Hollywood On 52nd Street
Over The Rainbow is a jazz classic taken from the 1939 American musical fantasy film The Wizard of Oz. It was the most commercially successful adaptation of the novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. The film stars Judy Garland, Terry the Dog as Toto, Ray bolger, Jack Halsy, Bert Lahr, Frank Morgan, Billie Burke, Margaret Hamilton, Charley Grapewin, Clara Blandick, Pat Walshe as the leader of the flying monkeys and the Singer Midgets as the Munchkins.
The Story: Dorothy is bored and her aunt, uncle and farmhands are too busy to pay attention to her so she runs off. Meeting carny mystic Professor Marvel who tells her fortune and convinces her to return home. Arriving home during a tornado she is knocked unconscious and she imagines the house being blown up into the funnel and ends up landing in Oz atop a wicked witch. Traveling from Munchkin Land to the Emerald City to see the Wizard, Dorothy encounters a scarecrow, a tin man, a cowardly lion, flying monkeys, talking trees and poppy fields. She meets the Wizard, kills the wicked witch and discovers home is all about just believing.
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Henry Mancini was born Enrico Nicola Mancini on April 16, 1924 in the Little Italy neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio and was raised in the steel town of West Aliquippa near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He began piccolo lessons at age eight, by 12 began piano lessons and played flute in the Aliquippa Italian immigrant band, “Sons of Italy”. After graduating from high school he went to Juilliard School of Music and after one year of study was drafted into the Army, where in 1945 was part of the liberation force of a southern Germany concentration camp.
After the war years Mancini entered the music industry as a pianist and arranger for the newly re-formed Glenn Miller Orchestra. He went on to broaden his skills in composition, counterpoint, harmony and orchestration during subsequent studies. By 1952 he joined the Universal Pictures music department and over the next six years contributed music to over 100 movies, most notably The Glenn Miller Story, The Benny Goodman Story, Touch of Evil and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. It was also during this period that he wrote his first hit single for Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians titled I Won’t Let You Out of My Heart.
Henry left Universal International to work as an independent composer and arranger in 1958 and soon scored the television series Peter for writer and producer Blake Edwards. This was the genesis of a relationship in which Edwards and Mancini collaborated on 30 films over 35 years and was one of several pioneers introducing jazz elements in the late romantic orchestral film and TV scoring prevalent at the time.
Mancini’s scored film songs Moon River, Days of Wine and Roses, The Pink Panther, A Time For Us, Baby Elephant Walk, and the Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet as well as many TV shows and movies such as the Thorn Birds, Peter Gunn and Remington Steele. Among his many singers he worked with frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Julie London, Peggy Lee among a host of others. He recorded over 90 albums, eight certified gold by the RIAA, a twenty-year contract with RCA that culminated in 60 commercial albums. Many of his songs have become jazz standards, most notably, Charade, Moment To Moment, Two For The Road, Love Story, Slow Hot Wind, Moonlight Sonata, The Pink Panther, The Days of Wine and Roses and Moon River.
Composer, arranger and conductor Henry Mancini died of pancreatic cancer in Los Angeles, California on June 14, 1994. He was working at the time on the Broadway stage version of Victor/Victoria, which he never saw on stage. Mancini was nominated for an unprecedented 72 Grammys, winning 20; nominated for 18 Academy Awards, winning four; won a Golden Globe Award, nominated for two Emmys, was posthumously Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and honored with a 37 cent postage stamp in 2004.
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Coco Rouzier was born on April 14, 1966 in Washington, DC and began singing as a child by imitating the sounds that came from her mother. She sang in the Concert Choir at Kelly Miller Jr. High School taught her harmony. While working summers in musical theater she learned acting and subsequent immersion into cabaret taught her to and learned to connect intimately with the audience.
While at Howard University, Rouzier won the amateur singing contest and that led her straight to the Apollo Theater in New York City where she performed on “It’s Showtime at the Apollo”. New York City become her home, where she discovered jazz and started to swing with The Jerry Kravat NY Orchestra, now called Tribeca Rhythm.
Coco’s performances have garnered her the labels of a Jazz Diva in France, the Soulful Swinging Songstress in America, and The Jewel in China. She has performed in Norway on some of stages her heroes stood decades before. As yet she has not led her own recording session to showcase her own style she has developed and for the past 15 years. Vocalist Coco Rouzier continues to perform for audiences around the world with a blend of straight-ahead swing, blues and old-school soul.
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Hollywood To 52nd Street
Beyond the Sea was originally titled La Mer, and the lyrics were written by sixteen-year old French lad named Charles Trenet. It wasn’t until 1943 while riding on a train that he composed the music for the song. Jacques Lawrence translated the original French lyrics into what has been widely known to the English-speaking world as Beyond The Sea. Though already a hit around the world as La Mer, it became a huge hit for jazz singer Bobby Darin and has been associated with him ever since.
The song became the title of the 2004 Bobby Darin biopic starring Kevin Spacey and has been heard in the 1995’s French Kiss starring Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline, and as the end music for the 2011 film Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and in the 2003 movie Finding Nemo.
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Requisites
This is My Beloved, recorded by Arthur Prysock, eight years before the author, Walter Benton, death in 1976. His recitation of the poems written in diary form are addressed to Lillian and is set to a beautifully scored background of jazz. The book was first published in 1943 and became one of the bet selling books of poetry, selling over 350,000 copies at that time. This landmark recording is a necessity for every collector who has ever wanted to understand love.
Record Label: Verve
Record Date: December 16,1968 / Los Angeles, California
Producer: Hy Weiss, Pete Spargo
Music Accompaniment Composer: Mort Garson
Liner Notes: Helen Hanff
Playing Time: 37 Minutes
Songs: I Need Your Love, Your Eyes, Your Words, Your Body Makes Eyes At Me, Come Love Me, I Was Very Tired And Lonely, You Did Not Come, I Stood Long Where You Left Me, Each Season, Every Year, Eleven Years, Remembering How We Could Be Warm Together, Sleeping…So Still, So Still, I Shall Wish For You
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