Henry Mancini and The Mancini Pops Orchestra - As Time Goes By and other Classic Movie Love Songs

1. As Time Goes By
2. One For My Baby
3. Everything I Do (I Do It For You)
4. Stella By Starlight
5. Windmills Of Your Mind
6. Crazy World
7. That Old Black Magic
8. Unchained Melody
9. Mona Lisa
10. Call Me Irresponsible / The Second Time Around
11. Two For The Road
12. It's All There
13. The Summer Knows (Summer Of '42)
14. Tender Is The Night
15. Charade

As Time Goes By

For his third album recorded directly in Dolby Surround, Henry Mancini returns to a popular musical milieu that he has helped to define: the classic movie love song. As Time Goes By is an unabashedly romantic collection of melodies in which that special Mancini touch is evident throughout.

Technically, Herman Hupfield's As Time Goes By shouldn't qualify as a movie love song because it was not written for "Casablanca". It was first heard in 1931 in a Broadway show entitled "Everybody's Welcome" which lasted 131 performances. It wasn't until 11 years later, when it was used to define the power ore song can have over the destinies of two people whose problems "don't amount to a hill of beans", that it became a classic love song. It's interesting to note that Max Steiner, the composer of the film's musical score, didn't want to incorporate the song as his main theme; he wanted to compose a new song for the film. That would have been all right with Warner Brothers were it not for the fact that once shooting was completed Ingrid Bergman got her hair cut in such a manner that it was impossible to reshoot. As Time Goes By is the quintessential movie love song - full of regret, hope and passion - the perfect recipe for a love affair.

"The Sky's The Limit" (1943) was a wartime musical that offered Fred Astaire as a soldier on leave in New York who naturally falls in love with a beautiful girl played by Joan Leslie. The movie featured some fine Astaire dancing and the Harold Arlen/Johnny Mercer soon-to-be-classic barroom request One For My Baby.

The tradition of great movie love songs continues today with Everything I Do (I Do It For You) from the 1991 film of "Robin Hood, Prince Of Thieves". In that film the solid goodness of Kevin Costner's Robin was well matched by the shimmering beauty and intelligence of Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio's Maid Marian. With these two performers at the film's center, this romantic theme written by Bryan Adams, R. J. Lange and Michael Kamen hit a bull's eye with movie audiences and soared to the top of the charts.

Victor Young and Ned Washington's haunting classic Stella By Starlight is from, appropriately enough, the popular ghost story The Uninvited (1944). It starred Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey as a couple who buy a house in England and discover the previous tenants haven't left.

Norman Jewinson's 1968 film "The Thomas Crown Affair" was notable for its sexy star performances from Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, its complex caper plot, its dazzling multi-image cinematography and editing, and most of all, the swirling Academy Award-winning song The Windmills Of Your Mind with music by Michel Legrand and lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman.

Crazy World with music by Mancini and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse is from Blake Edward's "Victor/Victoria" (1982). the film was something all too rare, a very hip, very stylish, old fashioned musical comedy that featured Julie Andrews as a woman impersonating a man impersonating a woman, James Garner as the gangster that falls for her/him/her, Robert Preston as Julie's completely outrageous mentor and Lesley Ann Warren as the gangster's moll - a woman who makes the most of every opportunity. The song perfectly conveys the film's deeper message that was at the heart of the story. For this score Messrs. Mancini and Bricusse won an Academy Award. This recording marks the frist time the instrumental version of this song is heard in its entirely.

"Star-Spangled Rhythm" (1942) was not much more than a filmed variety show that sought to boost the country's morale during the war. It featured Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Veronica Lake and Betty Grable. However, any movie that has a song as bewitching as Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer's That Old Black Magic can't be ignored, and in this version Mancini returns the song to its "voodo" roots.

Alex North and Hy Zaret's Unchained Melody is from Hall Bartlett's 1955 prison film "Unchained". It was nominated for an Academy Award that year - but lost. In 1990 the song was ressurrected for the film "Ghost" and the rest is movie love song history. Listening to it, how can you not think of Demi Moore in front of a potter's wheel with the ghost of Patrick Swayze surrounding her?

Mona Lisa won an Academy Award in 1950 for its authors Jay Livingston and Ray Evans. It was made immortal by Nat King Cole and was used as the theme (as well as title) for Neil Jordan's gritty off-beat 1986 drama about an obsessive two-bit British hood played by Bob Hoskins. The movie it was originally written for was "Captain Carey, USA", starring Alan Ladd and Frances Lederer and directed by Mitchell Leisen. Few remember the film, but who can forget the song?

The 1963 Academy Award for Best Song went to Call Me Irresponsible which was written by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen for the stylish period comedy "Papa's Delicate Condition". The movie starred Jackie Gleason and Glynis Johns as a husband who liked to drink and a wife who wants to reform him. Blake Edward's "High Time" (1960) starred Bing Crosby as a wealthy widower who returns to college to complete his education. Tuesday Weld and Fabian co-starred as his fellow students. For this film, Cahn and Van Heusen wrote The Second Time Around and received an Oscar nomination. By putting these songs together, Mancini gives us a medley that reflects a kind of love that isn't so much passionate as it is imperfect, reflective and comfortable.

Easily one of the most sophisticated films of the 1960's, Two for The Road (1967) starred Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney. It was directed by Stanley Donen from a script by Frederic Raphael. When viewed today it is still a sly, mature, painful, and funny film done with great style and wit. Mancini's evocative score matches the film's title song stands with the best of movie love songs.

With "Switch" in 1990, Blake Edward's revisited the always-changing world of sex roles that he previously explored in "Victor/Victoria". This time the film was about a dead man reincarnated in a beautiful woman's body. The beautiful woman was played by the gifted Ellen Barkin. The song It's All There is one of Mancini's lovelier melodies of recent years. "Switch" marked the first time that Mancini worked with David Wilson, whose extraordinary electric violin is heard on this track, as well as several others on this recording.

Michel Legrand's score for "Summer Of '42" (1971) won the Oscar for Best Original Score that year. The haunting main theme, The Summer Knows, evokes the pain, confusion and memory of a young man's coming of age, and of a romance that was lost. Robert Mulligan's pastoral film set on Cape Cod during World War II was the surprise hit of the summer of '71.

With music by Sammy Fain and lyrics by Paul Francis Webster, Tender Is The Night (1962) from the film of the same name is typical of the kind of lush love songs prevalent in films of the 50's and 60's. The film, starring Jason Robards and Jennifer Jones, was based upon F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel. Set in the Roaring 20's, it told the story of a psychiatrist who marries one of his patients and how the marriage destroys them both.

