1953

• The four songs added to that LP to compose the 1956 12-inch LP On Bandstand No. 1

• One additional song from the EP Dancers' Delight, which otherwise repeats three numbers from the LPs just mentioned

So 13 selections in total, some of which were originally issued as singles; "Pretend" and  "Caravan" were even hits.

About Marterie: unlike most of his bandleader peers, Ralph (1914-78) had little experience with the prewar bands. He was a trumpeter in the NBC Chicago studio band, then led a Navy band during the war. Thereafter, he returned to Chicago but moved to the ABC band, where he became the leader. The local Mercury label soon offered him a contract, and his career took off.

Dancing on the Down Beat (10-inch LP)

We start off with Ralph's album Dancing on the Down Beat, its title signifying a seal of approval by the music magazine of that name. The cover makes the claim that Marterie was number one on campus. Not sure about that - I haven't turned up a specific campus poll - but his popularity was growing.

The Marterie band at the University of Montana

As mentioned, Ralph had a hit with "Pretend," the song by Dan Belloc, Lew Douglas, Cliff Parman and Frank Levere. But Nat King Cole's vocal rendition was even bigger - it reached number 3 on the Billboard chart.

The flip side of Marterie's "Pretend" was "After Midnight," which Ralph wrote with a person named Schreier. This was probably Mercury's David Carroll, whose birth name was Rodell Schreier. "After Midnight" is notable as a boogie number with a guitar lead that gives it almost a proto-rockabilly feel. Marterie's band was proficient both with big-beat selections and ballads.

Otherwise, the 10-inch album includes :

• "Everything I Have Is Yours," the Burton Lane-Harold Adamson tune from the 1933 pic Dancing Lady 

• "Hall of the Mountain King," a not-bad version of the selection from Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt

• "Through for the Night," a piece by trombonist Trummy Young

• "Downbeat" by bandleader-critic Leonard Feather and a person named Webman

• "Dark Eyes," a version of the Russian song "Очи чёрные [Ochi chyornye]' by the poet Yevhen Hrebinka with a melody borrowed from a piano piece by Florian Hermann; the song was popularized by Feodor Chaliapin

• "La Rosita" by Gus Haenschen and Lester O'Keefe, dating from 1923

On Bandstand No. 1 (12-inch LP)

Mercury issued Marterie's On Bandstand No. 1 in 1956, adding four songs to the eight previously included in Dancing on the Down Beat.

The title and cover again play on the trumpeter's popularity with the campus crowd. (In the photo, the band must be on a break or something.)

The four additional selections are:

• "Darling Je Vous Aime Beaucoup," another Nat Cole hit. The Anna Sosenko song has just appeared on my other blog in a Jack Haskell vocal rendition.

• "Cherry Pink (and Apple Blossom White)," which was a 1955 US hit in Pérez Prado's version of the Louiguy song. (This song was recently posted here in a recording by a much different trumpeter - Chet Baker.)

• "Baritone Boogie," whose baritone sax lead gives the music a strong R&B feel. Marterie was a co-author of the piece.

• "Ciribiri Mambo," an adaptation of the 1898 Alberto Pestalozza song "Ciribiribin" that gained fame as Harry James' theme song. Here, Marterie and Gage Brewer have transformed it quite well into the newly popular mambo.

Dancer's Delight EP

The specter of a ghostly Ralph appears to be haunting the dance floor on the cover of this circa 1953 EP.

The record adds one number to three that are also found in the two LPs above.

The new item - a version of trombonist Juan Tizol's "Caravan" of Ellington fame - was an early 1953 single that did well for Marterie.

LINK

More Marterie

I have a thing for some post-war dance bands, Ralph Marterie among them. I recently had a request to reup a Marterie album featured here some years ago, and I enjoyed remastering the LP so much that I decided to transfer this collection, which dates from 1951.

Marterie Moods for Dancing collates the bandleader's recent singles, which cover a range of styles. As I wrote the first time around for the band, Marterie "had a good ensemble that played a variety of music quite well - from ballads to post-Hampton big band r&b."

The cover suggests that you will hear a female vocalist - not so. This is all instrumental, featuring the leader's trumpet. Hopefully he did not attempt to play it while peeking out from under the dancers' armpits, as he does on this cover.

Good sound on this one, even though Mercury at the time was pressing its records on the cheesiest vinyl (or vinyliest cheese) it could find. The download includes personnel.

By the way, if you like Marterie, I recently posted an EP that Vic Damone made with Marterie on my other blog.

Dancing with Ralph Marterie

Here is the beginning of yet another new thread on this blog (how many do I have going? 30?), this one devoted to the post World War II dance bands.

You don't hear too much about these bands today, except for some of the jazz bands, leftovers from the big band heyday, and Miller-derived ensembles like Ray Anthony and Tex Beneke.

This post presents Ralph Marterie, who made many records over quite a few years, won polls such as the one touted on this cover, and yet has fallen into something very much like obscurity.

Too bad. He had a good ensemble that played a variety of music quite well - from ballads to post-Hampton big band r&b.

Marterie's band started off as a recording orchestra, then after gaining some notice, he formed a touring ensemble. This is a pattern that was also followed by Ralph Flanagan, who also will make an appearance in this series.

All these sides were recorded in 1952, according to the very helpful Mercury Records site.

The truth is, I am starting off this series with Marterie because of the very cool cover - what could be better than a disembodied cartoon face and a Down Beat magazine? Outstanding!