MUSIC CLIP - OSCAR PETERSON, "MOONGLOW"

Welcome to Afterglow, a show of vocal jazz and popular song from the Great American Songbook. I’m your host, Mark Chilla.

This week on the show, we’re paying tribute to jazz arranger Pete Rugolo. Rugolo was one of the most progressive and prolific arrangers to come out of the post-World War II era. In the early years of his career, he often worked with some of the top vocalists in the jazz and popular-song world, writing charts and conducting for Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, Mel Torme, and June Christy. In the next hour we’ll hear the recordings Rugolo made with those performers and others…

It’s “Pete Rugolo and the Singers”… coming up next on Afterglow.

MUSIC - ERNESTINE ANDERSON, "STAR DUST"

Ernestine Anderson from her 1959 Mercury album The Toast Of The Nation’s Critics, performing the Hoagy Carmichael and Mitchell Parish standard “Star Dust.” That recording was arranged and conducted by Pete Rugolo.

MUSIC CLIP - STAN KENTON ORCHESTRA, "UNISON RIFF"

Mark Chilla here on Afterglow. On this show, ..I’m featuring recordings that arranger Pete Rugolo made with singers in the 1940s and 50s… 

Pete Rugolo, born on Christmas Day in Sicily in 1915, migrated to California with his family at the age of 5. He studied with the classical composer Darius Milhaud at Mills College in the 1940s, and in 1945 he managed to get on board with the band of his idol, Stan Kenton. Much of the bold, progressive sound that Kenton’s band was known for could be attributed to the arrangements by Rugolo. In later years, Rugolo would go on to record 30 albums under his own name, and also write the music for TV shows, including “Leave It To Beaver” and “The Fugitive,” eventually winning three Emmys and two Grammys. Throughout all of this work, Rugolo retained the jazz elements of his sound, and critic Leonard Feather once called him (quote) “the most unfairly forgotten man of jazz.” 

Pete Rugolo joined Stan Kenton not long after singer June Christy had replaced Anita O’Day as the orchestra’s singer. It was the beginning of a beautiful musical friendship between Rugolo and Christy, who would go on to record numerous tracks and LPs together over the next 15 years. 

It was Rugolo who arranged Christy’s first ballad feature for the band, with a chart that writer Michael Sparke calls (quote) “replete with classical nuances, dazzling harmonies, and stunning displays of dissonance.” 

Here’s June Christy with Stan Kenton in 1946 with Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer’s “Come Rain Or Come Shine,” on Afterglow:

MUSIC - STAN KENTON ORCHESTRA FEATURING JUNE CHRISTY, "COME RAIN OR COME SHINE"

MUSIC - STAN KENTON ORCHESTRA FEATURING JUNE CHRISTY, "WILLOW WEEP FOR ME"

June Christy with Stan Kenton’s orchestra in 1946 doing Pete Rugolo’s arrangements of “Willow Weep For Me” and “Come Rain Or Come Shine.” 

In the next several years Pete Rugolo would work for Capitol Records, helping to put together the legendary Miles Davis sessions that came to be called THE BIRTH OF THE COOL. The title itself was supposedly coined by Rugolo as well. 

MUSIC CLIP - MILES DAVIS, "JERU"

He arranged and conducted for singers such as Mel Torme, who made a brief stay with the label, and Peggy Lee, who soared to solo stardom during this period. We’ll start off the next set featuring both vocalists with Mel Torme doing Pete Rugolo’s arrangement of the Rodgers and Hart tune “Blue Moon.” Rodgers himself was at the recording session for this track. When Mel Torme carried over the line “You heard me saying a prayer for someone I really could care for,” without a break, Rodgers disagreed with his interpretation. Torme, 23 years younger than Rodgers, stood up to the elder composer, and his rendition was a billboard hit. 

This is Mel Torme and Pete Rugolo in 1949 with “Blue Moon” on Afterglow:    

MUSIC - MEL TORMÉ, "BLUE MOON"

MUSIC - MEL TOMRÉ, "SKYLARK"

MUSIC - PEGGY LEE, "ONE DAY"

Peggy Lee on Capitol Records in 1949 with the song “One Day”— arranged and conducted by Pete Rugolo. Before that, Mel Torme and Pete Rugolo with Rodgers and Hart’s “Blue Moon,” and Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer’s “Skylark”

Rugolo established himself in the immediate postwar years at Capitol Records, working out of New York City, but after going out to Los Angeles to do an album with Nat King Cole, he decided to stay on the West Coast, where he would make band records under his own name and break into the TV and film studio business. 

Rugolo had been collaborating with Cole, off and on, since 1946, and in March of 1949 they made a landmark recording of Billy Strayhorn’s newly published “Lush Life.” Jazz writer Will Friedwald cites Rugolo’s arrangement for being “full of Latin percussion… it balances strings and pizzicato harps with counter-rhythms, underscoring Cole’s narrative as if it were the background for a Shakespeare soliloquy.” 

Rugolo later said that Capitol considered it so unusual that they simply sat on it for six months, then put it out as a B-side…but the recording took off with disc jockeys and became a hit.  

Here’s Nat King Cole in 1949 doing Pete Rugolo’s arrangement of “Lush Life,” on Afterglow:

MUSIC - NAT KING COLE WITH THE PETE RUGOLO ORCHESTRA, "LUSH LIFE"

Nat King Cole in 1949 with Pete Rugolo’s arrangement of Lush Life.

We’ll have more from Nat King Cole and more of Pete Rugolo’s collaborations with singers in just a bit, stay with us.