And finally, Mancini's own Charade (1963), a wonderful song that was in contention for the Academy Award that Call Me Irresponsible won. The film, a perfect mix of suspense, comedy, and of course, romance, was directed by Stanley Donen and starred Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. A classic movie. A classic Mancini/Mercer movie love song. A perfect coda to this album. What could be better?

(Bill Rosenfield, from the original liner notes)

Ray Conniff and The Singers - Love Affair

1. For All We Know
2. The Second Time Around
3. Just Friends
4. Love Is A Many Splendored Thing
5. Chloe
6. Mam'Selle
7. Try A Little Tenderness
8. Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo
9. Taking A Chance On Love
10. Three Coins In The Fountain
11. I'm Always Chasing Rainbows
12. Goodnight, Sweetheart

Produced by Ernie Altschuler
Solo Guitar: Al Hendrickson

It may be the tender strains of "Just Friends", "Mam'Selle", "Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo" or "Goodnight, Sweetheart"; the appealing sadness of "For All We Know", "The Second Time Around" or "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows"; or the joy of "Love Is A Many Splendored Thing".

Whether it's for relaxed listening, for dancing, for putting life into a party, Ray Conniff and the Singers turn every song in their newest album into an unforgettable LOVE AFFAIR.

The arrangements used in this record - adapted for choral use with from four to four hundred voices, with or without orchestral accompaniment, or for home or solo use with piano accompaniment - are published by The Big Three Group, Robbins - Leo Feist - Miller Music.

(From the original liner notes)

Love Affair

Edmundo Ros and His Orchestra - Rhythms of the South

1. Spanish Gipsy Dance
2. The Blue Danube (Strauss)
3. Barcarolle (Offenbach)
4. La Maxixe
5. Capullito de Aleli
6. Siboney
7. Isle of Capri
8. Colonel Bogey
9. My Friend Elizabeth
10. Caminito
11. Marta
12. Cachita

Rhythms of the South

Orquestra Românticos de Monte Carlo - Emmanuelle

1. Je T'Aime, Moi Non Plus
2. Emmanuelle
3. Bilitis
4. Le Reve
5. La Prima Volta
6. I Feel Love
7. Feelings
8. Histoire d'O
9. Les Femmes
10. Tornero
11. Black Emmanuelle
12. Love To Love You Baby

Emmanuelle

Edmundo Ros & His Orchestra - That Latin Sound

1. The Peanut Vendor
2. Frenesi
3. Brazil
4. TicoTico
5. Maria Elena
6. Perfidia
7. Taboo
8. Miami Beach Rumba
9. Mambo No. 5
10. Lady Of Spain
11. Cielito Lindo
12. A Felicidade
13. Delicado
14. Rumba Rhapsody
15. The Wedding Samba
16. The Carioca
17. La Paloma
18. Quiereme Mucho

That Latin Sound

Edmundo Ros (1910-2011)

Bandleader Edmundo Ros was the living embodiment of Latin music in World War II-era Britain. The toast of London's high society, he effectively introduced the rhumba and samba to the U.K. shores. Born December 7, 1910, in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, to a Scottish father and an African-Venezuelan mother, Ros spent much of his childhood in military school, playing percussion in the military band. The experience was otherwise miserable, however, and at 17 he ran away to Caracas, where he served as tympanist in the Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela. A decade later Ros migrated to London, where he briefly studied classical music before pursuing popular music full-time, backing Fats Waller and singing with Don Marino Barreto's Cuban band prior to forming his own five-piece rhumba outfit in 1940. After scoring a hit with 1941's Parlophone release "Los Hijos de Buda," Ros became a sensation, attracting the cream of London society to his appearances at the lavish Coconut Grove. When the defendant in a high-profile divorce case implicated Ros as a catalyst for his marriage's demise, the bandleader made national headlines, and the sex scandal only made him more popular, and he even taught then-Princess Elizabeth and her sister Princess Margaret to dance. After a long residency at the West End club the Bagatelle, Ros in 1951 acquired the former Coconut Grove site on Regent Street and renamed the venue Edmundo Ros' Dinner and Supper Club. He also made regular appearances on BBC radio, and his albums for the London label's Phase 4 imprint (including the space age pop classics Rhythms of the South and Arriba!) sold briskly. His biggest hit, "The Wedding Samba," even crossed over to the U.S. Top Five, selling three million copies in the process. After Parliament legalized gambling in 1965, attendance at Ros' club quickly nosedived, and he sold the business as soon as possible. He retired to Alicante, Spain, a decade later, returning to London's Queen Elizabeth Hall on January 8, 1994, for one final farewell performance leading the BBC Big Band with Strings. Ros was also awarded the Order of the British Empire in the 2000 New Year's Honours List. 

(by Jason Ankeny from allmusic.com)

The seductively orchestrated Latin-pop songs that set British feet tapping in the 1940s and 50s made the Trinidad-born bandleader Edmundo Ros a household name. But beside such musical success, Ros, who has died aged 100, made a remarkable reinvention of his life: the mixed-race "outsider" successfully challenged the British class system, to become, as he put it, "a respected gentleman".


When he went to London in June 1937 to study at the Royal Academy of Music, he felt racially categorised by being sent to lodgings for colonial students. A tall, strikingly handsome man, he was determined to crash through such restrictions. Within five years, he had deployed his talents, charisma and charm to good enough effect to find himself performing for the future Queen of England – and was himself developing a cut-glass accent.


Ros began this transformation as soon as he arrived in the capital. On his first night there, he went to the Nest club in Soho to join pianist Don Marino Barreto as a drummer in Cuban songs. The next day, he was hired to play drums and sing on the Mayfair circuit of fashion salons and supper clubs, and in 1938 recorded with both Barreto and Fats Waller.


Ros often ran Barreto's Dance Orchestra, modelled on the influential Havana band, the Lecuona Cuban Boys. He opened Mayfair's Embassy Club, sporting ruffle-sleeved "rumba shirts", and led Edmundo Ros's Rumba Band in the New Cosmo and other clubs. A 1939 Melody Maker headline declared, with the popular new dance in mind, "He came… he saw… he conga'd!" Ros's first recording, Los Hijos de Buda (Sons of Buddha, 1941) was authentic Cuban rumba.


During the second world war, Ros briefly drove ambulances before launching his own 16-piece dance orchestra to play at the Coconut Grove Club at 177 Regent Street. He alternated between that and the Bagatelle Club off Picadilly, where members included Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle, and the heads of Europe's allied forces. Most significant to Ros, Princess Elizabeth danced there with her friend Captain Wills.


Ros's popularity escalated in postwar Britain through live radio concerts, produced by Cecil Madden. In 1948, he supported Carmen Miranda for a year at the London Palladium, while still playing the Coconut Grove, and the following year The Wedding Samba sold 3m copies in Britain and entered the US charts.


