alocispepraluger102

in the field of light music of the 50s, british arranger johnny douglas, among a very few others, was a personal favorite. listening to some of his string music this morning, i am taken by the deight of his arrangers. he comes to mind as i listen to his delightful album of harold rome compositions. i never saw any of his name credited as arranger on the early melachrino and stapleton arrangements, but i'm sure, many, if not most, were douglas arrangements. the music was pleasant and singing, never dragging and lugubrious. douglas was one of the early arrangers of the living strings albms, when they were good, really good. on this september morning when one tends to survey some things, it's good to give johnny douglas a spin. his music was special to me. johnny douglas obit from the independent Railway man: Johnny Douglas's best known work was the score for The Railway ChildrenThe composer, arranger and conductor Johnny Douglas, who has died from prostate cancer aged 82, is best remembered for the evocative, nostalgic score he wrote in 1970 for Lionel Jeffries's screen adaptation of the Edith Nesbit classic, The Railway Children. But the range of this enormously gifted musician is indicated by the range of artists he worked with - among them Shirley Bassey, June Bronhill, Max Bygraves, Vera Lynn, Frankie Vaughan, Barbra Streisand, Harry Secombe, Kenneth McKellar, Frankie Howerd, Al Martino, Mantovani, Ann Shelton and Billy Cotton.Douglas was born in Hackney, east London, and, by the age of two, could pick out on the piano tunes played by his uncle. He took formal piano lessons from the age of four and, by 11, was studying scores and band parts while listening to recordings. By learning about instruments and their transpositions, he began to appreciate the finer points of composition and orchestration. As a scholarship boy at St Olave's and St Saviour's grammar school, Bermondsey, he formed a dance band, mainly of school friends, and developed it to such a high standard that it regularly won awards. His first professional job came in 1939, as pianist with the Neville Hughes Sextet. The outbreak of the second world war took him into the RAF, where again he formed a dance band. An arm injury put a stop to his piano-playing for a couple of years, and by the time he was fit again, arranging and composition work had become dominant. In the immediate post-war years, he was kept busy arranging for such band-leaders as Bert Ambrose, Ted Heath, Edmundo Ros and Cyril Stapleton. For Stapleton, he also continued as a pianist. From 1948, Douglas took a staff job with a music publisher, in order to be able to arrange for full orchestra, and, in 1952, he had his first big hit with the backing for Tex Ritter's recording of High Noon. In all, he provided the arrangements for around 500 titles on the Decca label. Already a seasoned radio broadcaster, in 1955 he was given a show with his own orchestra, In The Still Of The Night. Swing Song was another favourite BBC radio series in the 1960s, and, in the 1970s, he was a regular conductor on such Radio 2 programmes as The Terry Wogan Show and Charlie Chester's Sunday Soapbox. On television, he provided musical support to top international stars. In 1958, the grande dame of RCA, Ethel Gabriel, asked Douglas to provide arrangements for the album Living Strings Play Music Of The Sea, a project that gave him the long-sought opportunity to work with a full-sized orchestra as both arranger and conductor. RCA was delighted with the result, which began a quarter-century collaboration that saw the creation of more than 80 albums, one of which, Feelings, went gold. Douglas wrote the scores for some 36 pictures, starting in 1962 with The Day Of The Triffids, which he co-composed with Ron Goodwin (obituary, January 11 2003). Other notablecredits were Circus Of Fear (1966) and Run Like A Thief (1967); the score of The Railway Children was nominated for a Bafta award. The television films and series he provided music for included The Incredible Hulk (1982), Dungeons And Dragons (1983), The Transformers (1984) and GI Joe (1990). Douglas established his own easy-listening record label in 1983, taking its name, Dulcima, from a 1971 film adaptation of an HE Bates story, for which he had written the score. The freedom this new venture gave him to choose his own material, and have full control over its production, enabled him, in 1999, to commit to disc two symphonic poems, The Conquest and The Aftermath. Both were recorded by an orchestra largely made up of his numerous friends and colleagues. Sadly, Douglas's creative energies outran his physical health, but those who knew him will remember the kindly-looking, bespectacled man who succeeded in combining bonhomie and authority in the course of a 60-year musical career. He is survived by his wife Marion and daughters Norma and Martine; his son Martin predeceased him. · John 'Johnny' Douglas, composer, arranger and conductor, born June 19 1920; died April 20 2003 © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

AWESOME VENERABLE BEAST!!!!!!!! yours???? speeding, drunk, no tags, loud cherry bombs, loud stereo? Not mine, alas... I don't even drive (no need - most of Switzerland by now is kind of suburbia, you get trains and buses everywhere, at least once every hour). Read about it only - seems the steering wheel was too lose for today's rules... my 57 hudson wouldn't have passed swiss standards. the steering wheel had near a turn and half of play.

