Sid Ramin's 'Love Is a Swingin' Word'

Sid Ramin, who died a few months ago at age 100, was one of the busiest orchestrators of the 1950s and 60s. He is mainly known today for his work on West Side Story, whose composer was his childhood friend Leonard Bernstein. Ramin and Irwin Kostal won an Oscar for their orchestrations of the musical's film version.

But Ramin did so much more: on Broadway alone he orchestrated Wonderful Town, Gypsy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, I Can Get It for You Wholesale and Wildcat. He composed a great deal of music for television and advertising. People my age will remember the themes from Candid Camera and the Patty Duke Show. His commercials included famous jingles for Pepsi, Hertz and Charlie perfume. His "Music to Watch Girls By," written for a Diet Pepsi ad, became a big hit as an instrumental.

Ramin also orchestrated a Broadway show that didn't even use a pit band. The 1957 play Say, Darling, used piano accompaniment for its play-within-a-play songs, written by Styne, Comden and Green. But for recording purposes, RCA decided that the songs needed orchestrations, and it brought in Ramin to do the job.

At the Say, Darling sessions: Sid Ramin, Johnny Desmond, Jule Styne

While he was doing all this, he also was producing arrangements for vocal albums and his own instrumental LPs. I recently reuploaded one of the vocal albums, Abbe Lane's Where There's a Man, in the process opining that Ramin's arrangements were a little too space-agey and bachelor-paddy for my taste. In response, discographer Nigel Burlinson and theater music expert JAC both praised Ramin's work, and expressed interest in hearing one of the arranger's instrumental LPs.

So what we have here is, I believe, Ramin's first solo LP, done for RCA Victor, dating from 1958 and emanating from Webster Hall in New York. It was an early stereo effort, and both the engineer and arranger were surely influenced by that fact. The stereo separation is w-i-i-de. The arrangements emphasize high and low frequencies, so expect lots of piercing piccolos and booming bass saxophones.

Not that I mind such things. The record is a great deal of fun, with highly imaginative instrumentation and wonderful playing by the unidentified studio pros on the date. You may notice echoes of Billy May and Nelson Riddle in Ramin's work, but not so much to make the arrangements sound derivative.

Sid Ramin in action

RCA, Ramin or the producer came up with the idea of having the word "love" in all the song titles. The album begins with "The Lady's in Love with You," a Lane-Loesser song beloved by cabaret vocalists but not by me, and ends with "Love," a great Martin-Blane song that is beloved by me.

Ramin went on to make four other LPs for RCA, three of which are in my collection. Beside Abbe Lane, he accompanied a number of other singers on record. The RCA inner sleeve below credits his work on a second Lane record as well on as the Ames Brothers' Destination Moon. I was tempted to comment that RCA should have left the brothers there, but then I remembered I own the album.

RCA inner sleeve (click to enlarge)

I first became aware of Ramin through his arrangements for Robert Goulet's 1963 LP The Wonderful World of Love, a singer and album favored by my mother. I enjoyed the arrangements, and even grew to like Goulet's belting after a while.

Earlier, I mentioned the early-stereo sound on Love Is a Swingin' Word. RCA, in common with other record companies at the time, turned up the treble and bass controls during mastering. The resulting sonics were both shrill and boomy, tendencies I've moderated.