Its success coincided with a highly publicised high court adultery case involving him and a Dutch army officer, both known to an upper-class English couple. Instead of protesting his innocence, Ros remained silent during the trial, but was still fined £1000 for having befriended the lady in question, whereas the truly guilty party was fined £300. Ros understood the racial implications but saw it as his big break, since in discussing the case, Queen Elizabeth, the later Queen Mother, apparently described him as "a gentleman". In 1950, her husband, King George VI, invited him to perform at Windsor, and he took his fiancee, the beautiful Swedish aristocrat Britt Johansen, whom he married that year. 


Ros was famously cagey about the royals, but he did once reveal to me, in a stage whisper, that he later lent his office at the Coconut Grove to Princess Margaret and Captain Peter Townsend "for private drinks". By then, his clothes were from Jermyn Street and he performed only to the upper classes. But his hit records – including Melodie d'Amour, Tico Tico, Her Bathing Suit Never Got Wet and The Cuban Love Song – and radio shows, still produced Madden, broke all social boundaries.

Latin music was by then a significant part of postwar Britain's dance scene, but fellow bandleader Victor Silvester suggested to Ros that he needed to adapt his music to get people dancing to it. By hooking a Latinised military beat to a familiar song, he produced an experimental version of Colonel Bogie in the style of the dance known as the merengue and proved the point: "It fitted beautifully," Ros recalled. That became "The Ros Sound" - flattened rhythms, catchy melodies and sophisticated arrangements, all fronted by his risque word-plays and tongue-twisting rhymes, carried on a soft Caribbean lilt.


In 1951, Ros bought the Coconut Grove's expiring lease and reopened as Edmundo Ros's Supper and Dance Club. It became the playground for an exclusive international membership of kings and admirals, Hollywood stars and British aristocrats. Its door policy was legendary, with both Peter O'Toole and King Hussein of Jordan refused admission for over-casual dress. Ros's holding company incorporated a talent agency, dance school and photo-lab for printing guests' portraits. On the radio, his hit records were a constant presence on programmes like Housewives' Choice and Two-way Family Favourites.


In 1953, Decca hired a young Belgian producer, Marcel Stellman, to work with the UK's leading Latin band leaders, Ros and Stanley Black. Stellman said, "The key to [Ros's] popularity was his engaging rhythm section. Within 12 bars of his music, people knew who it was, and they loved his rhythmic voice." He was not interested in an "authentic" Latin sound, though their first album, Rhythms of the South (1958) sold a million copies. Instead, he introduced pot-boilers like I'm Just Wild About Harry, set to mambos and sambas, and went on to strike gold in the 1960s with Ros at the Opera, Hair Goes Latin and even Japanese military tunes set to Latin beats.


Ros's popularity now extended internationally, and included a television collaboration in New York with his American counterpart Xavier Cugat, in the series Broadway Goes Latin. On British TV, Ros performed on faux-Spanish sets for The Billy Cotton Band Show, Saturday Night at the London Palladium and the Royal Variety Shows, and in 1965 was hired by Madden for A Night of 1000 Stars, the opening party for the BBC TV Centre, where he backed Vera Lynn and the Beverley Sisters. Bill Cotton Jr, later director of BBC Light Entertainment, described Ros's band as "very sophisticated; he was Latin American music".


A native of Port of Spain, Edmund William Ross had a complex family background. His mother, Luisa Urquart, was a teacher, apparently descended from indigenous Caribs, and his father, William Hope-Ross, the illegitimate son of a Scottish-Canadian plantation owner, brought to Trinidad by an employee called Hope-Ross. A ship's electrician, William took Luisa, and then their first two children, Edmund and Ruby, on boats around the Caribbean until they reached school age. At Tranquillity school, Port of Spain, their teachers instilled in them Victorian, Christian values brought from Britain.

Edmundo's father left the family and he became "a bit of a delinquent", ending up in the local police boot camp. In turned out to be a stroke of luck, since it introduced him to music through playing the euphonium and percussion. When his mother became involved with a man he loathed and had a son by him, the 17-year old left for Caracas, Venezuela to study at the Academy of Music under Maestro Vicente Emilio Sojo.


He played drums in the city's nightclubs, and was soon hired by Sojo as timpanist in the new Venezuela Symphony Orchestra. His local name, "Edmundo Ros", launched a lasting myth that he was Venezuelan. Impressed by Sojo, Ros applied to the RAM in London to study conducting and composition.


By the 1960s, Ros had become hugely wealthy, and lived with Britt and their children, Douglas and Luisa, in a modernist house in Mill Hill, north London. His car collection included a Rolls-Royce with the registration EWR1. With their children at boarding schools, Britt continued as his companion at his club.


However, as the decade went on, pop began to gnaw at Latin music. When his club lease expired, he closed down and turned to lucrative international tours. Then, in 1965, "Britt danced out of my life," leaving him for a Colombian friend of theirs whom she had met at the club. He sold the family home and bought a luxury apartment in St John's Wood, next to Victor Silvester. Silvester's grand-daughter Tara recalls "Uncle Edmundo" as "very good fun, very stern, very posh; he would do anything to stop you thinking he was black". 


In 1971, Ros married Susan, three decades his junior, after they had met on a train. Four years later, he abruptly "closed the shop" following what he saw as mutinous behaviour by some recently unionised musicians during a tour of Japan. He sent his orchestra's sheet music archive to be shredded at the Bank of England, and during a formal dinner for the musicians and their wives announced, "It's all over." 


Predictably, Ros's musical career did not end there. His last concert, in 1994, was a two-headed Latin extravaganza with Stanley Black, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, followed by a This Is Your Life programme on television. In 2000, the composer Michael Nyman produced a BBC TV documentary about him entitled I Sold My Cadillac to Diana Dors, and described him as: "One of the few black men to have attained national recognition; he hadn't gone for 'the gorblimeys', he wanted to be a gentleman, the greatest satisfaction you can earn in England."


Ros was appointed OBE in 2000, and his 1940s hit Va Va Voom reappeared in a cinema advertisement for a Triumph bra – a wry tribute to the man who, said Nyman, "single-handedly introduced Latin American music to English audiences". He is survived by Susan and his children.


Edmundo Ros (Edmund William Ross), bandleader, born December 7 1910; died 21 October 2011.


