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Nelson Riddle - Buddy DeFranco - "Cross Country Suite"


garthsj

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Here is a rather long article I copied from the Songbirds site ... good news for us Buddy DeFranco fans ... Also, of course, Nelson Riddle fans ...

Garth.

Rosemary Riddle Acerra interviewed

Posted by: "Songbirds moderator" peggyfan@earthlink.net ndegstrom

Sun Jun 15, 2008 9:59 pm (PDT)

A Daughter's Devotion

Lakewood woman keeps Nelson Riddle's legacy alive

by Kelly-Jane Cotter

Asbury Park (New Jersey) Press, June 15, 2008

If Nelson Riddle were still alive, he'd be getting a nice surprise from his eldest daughter this Father's Day -- one of his best-loved compositions, re-issued on CD.

Riddle, an arranger and conductor who learned his craft as a teenager in Rumson and died in 1985, is best remembered for his work on Frank Sinatra's classic "comeback" albums of the 1950s. Riddle's craftsmanship and innate sense of swing helped create some of Sinatra's masterpieces, among them "Swing Easy" and "Songs For Young Lovers" in 1954; "In The Wee Small Hours" in 1955, "Songs For Swingin' Lovers" in 1956 and "Frank Sinatra Sings For Only The Lonely" in 1958.

Riddle also arranged music for Nat "King" Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Rosemary Clooney, Judy Garland, Dean Martin, Linda Ronstadt and other luminaries.

Riddle also was a composer, and this is where his eldest daughter enters the picture.

Riddle had seven children with his first wife, the former Doreen Moran. Of the six who are still alive, it is Rosemary Riddle Acerra, 60, of Lakewood, who has been most protective of Riddle's work and his legacy.

Her most recent achievement is the re-issue of "Cross Country Suite," a Grammy Award-winning instrumental work from 1958.

The album becomes available on a re-mastered CD this month, in local stores, such as Jack's Music in Red Bank, and through Amazon.com and other music sites. Acerra was in charge of its design and is handling the distribution and marketing.

"Cross Country Suite," originally released on the Dot label and later acquired by Universal, has been long out of print, and therefore something of a "Holy Grail" for Riddle fans, as well as for Acerra herself.

"I always had the LP, but it was getting scratched," Acerra said. "People had e-mailed me on the Web site -- http://www.nelsonriddlemusic.com/ -- and asked about "Cross Country Suite."

Universal resisted the re-issue, but relented this year, perhaps because of the 10th anniversary of Sinatra's death, but mainly because of interest in the suite by the Chicago Jazz Orchestra. Buddy DeFranco, the clarinetist on "Cross Country Suite," reprised his starring role on the album in a live performance with the Chicago Jazz Orchestra in October 2007. At 85, DeFranco still performs.

"A lot of writers were trying to bridge the gap between symphonic and jazz music," DeFranco said, in a phone interview from his home in Montana, "but this was the first time it felt really complete, and included the idea of ad lib playing for clarinet."

In the 1950s, DeFranco conducted jazz clinics for high school and college students, hoping to stave off the dominance of rock 'n' roll in young people's lives.

"Music took a downturn, in my opinion, with the advent of rock 'n' roll," DeFranco said. "It went hand in hand with the dumbing down of America -- we lost some sophistication, as a culture."

"I know by saying something like that," he added with a rueful laugh, "I could be shot."

DeFranco asked Riddle to write for a large ensemble, to be used in the clinics. Riddle delved eagerly into the project. Acerra said "Cross Country Suite" was important to her father because it allowed him to explore the kind of composing he would do for movie scores -- impressionistic and visual, music that painted a picture.

In recent seasons, the Radio Television Eire Concert Orchestra of Ireland also included movements of "Cross Country Suite" in its repertoire, performing Riddle's work in 2006 and 2007. The 2007 concert had the added bonus of Christopher Riddle, son of Nelson, as conductor. Christopher, born in 1950, is the only Riddle child who is a professional musician.

Gershwin-like ode

Acerra was thrilled that new audiences heard her father's composition, which is made up of 11 pieces, each inspired by a specific region of the United States. It is a sweeping, Gershwin-like ode to the American landscape, and to American music itself. "Cross Country Suite" exhibits all of Riddle's strengths -- his clean and clear approach to orchestral music, his colorful expressiveness and his jaunty rhythms.

Acerra said her father would be delighted by the renewed interest in "Cross Country Suite" and astounded by its re-issue. She feels that way, too, for more personal, complex reasons.

"It's been important to me because when it was recorded -- I was 10 -- I latched on to the sound of it," she said, "as an emotional attachment."

Acerra grew up in California, but came east to attend what was then Monmouth College in West Long Branch. She and her husband, Joe, raised their family in Tinton Falls and moved to Lakewood about a year and a half ago.

