Artist Lounge: Les Brown & His Band Of Renown
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Every year in Vienna, the Vienna Philharmonic plays a New Year’s Day concert, the penultimate work coming near the end: “On The Beautiful Blue Danube,” written in 1865 by Johann Strauss, Jr. This version actually swings mightily, taking all of the themes of Strauss' classic waltz and developing them in a hard driving fashion. I wonder what the audiences at the Musikvereinsall in Vienna would say about this recording?
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Georges Bizet had composed the piece (which serves as the basis of this recording) as the “Farandole” for his music for a stage play called “L’Arlesienne.” This version swings the Farandole in several original ways, adding color and updating the music for modern listeners.
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Arranger J. Hill takes us on a Volga Boat Ride on a Smirnoff vodka run (and how a non-drinker like myself got on this boat is a mystery!). J. Hill writes another hard driving arrangement with a dynamic full bodied ensemble with very tight harmonies and orchestra sonorities. This is all due to Les Brown’s magnificent abilities to get his band to play with vitality and urgency, his own special trademarks.
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The talents of Buck Ram, Morty Nevins, and Artie Dunn collaborated on this 1944 classic which was revived in 1958. It’s regarded as the all-time favorite romantic song and it receives a deliciously subtle treatment by the Les Brown orchestra with full saxes and a lovely tenor sax solo.
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Written by Cole Porter for his musical “Jubilee,” this treatment by the Les Brown band has a great trumpet solo plus excellent brass and sax contributions.
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This is quite a laid back arrangement for either listening or dancing. For his solo, the pianist uses block chords joined with the electric guitar. This song was written in 1940 by John Latouche and Ted Fetter (words) and Vernon Duke (music) and has been a favorite of singers.
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As noted elsewhere by myself, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakoff was a world traveler earlier in his life and never forgot the strange harmonies and instrumental colors of every place he visited as a sailor in the Russian navy in the 1860's. From his opera "Sadko" came "The Song of India" which became a great hit for Tommy Dorsey in the middle 1930's. J. Hill takes his arrangement of this classic one step further by adding a bossa nova beat to this classic. The result is a very rela... MORE
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In 1935, George Gershwin wrote his second opera "Porgy and Bess," making a bold statement by having the entire cast made up of African-American singers. The jazz idiom was never very far from this score and Frank Comstock shows us just how close to jazz Gershwin came. The songs in this suite are Summertime (trombonist Roy Main plays a melting solo on this well-known song); I Got Plenty O’ Nuttin’, Bess You Is My Woman Now; It Ain’t Necessarily So; I Loves You Porgy, I’m On... MORE
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If anyone remembers, "Baubles, Bangles and Beads" was the sole property of singer Buddy Greco although it came straight from the Borodin influenced musical "Kismet." Unfortunately, Buddy Greco isn’t singing on this one but J. Hill gives a magnificent arrangement for the brown aggregation, another hard swinger by J. Hill with calls and responses from saxes and brass ooh-wahs. The writing is very colorful as it should be as it describes the baubles, bangles and beads of many... MORE
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No, we don’t mean Rocky Marciano, the famous boxer who, when in his prime, could rock with the rest of the pugilists. We mean Sergei Rachmaninoff, triple threat composer/pianist/conductor. And the work to swing this time is the famous romantically arching main theme from the last movement of the Second Piano Concerto, a great favorite of audiences world wide. This medium tempo treatment by J. Hill features the trumpets playing the main theme above the saxes who also get a ... MORE
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As an encore, here is Frank Comstock’s earlier chart for the Les Brown band which was re-recorded in 1963 for the LP "The Explosive Sound Of Les Brown & His Band Of Renown: Swingin’ the Masters." The piece by Bizet gets a magnificent work out is the Farandole from the "L’Arlesienne Suite No.1."
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No bigger authority on his band’s music than Les Brown referred to his orchestra as “The Malted Milk Band,” referring to it’s youthful, joyous, exuberant quality. And that assumption fits the theme song, “Leap Frog,” one of the most catchy tunes ever composed for a big band. And it also typifies the personality of the man who led the band. Beginning in earnest in 1938 after leading a college band at Duke University and arranging for Larry Clinton, Brown led a band that alw... MORE
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If the Brian Setzer Orchestra’s playing of swinging classics sounded like a fluke for arranger Frank Comstock, it was actually not a once only occurrence. In the 1940's, he arranged Georges Bizet’s "Farandole" from the "L’Arlesienne" Suite No. 1 into Bizet has his day. In the late 1950's, Comstock arranged more works into extended suites suitable for concert performances which were becoming the bread and butter for most big bands following the end of the Second World War. ... MORE
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A big hit for the Les Brown band after the recording ban of 1942-1944 was over was the song by Irving Berlin written in 1937 for the film “On The Avenue” starring Dick Powell and the Ritz Brothers. The rich, full bodied texture of this arrangement became both a trademark of the Band Of Renown and one of their greatest hits.
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When Paul Whiteman commissioned George Gershwin to write his "Rhapsody In Blue" for an All-American Concert in 1924 at Aeolian Hall in New York City, he had no way knowing that this piece alone would remain one of the most popular of all serious works for orchestra ever composed by an American born musicians. "Rhapsody In Blue" has been heard in dozens of ways but nowhere in as flattering a light as that one by Frank Comstock for the Les Brown big band. It opens with the f... MORE