(by Sue Steward from theguardian.co.uk)

Paul Mauriat - Chromatic

1. Romantic Laser
2. Ballade Orange
3. Piccolo Paradise
4. Blue Sticks For A Rainbow
5. Elie Upa
6. Crocodile Tears
7. Pop Horn
8. Back Again
9. Sica Sica
10. She's Like A Song
11. Chromatic Dream

Chromatic

O Melhor do Bang Bang à italiana - Vários Artistas

1. One Silver Dollar - Maurice Renet & His Orchestra
2. The Good, The Bad And The Ugly - Hugo Montenegro & His Orchestra
3. Per Qualche Dollaro In Piu' - Ennio Morricone & His Orchestra
4. I Giorni Dell'Ira - Riz Ortolani & His Orchestra
5. All' Ombra Di Una Colt - Willy Brezza & His Orchestra
6. Theme From "A Few Dollars More" - Maurice Renet & His Orchestra
7. Johnny Guitar - Nico Fidenco
8. Titoli - Ennio Morricone His Orchestra And Chorus
9. Hang' Em High - Hugo Montenegro His Orchestra And Chorus
10. C'Era Una Volta Il West - Ennio Morricone I Cantori Moderni Di Alessandroni
11. Django - Maurice Renet & His Orchestra
12. Trinity - Annibale and Gianfranco Plenizio

Bang Bang À Italiana

Victor Silvester - Dance, Dance, Dance

1. Too Close For Comfort
2. The Lady's In Love With You
3. Call Me Irresponsible
4. You're My Everything
5. Amore Baciami
6. I Give My Heart
7. Belle Of The Ball
8. Gotta Be This Or That
9. Old Devil Moon
10. My Foolish Heart
11. It Can't Be Wrong
12. Broadway Melody
13. A Foggy Day
14. The Boy Next Door
15. Around The World
16. At The Balalaika
17. Hernando's Hideaway
18. At The Jazz Band Ball
19. Dearly Beloved
20. Cerveza
21. One
22. Pennies From Heaven
23. Feelings
24. Al Di La
25. Copacabana
26. La Cumparsita
27. I'll Go Where Your Music Takes Me
28. You Were Never Lovelier

Dance, Dance, Dance - Part 1
Dance, Dance, Dance - Part 2

"The basic essentials of true dance music are melody, simplicity, and consistent rhythm. Join these three entities together and you have music that is nice to dance to and pleasing to listen to," observed Victor Silvester -- he did precisely that and sold 75 million records over a recording career lasting 50 years. Today he is but a fading memory on a musical landscape that he scarcely would have recognized, but for 50 years, from the '30s through the early '80s, Victor Silvester was England's top dance-band leader -- and from the '30s through the '60s, that designation meant musical stardom. The second son of a vicar in North London, Silvester played the piano as a boy and studied music at Trinity College of music and the London College of Music. For reasons best known to himself, he interrupted his musical studies to enlist in the army in 1915, when he was just 15 years old, and was sent to the front, where he saw action -- including service on a firing squad executing deserters. Discharged when his true age was discovered, he waited until he was 17 and re-enlisted legally to return to combat. After World War I, he considered a permanent career in the army, but his interests turned instead to dancing. He won the World Dancing Championship in 1922, in partnership with Phyllis Clarke, and later opened his dancing academy in London, which eventually became a chain of dance studios. By the early '30s, he was the most renowned dance teacher in England, with a clientele that included the top celebrities of the day, and a reputation that quickly spread throughout the British Empire and the rest of Europe, and as far away as Japan. It was the lack of what he felt were proper dance records that drove Silvester into a recording career. Forming his own orchestra, he recorded "You're Dancing on My Heart" (written by Al Bryan and George M. Meyer) in 1935, which became his signature tune. It was the beginning of a career that would last a half-century and vault the era of swing, trad jazz, skiffle, rock & roll, British beat, psychedelia, disco, and power pop. By the end of the '30s, he was not only selling huge numbers of records in England, but also in Australia, continental Europe, South Africa, and India.

By 1937, Silvester had his own dance music program on the BBC, for which he eventually made 6,500 broadcasts -- he was among the first music artists to appear on television as well, on the BBC's pre-World War II experimental television broadcasts. During the late '30s, he also wrote a book, Modern Ballroom Dancing, which ultimately went to 50 printings and sales of over a million copies, and translations into German and Japanese, among a dozen other languages. For most of his career, Silvester specialized in strict-tempo ballroom dancing. During World War II, however, he recognized that he had a special audience among his listeners, in the form of burgeoning numbers of American servicemen stationed in England. He began aiming his program and his records specifically at them, releasing a large body of swing-oriented dance recordings.

After the war, he returned to the traditional ballroom dance music that he preferred. Silvester wrote some 90 dance tunes in collaboration with his pianist, Ernest Wilson, but was well-known for his interpretations of the work of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, and had a marked preference for the musical standards of the 1930s, which he kept recording well into the 1970s and beyond. Apart from his one concession to swing music in the early '40s, as a sort of wartime sacrifice, he was oblivious to most of the changes in music that took place around him as the decades wore on, never even acknowledging rock & roll; such was the musical environment of the times, that he was one of EMI's prized artistic possessions during the 1950s. Silvester was awarded the Order of the British Empire, a royal honor, in 1961, and continued making records for another 15 years, finally embracing '60s and '70s melodies on albums such as Up Up and Away. He recorded so many hundreds of albums, that they became impossible even for the bandleader to keep track of, and EMI later issued his work on CD in the 1980s and 1990s, most recently Victor Silvester and His Silver Strings. As Silvester grew older, his son Victor Silvester Jr. frequently deputized for him leading the orchestra, and upon the older Silvester's death during a vacation in France in 1978, his son took over the orchestra. 

(by Bruce Eder from allmusic.com)

Nelson Riddle - The Today Sound of Nelson Riddle

1. Light My Fire
2. Dream A Little Dream Of Me
3. Yesterday's Dreams
4. Halfway To Paradise
5. How Are Things In Glocca Morra
6. Gentle On My Mind
7. Where Do I Go
8. Stoned Soul Picnic
9. Don't Rain On My Parade
10. Sealed With A Kiss
11. Alouette
12. Tell Someone You Love Them

Today Sound

Paul Mauriat - A Grande Orquestra de Paul Mauriat - Vol. 12

1. Mamy Blue
2. Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep
3. We Shall Dance
4. Oh! Ma Jolie Sarah
5. La Bikina
6. Smic Smac Smoc
7. Pour Un Flirt
8. Here's To You
9. Je T'Aime, Je T'Aime
10. Les Rois Mages
11. Mon Vieux Paris
12. The Fool

Paul Mauriat - Vol. 12

Al Caiola - Percussion And Guitars

1. Gone With The Wind
2. Jazz Pizzicato
3. Just In Time
4. Holiday For Strings
5. The Sound Of Music
6. Charleston
7. Then I'll Be Tired Of You
8. Cherokee
9. Baubles Bangles And Beads
10. Something's Coming
11. 'S Wonderful
12. Early Autumn

Percussion And Guitars

Stan Getz - The Jazz Masters - 100 anos de Swing

1. Autumn Leaves
2. Billie's Bounce
3. Lady Day
4. Heart Place
5. Kali-au
6. Chappaqua

Personell:
Stan Getz, tenor saxophone
Andy Leverne, piano
Brian Bromberg, bass
Chuck Loeb, guitar
Victor Jones, drums

Folio EF 20005

One of the all-time great tenor saxophonists, Stan Getz was known as "The Sound" because he had one of the most beautiful tones ever heard. Getz, whose main early influence was Lester Young, grew to be a major influence himself and to his credit he never stopped evolving.