The Acerras' new home is filled with nostalgia. The main hallway is lined with black-and-white photographs of Riddle, at work with major stars and in family portraits. In one, Nelson Riddle is reading to his fresh-scrubbed children. In another, he and Doreen Riddle seem the epitome of mid-20th century American glamour -- a young couple, dressed to the nines, very much in each other's thrall.

Nelson and Doreen's marriage disintegrated just as the arranger's career hit its peak.

"They let Dad's success destroy them," Acerra said, plainly. "When they were struggling, they were happy."

Riddle's infidelities included a notorious affair with Rosemary Clooney, while the pair were working on the 1960 album "Rosie Solves The Swingin' Riddle." Clooney was then unhappily married to Jose Ferrer. Neither marriage survived the affair. Acerra is philosophical about the affair, blaming neither her parents nor Clooney.

A daughter's death

A far greater blow to the marriage came earlier, in 1959, with the death of the Riddles' daughter, Lenora Celeste, at the age of six months, due to bronchial asthma. The death triggered a deep depression in Doreen Riddle, who struggled with both depression and alcoholism.

Although the Riddles went on to have two more children -- Cecily in 1960 and Maureen in 1962 -- as Acerra remembers it, her parents' marriage essentially ended with the death of baby Lenora.

Nelson and Doreen divorced in 1970, and, soon afterward, Nelson married his secretary, the former Naomi Tenenholtz. The new Mrs. Riddle did not get along with the Riddle children, who, in addition to the aforementioned, include Nelson Jr., known as Skip, who was born in 1947; and Bettina, who was born in 1954.

"She tried to separate us," Acerra said of her step-mother. "She was unsuccessful.

"

Naomi Riddle died in 1998, and it took the Riddle children, led by Acerra, until 2005 to regain control over their father's estate.

Mixed emotions

Considering the turmoil in the family, it is not surprising to hear Acerra speak of her siblings' mixed emotions about their father and their lack of attachment to his work. What is intriguing is that Acerra, while not denying the dysfunctional aspects of her upbringing, is such a devoted torch bearer for Nelson Riddle.

Acerra faces questions about this without flinching, and reveals a mature sense of empathy for both her parents, as well as for her siblings.

"I'm pretty passionate about it," she said of her father's music, "and I think because my mom and dad split up and had a stormy relationship, that my siblings -- they have memories of that, and it's all intertwined with the music."

"I think Dad tried to be a good father," Acerra said. "The boys felt they couldn't measure up to what he wanted. The girls -- the divorce destroyed a lot of what they felt about him."

"He didn't fall into being a parent easily," she said. "He was an only child, and I don't think he was prepared to be in a big family. I think he did his best."

A biography on Nelson Riddle, written by Peter Levinson and published in 2001, opens with a musician's recollection that Riddle never smiled. Acerra is critical of Levinson's book, saying that it sensationalized her father's flaws without providing a full picture of his personality or his life.

As it happens, when asked what kind of father he was to her, Acerra immediately mentioned his sense of humor. "It's what I miss," she said.

Acerra was proud of her father's music, even as a child, and she would bring each new album to Our Lady Of Malibu elementary school to impress her choir director, who was a nun. When Nelson Riddle saw his daughter with his "Sea Of Dreams" album, which depicted on its cover a photo of a sexy, mermaid-like woman, he said, dryly, "You're not going to give Sister Mary Cora that album, are you?"

Acerra also recalled how he drove her each day to her Catholic high school and how they would talk during the 45-minute ride. In any large family, one-on-one time with a parent can be rare, and Acerra treasured it.

"He was crazy-busy -- he was off doing concerts with Sinatra," she said. "When he was home for dinner, it was nice."

Acerra, who worked as a special education and substitute teacher in the Keansburg and Colts Neck school systems, said she is not musically talented herself, despite the imposing piano in her living room. "We all studied piano, along with Natalie Cole, in Malibu," she said, "but I never did much with it."

However, she clearly could sense her father's talent, even as a child. She remembers, as a 10-year-old, thinking that "Cross Country Suite" was "fresh-sounding and energetic."

"I know that Dad compartmentalized things," she said. "When he was in music mode, you weren't going to interrupt him. But it was an amazing experience to be around."

In his 1985 study guide, "Arranged By Nelson Riddle," the author compares his approach to music to that of a journalist writing a story: "The facts are the important thing (in this case the musical ideas), and they have to be stated in as lean and economical a way as possible, since space and time are two very important factors."

DeFranco remembers the process as exhilarating and exhausting.

"The recording of it was amazingly easy," he recalled. "Creating it was both fun and a challenge. It took time and energy and thought. Physically, it took its toll."