MUSIC CLIP - STAN KENTON ORCHESTRA, "INTERLUDE"

I’m Mark Chilla, and you’re listening to Afterglow

MUSIC CLIP - PETE RUGOLO AND HIS ORCHESTRA, "RUGOLO MEETS SHEARING"

MUSIC CLIP - PETE RUGOLO AND HIS ORCHESTRA, "HERE'S PETE"

Welcome back to Afterglow, I’m Mark Chilla.

I’ve been playing recordings that arranger Pete Rugolo made with singers on this hour of the show… When we left off, we had heard Rugolo’s iconic arrangement of the Billy Strayhorn tune “Lush Life,” sung by Nat King Cole in 1949. 

The duo would work together periodically for the next three years, until Nelson Riddle and later Gordon Jenkins took over as arrangers for most of Cole’s work on Capitol. Let’s hear two more songs from Cole and Rugolo. We’ll start with a recording from 1951. This is Nat King Cole and Pete Rugolo with the Don George and Bee Walker tune “You Can’t Make Me Love You,” on Afterglow.

MUSIC - NAT KING COLE WITH THE PETE RUGOLO ORCHESTRA, "YOU CAN'T MAKE ME LOVE YOU"

MUSIC - NAT KING COLE WITH THE PETE RUGOLO ORCHESTRA, "IT'S CRAZY (BUT I'M IN LOVE)"

Nat King Cole in 1952 with “It’s Crazy (But I’m in Love),” by Al Fields and Timmie Rogers, and before that in 1951 “You Can’t Make Me Love You.” Both recordings for Capitol featured Cole playing piano with his trio, backed by Pete Rugolo’s orchestra.

While many of Pete Rugolo’s collaborations with singers were done for the Capitol label, he did some for the MGM and Mercury labels as well, where he worked as an orchestrator and musical director. Patti Page, who passed away in 2013 at the age of 85, was best known for her hit “Tennessee Waltz” and her pop and country recordings in general, but she made a few albums with Pete Rugolo for Mercury in the mid-1950s that put her in a vocal jazz setting. We’ll also hear a 1957 Rugolo musical setting for singer Billy Eckstine in this set.

But first, here’s Patti Page in 1956 with “I Didn’t Know About You” on Afterglow:

MUSIC - PATTI PAGE, "I DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT YOU"

MUSIC - BILLY ECKSTINE AND PETE RUGOLO AND HIS ORCHESTRA, "LULLABY OF THE LEAVES"

Billy Eckstine singing Pete Rugolo’s arrangement of “Lullaby of the Leaves,” recorded in 1957, and released on Mercury’s jazz subsidiary label EmArcy. Eckstine and Rugolo had previously worked together in the early 1950s for MGM. Before that, Patti Page singing Rugolo’s arrangement of the Bob Russell and Duke Ellington song “I Didn’t Know About You” from the 1956 album PATTI PAGE IN THE LAND OF HI-FI.

Pete Rugolo had written for vocal groups early on, doing charts for the Stan Kenton orchestra’s singing component the Pastels, and it was only fitting that he end up doing some arrangements for a vocal group that Kenton had helped champion to prominence in the early 1950s—the Four Freshmen. For their 1955 album THE FOUR FRESHMEN AND FIVE TROMBONES, Rugolo assembled an all-star cast of West Coast musicians, and helped put the daunted Freshmen at ease by pranking the West Coasters into warming up at a hyperfast tempo that degenerated into a musical trainwreck. Freshmen member Ross Barbour praised Rugolo’s charts decades later for their “angularity” that enhanced the group’s harmonic vitality.  Here they are doing Rugolo’s arrangement of “Angel Eyes” on Afterglow:

MUSIC - THE FOUR FRESHMEN, "ANGEL EYES"

Indiana’s Four Freshmen singing Pete Rugolo’s arrangement of “Angel Eyes” from the album FOUR FRESHMEN AND FIVE TROMBONES. This album was evidently one of the first albums purchased by a young Brian Wilson of Beach Boys fame. In a recent article he cited that this song was where he learned to sing falsetto and write four-part harmony. The Four Freshmen would go on to record several albums arranged by Rugolo.

Pete Rugolo’s most significant arranging relationship with a singer was undoubtedly the one he had with June Christy—their alliance, stretching across numerous single tracks and albums made in the late 1940s and the 1950s, is often compared to that of arranger Nelson Riddle and Frank Sinatra. Rugolo’s nuanced-yet-soaring, arrangements and smartly-dramatic backdrops were a perfect complement to Christy’s husky, hope-and-ennui-tinged voice. The pair hit many musical high points together, and we’ll close with a few of them, beginning with the title track from what many consider to be their masterpiece. Here’s June Christy with “Something Cool” on Afterglow.

MUSIC - JUNE CHRISTY, "SOMETHING COOL (1960 STEREO VERSION)"

MUSIC - JUNE CHRISTY, "OUT OF THIS WORLD"

MUSIC - JUNE CHRISTY, "MY SHINING HOUR"

Closing the show, three June Christy and Pete Rugolo collaborations. We just heard “My Shining Hour” from 1959. Christy and Rugolo first recorded this arrangement with Stan Kenton’s orchestra in 1948. Before that, Christy with “Out Of This World.” Before that, “Something Cool.”

Thanks for tuning into this edition of Afterglow. This episode was written by David Brent Johnson and myself.

MUSIC CLIP - STAN KENTON ORCHESTRA, "COLLABORATION"

You can see playlists from this and previous Afterglow programs on our website at indianapublicmedia.org/afterglow.

I’m Mark Chilla, inviting you to tune in next week for our mix of Vocal Jazz from the American Popular Songbook on Afterglow