Getz had the opportunity to play in a variety of major swing big bands while a teenager due to the World War II draft. He was with Jack Teagarden (1943) when he was just 16, followed by stints with Stan Kenton (1944-1945), Jimmy Dorsey (1945), and Benny Goodman (1945-1946); he soloed on a few records with Goodman. Getz, who had his recording debut as a leader in July 1946 with four titles, became famous during his period with Woody Herman's Second Herd (1947-1949), soloing (along with Zoot Sims, Herbie Steward, and Serge Chaloff) on the original version of "Four Brothers" and having his sound well-featured on the ballad "Early Autumn." After leaving Herman, Getz was (with the exception of some tours with Jazz at the Philharmonic) a leader for the rest of his life.

During the early '50s, Getz broke away from the Lester Young style to form his own musical identity and he was soon among the most popular of all jazzmen. He discovered Horace Silver in 1950 and used him in his quartet for several months. After touring Sweden in 1951, he formed an exciting quintet that co-featured guitarist Jimmy Raney; their interplay on uptempo tunes and tonal blend on ballads were quite memorable. Getz's playing helped Johnny Smith have a hit in "Moonlight in Vermont"; during 1953-1954, Bob Brookmeyer made his group a quintet and, despite some drug problems during the decade, Getz was a constant poll winner. After spending 1958-1960 in Europe, the tenorman returned to the U.S. and recorded his personal favorite album, Focus, with arranger Eddie Sauter's Orchestra. Then, in February 1962, Getz helped usher in the bossa nova era by recording Jazz Samba with Charlie Byrd; their rendition of "Desafinado" was a big hit. During the next year, Getz made bossa nova-flavored albums with Gary McFarland's big band, Luiz Bonfá, and Laurindo Almeida, but it was Getz/Gilberto (a collaboration with Antonio Carlos Jobim and João Gilberto) that was his biggest seller, thanks in large part to "The Girl from Ipanema" (featuring the vocals of Astrud and João Gilberto).

Getz could have spent the next decade sticking to bossa nova, but instead he de-emphasized the music and chose to play more challenging jazz. His regular group during this era was a piano-less quartet with vibraphonist Gary Burton, he recorded with Bill Evans (1964), played throughout the 1965 Eddie Sauter soundtrack for Mickey One, and made the classic album Sweet Rain (1967) with Chick Corea. Although not all of Getz's recordings from the 1966-1980 period are essential, he proved that he was not afraid to take chances. Dynasty with organist Eddie Louiss (1971), Captain Marvel with Chick Corea (1972), and The Peacocks with Jimmy Rowles (1975) are high points. After utilizing pianist Joanne Brackeen in his 1977 quartet, Getz explored some aspects of fusion with his next unit which featured keyboardist Andy Laverne. Getz even used an Echoplex on a couple of songs but, despite some misfires, most of his dates with this unit are worthwhile. However, purists were relieved when he signed with Concord in 1981 and started using a purely acoustic backup trio on most dates. Getz's sidemen in later years included pianists Lou Levy, Mitchell Forman, Jim McNeely, and Kenny Barron. His final recording, 1991's People Time, (despite some shortness in the tenor's breath) is a brilliant duet set with Barron.

Throughout his career Getz recorded as a leader for Savoy, Spotlite, Prestige, Roost, Verve, MGM, Victor, Columbia, SteepleChase, Concord, Sonet, Black Hawk, A&M, and EmArcy among other labels (not to mention sessions with Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie, and Gerry Mulligan) and there are dozens of worthy records by the tenor currently available on CD. 

(by Scott Yanow from allmusic.com)

Earl "Fatha" Hines - The Jazz Masters - 100 anos de Swing

1. Earl's Pearl
2. If It's True
3. Rosetta
4. One Night In Trinidad
5. I Know That You Know
6. If I Had You
7. St. Louis Blues
8. Chicago

Personell:
Earl "Fatha" Hines, piano
Milt Hinton, bass
Gradley Tate, drums
Sam Turner, conga toms
Lionel Hampton, vibes

Folio EF 20036

Once called "the first modern jazz pianist," Earl Hines differed from the stride pianists of the 1920s by breaking up the stride rhythms with unusual accents from his left hand. While his right hand often played octaves so as to ring clearly over ensembles, Hines had the trickiest left hand in the business, often suspending time recklessly but without ever losing the beat. One of the all-time great pianists, Hines was a major influence on Teddy Wilson, Jess Stacy, Joe Sullivan, Nat King Cole, and even to an extent on Art Tatum. He was also an underrated composer responsible for "Rosetta," "My Monday Date," and "You Can Depend on Me," among others.

Earl Hines played trumpet briefly as a youth before switching to piano. His first major job was accompanying vocalist Lois Deppe, and he made his first recordings with Deppe and his orchestra in 1922. The following year, Hines moved to Chicago where he worked with Sammy Stewart and Erskine Tate's Vendome Theatre Orchestra. He started teaming up with Louis Armstrong in 1926, and the two masterful musicians consistently inspired each other. Hines worked briefly in Armstrong's big band (formerly headed by Carroll Dickerson), and they unsuccessfully tried to manage their own club. 1928 was one of Hines' most significant years. He recorded his first ten piano solos, including versions of "A Monday Date," "Blues in Thirds," and "57 Varieties." Hines worked much of the year with Jimmy Noone's Apex Club Orchestra, and their recordings are also considered classic. Hines cut brilliant (and futuristic) sides with Louis Armstrong's Hot Five, resulting in such timeless gems as "West End Blues," "Fireworks," "Basin Street Blues," and their remarkable trumpet-piano duet "Weather Bird." And on his birthday on December 28, Hines debuted with his big band at Chicago's Grand Terrace.

