Bob Florence

Being a longtime personnel arranger for Liberty Information, Bob Florence wrote a few of the most innovative and challenging graphs in postwar jazz — in lots of respects a guy out of period, he possessed a specific brilliance for large-ensemble arrangements within the custom of Duke Ellington, even though business vogue for big-band jazz had very long since passed. Given birth to Might 30, 1932, in LA, Florence was a kid prodigy who required his 1st piano lesson at age three. He forgotten classical studies and only jazz and pop while going to Los Angeles Town University, assembling a music group with classmates and long term studio room aces Tommy Tedesco, Plant Geller, and Dennis Budimir. In a friend’s recommendation, Florence shifted the group’s methods towards the Hollywood Musician’s Union regional rehearsal hall, starting a weekly program that quickly drew myriad players from over the Southern California jazz picture, all vying for an area within the lineup. Upon graduating, Florence authorized on with guitarist Alvino Rey, accompanied by a stints organizing for bandleaders Harry Wayne and Les Dark brown. In 1958 he led his 1st session for Period, Meet up with the Bob Florence Trio, adopted a year later on by his 1st big-band day, The Name Music group. From 1959 to 1964 Florence collaborated with Si Zentner, organizing the trombonist’s 1960 smash “Up a Lazy River” — the solitary was the last business gasp from the big-band period, a change further underscored the next 12 months when Florence and Zentner supported space age group pop maestro Martin Denny around the vintage Exotica Collection. The industrial and creative achievement from the Zentner and Denny classes confident Liberty A&R movie director Dave Pell to employ Florence for any full-time personnel gig, and in the years to check out he arranged several recordings for the label, spanning from vocalist Vic Dana to Western Coastline jazz great Bud Shank to bossa nova huge Sergio Mendes. Actually probably the most pop-oriented times benefited significantly from Florence’s uncommonly luminous and elaborate preparations, and in 1964 he was presented with the opportunity to record his very own LP, the acclaimed Right here and today!, which won compliment from Thelonious Monk throughout a “blindfold check” interview released in Down Defeat. Pet Task, a assortment of tracks popularized by vocalist Petula Clark, implemented in 1967. Florence supplemented his studio room work with preparations for Dean Martin and Crimson Skelton’s television range displays, and Hollywood dominated a lot more of his concentrate in the 10 years to check out. He also spent the very first half of the ’70s offering because the musical movie director for vocalist Vikki Carr, a posture he later kept for Julie Andrews aswell. But Florence under no circumstances turned his back again totally on jazz, and in 1978 he authorized to the Pattern label release a the recording Live at Concerts by the ocean, the very first in some critically heralded modern big-band efforts. Over time the group (dubbed the Small Release in 1982) offered as a starting pad for several first-call L.A. program players, and in 2000 the LP Serendipity 18 received the Grammy for Greatest Jazz Performance by way of a Huge Ensemble. Florence passed away of pneumonia on, may 15, 2008, fourteen days timid of his 76th birthday.