Riddle took up arranging as a teenager, under the tutelage of Rumson resident Bill Finegan, who later became an arranger for Glenn Miller and a composer of experimental jazz. Finegan died June 4 at 91.

Nelson lived with his parents in Ridgewood but the family rented rooms in a house in Rumson during the summer. Riddle enjoyed the teen music scene in Rumson so much that he asked to spend his last year of high school in the borough. He and his mother stayed in the rental, and his father visited on weekends.

Arranging became Riddle's claim to fame, but it has complicated his daughter's efforts to promote his legacy.

"The thing is with Dad's work, if you try to develop concerts that include his arrangements, you have to get permission from other people -- from the Gershwin or Ella Fitzgerald estates, or from the Sinatra children," Acerra said. "It's time-consuming and sometimes not easy."

That is another reason why "Cross Country Suite" is special to Acerra. It is a piece of music that belongs exclusively to her father and can be presented as such.

"I have talked to people at Jazz At Lincoln Center about doing a Nelson Riddle festival," she said. "I'm trying to develop programs with some colleges. I'd love to see something in New Jersey -- it seems like a no-brainer to have his work performed here."

DeFranco said he was "very surprised" at the re-release of the album.

"I thought it was a dead issue all these years," he said. "I'm really pleased, and grateful to Rosie."

Plugging away

Acerra's dedication to her father's legacy is permanent, but she knows that the public is fickle, and that if there's interest in swing music, or Sinatra, or anything connected to her father's career, she needs to strike while the iron is hot.

"It's like a full-time job -- it can make your head swim," she said.

But she will plug away, because she loves the music, and the man behind it.

"He was a human being," Acerra said. "I can be angry with him for a lot of things. But, in the end, you try to accept that your parents did the best they could with what they had."

"I was lucky," she added, "because I knew the best of my parents, and took the good stuff."

_____

Photo: http://tinyurl.com/699mgm

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Who's the guy who did the worst Nat King Cole sessions.

Ralph Carmichael? The charts served the purpose, and even worse, the material. Skills like a mo, but...

Gordon Jenkins? Hard to go there all the way, because when he was bad, which was usually for me, he was... unbelievably overwrought, about 1000 mile high and a centimeter deep, but when he was good, and sometimes he was, it was still the same, only meaningful, and anybody who can pull that trick of is somebody for whom I have the same type respect I have for a professional thief who never gets caught. Either way, he had his zone, and it was his zone, if only because nobody else would dare to venture there for reasons aplenty. And, OOPS, in spite of those dreadful tentacles of treacle, the Cole/Jenkins sides are amongst Nat's best pop singing. Go figure, if you can. I can't.

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Who's the guy who did the worst Nat King Cole sessions.

Ralph Carmichael? The charts served the purpose, and even worse, the material. Skills like a mo, but...

Gordon Jenkins? Hard to go there all the way, because when he was bad, which was usually for me, he was... unbelievably overwrought, about 1000 mile high and a centimeter deep, but when he was good, and sometimes he was, it was still the same, only meaningful, and anybody who can pull that trick of is somebody for whom I have the same type respect I have for a professional thief who never gets caught. Either way, he had his zone, and it was his zone, if only because nobody else would dare to venture there for reasons aplenty. And, OOPS, in spite of those dreadful tentacles of treacle, the Cole/Jenkins sides are amongst Nat's best pop singing. Go figure, if you can. I can't.

"And, OOPS, in spite of those dreadful tentacles of treacle, the Cole/Jenkins sides are amongst Nat's best pop singing"

YUP

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ah but Magnum... perhaps we should ask too what Brook Benton did for Belford Hendricks? whether Brook Benton predicts Harvey Brooks or doesn't give a fuck one way or the other, edc has no opinion

Well, you may well have a point there.

I don't know who Harvey brooks is, but I'm far from sure I care.

MG

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I bet you do know Harvey Brooks and don't even realize it. Come a little closer and whisper I'll whisper it in your ear; we can talk about Red Prysock later.

Oh well, I thought you might be being subtle, so I checked the personnel of Etta's "Come a little closer"; no dice. So I googled him and I was right; never heard of this guy before (I assume you mean the bass player). Vaguely heard one or two of the recordings he was a sideman on. But none of them mentioned in Wiki are by people I'm interested in, so it's not very likely I would have run into his name before.

MG

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Anything is better than Buddy Bregman, I'll tell you that, my friend, and there's a special place in hell for Ella and Bregman together, the sum result of which gives the whole vocal bag a lousy name.

Even worse than Paul Weston? That picture of him on the inside of the Irving Berlin Songbook looks like a deer-in-the-headlights, or he's incredibly constipated, or he's REEEEEAALLY uncomfortable trying to swing with Ella.

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