A brilliant ensemble player as well as soloist, Earl Hines would lead big bands for the next 20 years. Among the key players in his band through the 1930s would be trumpeter/vocalist Walter Fuller, Ray Nance on trumpet and violin (prior to joining Duke Ellington), trombonist Trummy Young, tenor saxophonist Budd Johnson, Omer Simeon and Darnell Howard on reeds, and arranger Jimmy Mundy. In 1940, Billy Eckstine became the band's popular singer, and in 1943 (unfortunately during the musicians' recording strike), Hines welcomed such modernists as Charlie Parker (on tenor), trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and singer Sarah Vaughan in what was the first bebop orchestra. By the time the strike ended, Eckstine, Parker, Gillespie, and Vaughan were gone, but tenor Wardell Gray was still around to star with the group during 1945-1946.

In 1948, the economic situation forced Hines to break up his orchestra. He joined the Louis Armstrong All-Stars, but three years of playing second fiddle to his old friend were difficult to take. After leaving Armstrong in 1951, Hines moved to Los Angeles and later San Francisco, heading a Dixieland band. Although his style was much more modern, Hines kept the group working throughout the 1950s, at times featuring Muggsy Spanier, Jimmy Archey, and Darnell Howard. Hines did record on a few occasions, but was largely forgotten in the jazz world by the early '60s. Then, in 1964, jazz writer Stanley Dance arranged for him to play three concerts at New York's Little Theater, both solo and in a quartet with Budd Johnson. The New York critics were amazed by Hines' continuing creativity and vitality, and he had a major comeback that lasted through the rest of his career. Hines traveled the world with his quartet, recorded dozens of albums, and remained famous and renowned up until his death at the age of 79. Most of the many recordings from his career are currently available on CD. 

(by Scott Yanow from allmusic.com)

Werner Muller and His Orchestra - Cascading Strings

1. Tango In The Rain
2. Lisboa Antigua
3. Bistro
4. La Cumparsita
5. Simonetta
6. Monte Carlo Melodie
7. Arpanetta
8. Song Of The Pearlfisher
9. Guitar Mambo
10. Valse Baccara
11. Bolero Bleu
12. Tango Of The Drums

Cascading Strings

Warren Covington and The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra - Tea For Two Cha Chas

1. Tea For Two Cha Cha
2. Por Favor (Please)
3. Patricia
4. I Still Get Jealous - Cha Cha
5. Corazon De Melon
6. Dardanella Cha Cha
7. Rico Vacilon
8. I Want To Be Happy Cha Cha
9. Together 1-2-3
10. Trumpet Cha Cha Cha
11. Dinah Cha Cha
12. Cha Cha For Gia

Tea For Two Cha Chas

Every once in a while, a recording really "takes off", and skyrockets far beyond the most optimistic speculations. One of the most recent of these "musical missiles" is Warren Covington's captivating new cha cha arrangement of the popular old favorite, Tea for Two. Behind its spectacular success is a fresh new sound...a unique style that has taken the country by storm.

In this album you will hear the famous Tommy dorsey Orchestra, starring warren Covington, with a collection of sparkling arrangements played along the lines of the Tea For Two Cha Cha and the I Want To Be Happy Cha Cha - the latter showing every promise of equaling or possibly surpassing the former in popularity.

Cha Cha music has long been almost exclusively in the realm of the "too-old-to-rock-and-roll" set. That is, until Warren Covington introduced his exciting new treatment, and caught the imagination of the teen-agers as well as the steadfast cha cha aficionados. He has created a new, wider audience for cha cha music...an audience that includes practically everyone.

Warren Covington, who has idolized Tommy Dorsey as long as he can remember, was chosen to front the famous "Tee Dee" orchestra a short time after his hero's untimely death and the consequent disbandment of the orchestra. To Covington, a popular young conductor, arranger, musician and singer, his coveted place on the bandstand with the fabulous Dorsey's orchestra, "is like a dream". To his vast audience...it is quite real, indeed!

(from the original liner notes)

Count Basie - Gigantes do Jazz (1980)

1. Oh Lady Be Good (1936)
2. Miss Thing (1939)
3. I Left My Baby (with Jimmy Rushing) (1957)
4. Louisiana (1940)
5. Tickle Toe (with Lester Young) (1940)
6. Love Jumped Out (1940)
7. Midnite Blue (1957)
8. Li'l Darlin' (1957)
9. Baby Won't You Please Come Home (with Joe Williams) (1958)
10. Moten Swing (1959)
11. April In Paris (1962)

Um Nobre Band-Leader

Count Basie was among the most important bandleaders of the swing era. With the exception of a brief period in the early '50s, he led a big band from 1935 until his death almost 50 years later, and the band continued to perform after he died. Basie's orchestra was characterized by a light, swinging rhythm section that he led from the piano, lively ensemble work, and generous soloing. Basie was not a composer like Duke Ellington or an important soloist like Benny Goodman. His instrument was his band, which was considered the epitome of swing and became broadly influential on jazz.

Both of Basie's parents were musicians; his father, Harvie Basie, played the mellophone, and his mother, Lillian (Childs) Basie, was a pianist who gave her son his earliest lessons. Basie also learned from Harlem stride pianists, particularly Fats Waller. His first professional work came accompanying vaudeville performers, and he was part of a troupe that broke up in Kansas City in 1927, leaving him stranded there. He stayed in the Midwestern city, at first working in a silent movie house and then joining Walter Page's Blue Devils in July 1928. The band's vocalist was Jimmy Rushing. Basie left in early 1929 to play with other bands, eventually settling into one led by Bennie Moten. Upon Moten's untimely death on April 2, 1935, Basie worked as a soloist before leading a band initially called the Barons of Rhythm. Many former members of the Moten band joined this nine-piece outfit, among them Walter Page (bass), Freddie Green (guitar), Jo Jones (drums), and Lester Young (tenor saxophone). Jimmy Rushing became the singer. The band gained a residency at the Reno Club in Kansas City and began broadcasting on the radio, an announcer dubbing the pianist "Count" Basie.

Basie got his big break when one of his broadcasts was heard by journalist and record producer John Hammond, who touted him to agents and record companies. As a result, the band was able to leave Kansas City in the fall of 1936 and take up an engagement at the Grand Terrace in Chicago, followed by a date in Buffalo, NY, before coming into Roseland in New York City in December. It made its recording debut on Decca Records in January 1937. Undergoing expansion and personnel changes, it returned to Chicago, then to the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Boston. Meanwhile, its recording of "One O'Clock Jump" became its first chart entry in September 1937. The tune became the band's theme song and it was later inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Basie returned to New York for an extended engagement at the small club the Famous Door in 1938 that really established the band as a success. "Stop Beatin' Round the Mulberry Bush," with Rushing on vocals, became a Top Ten hit in the fall of 1938. Basie spent the first half of 1939 in Chicago, meanwhile switching from Decca to Columbia Records, then went to the West Coast in the fall. He spent the early '40s touring extensively, but after the U.S. entry into World War II in December 1941 and the onset of the recording ban in August 1942, his travel was restricted. While on the West Coast, he and the band appeared in five films, all released within a matter of months in 1943: Hit Parade of 1943, Reveille with Beverly, Stage Door Canteen, Top Man, and Crazy House. He also scored a series of Top Ten hits on the pop and R&B charts, including "I Didn't Know About You" (pop, winter 1945); "Red Bank Blues" (R&B, winter 1945); "Rusty Dusty Blues" (R&B, spring 1945); "Jimmy's Blues" (pop and R&B, summer/fall 1945); and "Blue Skies" (pop, summer 1946). Switching to RCA Victor Records, he topped the charts in February 1947 with "Open the Door, Richard!," followed by three more Top Ten pop hits in 1947: "Free Eats," "One O'Clock Boogie," and "I Ain't Mad at You (You Ain't Mad at Me)."