AWESOME VENERABLE BEAST!!!!!!!! yours???? speeding, drunk, no tags, loud cherry bombs, loud stereo?

it's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday this time-trashed morris minor was in the same spot when i was by this lot just off near north trimble a few years ago. "she is now gone for sure." i chanced by yesterday, and much to my delight, THERE SHE WAS(!!!!!), the ancient morris minor 1000 sedan,and the huge blue road coach with 1999 historic license tags, too!!!!! like a cat spotting a rottweiler, my head snapped round. i saw HER. there again were the parts men proudly built for her; some still gleaming. the men on another continent who built, drove, and loved..., and their cares and creations, are dust now, mostly. tree roots in cemeteries spike through their frozen hearts and thoughts as they sleep deep in their flimsy cradles; they are on their journies to wherever men of earth go. between you and me, if i happen by here in a couple of years, i hope she is.... Resized to 69% (was 1024 x 576) - Click image to enlarge Resized to 69% (was 1024 x 576) - Click image to enlarge Resized to 69% (was 1024 x 576) - Click image to enlarge Resized to 69% (was 1024 x 576) - Click image to enlarge Resized to 69% (was 1024 x 576) - Click image to enlarge boyz II men it 's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.

angelo badalamenti

they would use motor boats to issue tickets in my town.

in the old style every time we say good bye http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJbXnqnKlMI

i heard that bit of extended buffoonery(and have it here on a drive), except i remember it going on for what must have been half an hour. if anything, you understated the absurdity of the routine. it seems to me, that without phil's ridiculous hyperbole, the station as we've come to know it would not exist. wkcr is like having pinto bean soup with the rocks left in. great art has strange and unlikely bedfellows.

sincere thanks for so eloquently expressing what i feel in my heart. i'm a contributor. i savor all i can, for wkcr as we know it could end on a moment's notice. i don't want to think about a time without wkcr.

let's take a look at our facebook selves. aren't we ridicule-ous(sic)???? of course, you and i aren't like THAT.

Chuck Soukup

Do you have the 12" 78 album "Exotic Music" on Columbia? 4 tunes, 1 tune each side of two 12" 78s. He does "Lotus Land," "Flamingo," "Song of India" and "Poinciana." I am pretty sure that these are different arrangements/recordings than those that appeared on the early '50s Columbia LP "Lure of the Tropics," but I have never compared. Absolutely sublime. sad to say, no kosty 78s here, but i do have some 10 inchers. in fact, i just picked up a pristine ' tropics' lp this month for 50 cents. teasing, if you are that deep into the kosty, you may be more hopeless than i previously thought. those early arrangements were incredible. then he turned the arranging over to a varied crew of pop arrangers.

quoting a wise earlier aloc post from a couple of day ago: "it's hard to know what to believe from the media and their dire storm forecasts. the main, if not only, goal is to attract eyeballs, ratings, and attention. i generally regard most of these severe warnings with a skeptical eye. just one big storm has gone up the hudson, as i recall."

this year's kisses why must we discard beautiful things, music, and people before their time???? (1024x768) happy birthday mr. prez, lester young, and i mean that, every word http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAy0ZIE51zk

this year's kisses why must we discard beautiful things, music, and people before their time???? (1024x768) happy birthday mr. prez, lester young, and i mean that, every word http://www.youtube.c...h?v=UAy0ZIE51zk

On a related note, I will sometimes walk into the record room on a Saturday or Sunday morning and see an album on the turntable and have no idea how it got there. you aren't as far along as myself, it appears, but on the other hand, you haven't listened, and loved, as many old kostelanetz mood vinyls as i have. i never did get used to that 'modern' kostelanetz crap from the late 50s.

occasionally, likely, too often, i wake up with a wild turkey rare breed bottle emptied beside me, and often, with a dozen or more lps carefully strewn around the room, with no new scratches. records and hooch are a cheaper hobby than fillys, i reckon. i'm not sure what that says about me or rare breed or lps, but i'm sure i don't want to know.

MORTY-MORTY-MORTY ALOC THIRSTS FOR SOME MORTY.

wondering if you tire of the trio format or the piano element of the trio. i never tire of my evans(sometimes philly joe grates a little), garland, jamal, oscar, kelley, and bley piano trios

the 3 day marathon is now well into the prez phase. http://www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/wkcr/

haven't seen skins yet in 2011- who is your qb?????

what if michael vick were white? espn doesn't do journalism or editorials. it is in the production and advertising industry. some react strongly to the following as if it were groundbreaking journalism. stating the obvious is hardly journalism. http://espn.go.com/e...l-espn-magazine

can you imagine a how a bari would sound in the shower(with the water off, of course)?

thank you 3 gentlemen, for your rich, enlightening, and very personal explanations. this one, particularly, will be with me for a very long time. "Granted this, I more or less feel like gigs (like recordings) are snapshots--sometimes beautiful, sometimes unflattering--of what is an ongoing life. I'm sure many musicians here could relate when I say that I'm a musician 100% of the time (just as I'm a human being 100% of the time etc.), and of those several waking hours I spend doing creative stuff, only a fraction is really comprised of "live performance." Sometimes my best nights are gig nights, sometimes they're in a remote location rehearsing for several hours in a row."

in reading a commentary on the magnificent russian russian pianist benno moiseiwitsch, arichard evans comment grabbed me: And once I have worked out a satisfying (if not standardized) interpretation, I am hard to sway from it. One evening last summer, I played Chopin's B Minor Sonata, the Largo of which is among the loveliest slow movements we know. One always plays best alone at home, and this night I reveled in the beauty and sentiment of that movement. When I had finished it, I was startled to find myself sliding straight into the theme of the last movement, omitting the introductory chords. would our musician friends agree that they play their finest at home??