The big bands' decline in popularity in the late '40s hit Basie as it did his peers, and he broke up his orchestra at the end of the decade, opting to lead smaller units for the next couple of years. But he was able to reform the big band in 1952, responding to increased opportunities for touring. For example, he went overseas for the first time to play in Scandinavia in 1954, and thereafter international touring played a large part in his schedule. An important addition to the band in late 1954 was vocalist Joe Williams. The orchestra was re-established commercially by the 1955 album Count Basie Swings - Joe Williams Sings (released on Clef Records), particularly by the single "Every Day (I Have the Blues)," which reached the Top Five of the R&B charts and was later inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Another key recording of this period was an instrumental reading of "April in Paris" that made the pop Top 40 and the R&B Top Ten in early 1956; it also was enshrined in the Grammy Hall of Fame. These hits made what Albert Murray (co-author of Basie's autobiography, Good Morning Blues) called the "new testament" edition of the Basie band a major success. Williams remained with Basie until 1960, and even after his departure, the band continued to prosper.

At the first Grammy Awards ceremony, Basie won the 1958 awards for Best Performance by a Dance Band and Best Jazz Performance, Group, for his Roulette Records LP Basie. Breakfast Dance and Barbecue was nominated in the dance band category for 1959, and Basie won in the category in 1960 for Dance with Basie, earning nominations the same year for Best Performance by an Orchestra and Best Jazz Performance, Large Group, for The Count Basie Story. There were further nominations for best jazz performance for Basie at Birdland in 1961 and The Legend in 1962. None of these albums attracted much commercial attention, however, and in 1962, Basie switched to Frank Sinatra's Reprise Records in a bid to sell more records. Sinatra-Basie satisfied that desire, reaching the Top Five in early 1963. It was followed by This Time by Basie! Hits of the 50's and 60's, which reached the Top 20 and won the 1963 Grammy Award for Best Performance by an Orchestra for Dancing.

This initiated a period largely deplored by jazz fans that ran through the rest of the 1960s, when Basie teamed with various vocalists for a series of chart albums including Ella Fitzgerald (Ella and Basie!, 1963); Sinatra again (the Top 20 album It Might as Well Be Swing, 1964); Sammy Davis, Jr. (Our Shining Hour, 1965); the Mills Brothers (The Board of Directors, 1968); and Jackie Wilson (Manufacturers of Soul, 1968). He also reached the charts with an album of show tunes, Broadway Basie's ... Way (1966).

By the end of the 1960s, Basie had returned to more of a jazz format. His album Standing Ovation earned a 1969 Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Large Group or Soloist with Large Group (Eight or More), and in 1970, with Oliver Nelson as arranger/conductor, he recorded Afrique, an experimental, avant-garde album that earned a 1971 Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Performance by a Big Band. By this time, the band performed largely on the jazz festival circuit and on cruise ships. In the early 1970s, after a series of short-term affiliations, Basie signed to Pablo Records, with which he recorded for the rest of his life. Pablo recorded Basie prolifically in a variety of settings, resulting in a series of well-received albums: Basie Jam earned a 1975 Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Performance by a Group; Basie and Zoot was nominated in the same category in 1976 and won the Grammy for Best Jazz Performance by a Soloist; Prime Time won the 1977 Grammy for Best Jazz Performance by a Big Band; and The Gifted Ones by Basie and Dizzy Gillespie was nominated for a 1979 Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance by a Group. Thereafter, Basie competed in the category of Best Jazz Instrumental Performance by a Big Band, winning the Grammy in 1980 for On the Road and in 1982 for Warm Breeze, earning a nomination for Farmer's Market Barbecue in 1983, and winning a final time, for his ninth career Grammy, in 1984 for 88 Basie Street.

Basie's health gradually deteriorated during the last eight years of his life. He suffered a heart attack in 1976 that put him out of commission for several months. He was back in the hospital in 1981, and when he returned to action, he was driving an electric wheel chair onto the stage. He died of cancer at 79.

Count Basie was admired as much by musicians as by listeners, and he displayed a remarkable consistency in a bandleading career that lasted long after swing became an archival style of music. After his death, his was one of the livelier ghost bands, led in turn by Thad Jones, Frank Foster, and Grover Mitchell. His lengthy career resulted in a large discography spread across all of the major labels and quite a few minor ones as well. 

(by William Ruhlmann from allmusic.com)

Miles Davis - Gigantes do Jazz (1980)

1. 'Round Midnight (1956)
2. Stella By Starlight (1958)
3. Autumn Leaves (1963)
4. Pinocchio (1967)
5. Miles Runs The Woodoo Down (1969)

Um Enigma da Música Negro-Americana

Throughout a professional career lasting 50 years, Miles Davis played the trumpet in a lyrical, introspective, and melodic style, often employing a stemless Harmon mute to make his sound more personal and intimate. But if his approach to his instrument was constant, his approach to jazz was dazzlingly protean. To examine his career is to examine the history of jazz from the mid-'40s to the early '90s, since he was in the thick of almost every important innovation and stylistic development in the music during that period, and he often led the way in those changes, both with his own performances and recordings and by choosing sidemen and collaborators who forged new directions. It can even be argued that jazz stopped evolving when Davis wasn't there to push it forward.

Davis was the son of a dental surgeon, Dr. Miles Dewey Davis, Jr., and a music teacher, Cleota Mae (Henry) Davis, and thus grew up in the black middle class of east St. Louis after the family moved there shortly after his birth. He became interested in music during his childhood and by the age of 12 began taking trumpet lessons. While still in high school, he started to get jobs playing in local bars and at 16 was playing gigs out of town on weekends. At 17, he joined Eddie Randle's Blue Devils, a territory band based in St. Louis. He enjoyed a personal apotheosis in 1944, just after graduating from high school, when he saw and was allowed to sit in with Billy Eckstine's big band, who was playing in St. Louis. The band featured trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and saxophonist Charlie Parker, the architects of the emerging bebop style of jazz, which was characterized by fast, inventive soloing and dynamic rhythm variations. It is striking that Davis fell so completely under Gillespie and Parker's spell, since his own slower and less flashy style never really compared to theirs. But bebop was the new sound of the day, and the young trumpeter was bound to follow it. He did so by leaving the Midwest to attend the Institute of Musical Art in New York City (renamed Juilliard) in September 1944. Shortly after his arrival in Manhattan, he was playing in clubs with Parker, and by 1945 he had abandoned his academic studies for a full-time career as a jazz musician, initially joining Benny Carter's band and making his first recordings as a sideman. He played with Eckstine in 1946-1947 and was a member of Parker's group in 1947-1948, making his recording debut as a leader on a 1947 session that featured Parker, pianist John Lewis, bassist Nelson Boyd, and drummer Max Roach. This was an isolated date, however, and Davis spent most of his time playing and recording behind Parker. But in the summer of 1948, he organized a nine-piece band with an unusual horn section. In addition to himself, it featured an alto saxophone, a baritone saxophone, a trombone, a French horn, and a tuba. This nonet, employing arrangements by Gil Evans and others, played for two weeks at the Royal Roost in New York in September. Earning a contract with Capitol Records, the band went into the studio in January 1949 for the first of three sessions which produced 12 tracks that attracted little attention at first. The band's relaxed sound, however, affected the musicians who played it, among them Kai Winding, Lee Konitz, Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis, J.J. Johnson, and Kenny Clarke, and it had a profound influence on the development of the cool jazz style on the West Coast. In February 1957, Capitol finally issued the tracks together on an LP called Birth of the Cool. Davis, meanwhile, had moved on to co-leading a band with pianist Tadd Dameron in 1949, and the group took him out of the country for an appearance at the Paris Jazz Festival in May. But the trumpeter's progress was impeded by an addiction to heroin that plagued him in the early '50s. His performances and recordings became more haphazard, but in January 1951 he began a long series of recordings for the Prestige label that became his main recording outlet for the next several years. He managed to kick his habit by the middle of the decade, and he made a strong impression playing "'Round Midnight" at the Newport Jazz Festival in July 1955, a performance that led the major label Columbia Records to sign him. The prestigious contract allowed him to put together a permanent band, and he organized a quintet featuring saxophonist John Coltrane, pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Philly Joe Jones who began recording his Columbia debut, 'Round About Midnight, in October. As it happened, however, he had a remaining five albums on his Prestige contract, and over the next year he was forced to alternate his Columbia sessions with sessions for Prestige to fulfill this previous commitment. The latter resulted in the Prestige albums The New Miles Davis Quintet, Cookin', Workin', Relaxin', and Steamin', making Davis' first quintet one of his better-documented outfits. In May 1957, just three months after Capitol released the Birth of the Cool LP, Davis again teamed with arranger Gil Evans for his second Columbia LP, Miles Ahead. Playing flügelhorn, Davis fronted a big band on music that extended the Birth of the Cool concept and even had classical overtones. Released in 1958, the album was later inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, intended to honor recordings made before the Grammy Awards were instituted in 1959. In December 1957, Davis returned to Paris, where he improvised the background music for the film L'Ascenseur pour l'Echafaud (Escalator to the Gallows). Jazz Track, an album containing this music, earned him a 1960 Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Performance, Solo, or Small Group. He added saxophonist Cannonball Adderley to his group, creating the Miles Davis Sextet, who recorded the album Milestones in April 1958. Shortly after this recording, Red Garland was replaced on piano by Bill Evans and Jimmy Cobb took over for Philly Joe Jones on drums. In July, Davis again collaborated with Gil Evans and an orchestra on an album of music from Porgy and Bess. Back in the sextet, Davis began to experiment with modal playing, basing his improvisations on scales rather than chord changes. This led to his next band recording, Kind of Blue, in March and April 1959, an album that became a landmark in modern jazz and the most popular disc of Davis' career, eventually selling over two million copies, a phenomenal success for a jazz record. In sessions held in November 1959 and March 1960, Davis again followed his pattern of alternating band releases and collaborations with Gil Evans, recording Sketches of Spain, containing traditional Spanish music and original compositions in that style. The album earned Davis and Evans Grammy nominations in 1960 for Best Jazz Performance, Large Group, and Best Jazz Composition, More Than 5 minutes; they won in the latter category.

By the time Davis returned to the studio to make his next band album in March 1961, Adderley had departed, Wynton Kelly had replaced Bill Evans at the piano, and John Coltrane had left to begin his successful solo career, being replaced by saxophonist Hank Mobley (following the brief tenure of Sonny Stitt). Nevertheless, Coltrane guested on a couple of tracks of the album, called Someday My Prince Will Come. The record made the pop charts in March 1962, but it was preceded into the bestseller lists by the Davis quintet's next recording, the two-LP set Miles Davis in Person (Friday & Saturday Nights at the Blackhawk, San Francisco), recorded in April. The following month, Davis recorded another live show, as he and his band were joined by an orchestra led by Gil Evans at Carnegie Hall in May. The resulting Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall was his third LP to reach the pop charts, and it earned Davis and Evans a 1962 Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Performance by a Large Group, Instrumental. Davis and Evans teamed up again in 1962 for what became their final collaboration, Quiet Nights. The album was not issued until 1964, when it reached the charts and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Large Group or Soloist with Large Group. In 1996, Columbia Records released a six-CD box set, Miles Davis & Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings, that won the Grammy for Best Historical Album. Quiet Nights was preceded into the marketplace by Davis' next band effort, Seven Steps to Heaven, recorded in the spring of 1963 with an entirely new lineup consisting of saxophonist George Coleman, pianist Victor Feldman, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Frank Butler. During the sessions, Feldman was replaced by Herbie Hancock and Butler by Tony Williams. The album found Davis making a transition to his next great group, of which Carter, Hancock, and Williams would be members. It was another pop chart entry that earned 1963 Grammy nominations for both Best Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Soloist or Small Group and Best Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Large Group. The quintet followed with two live albums, Miles Davis in Europe, recorded in July 1963, which made the pop charts and earned a 1964 Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Small Group or Soloist with Small Group, and My Funny Valentine, recorded in February 1964 and released in 1965, when it reached the pop charts. By September 1964, the final member of the classic Miles Davis Quintet of the 1960s was in place with the addition of saxophonist Wayne Shorter to the team of Davis, Carter, Hancock, and Williams. While continuing to play standards in concert, this unit embarked on a series of albums of original compositions contributed by the band members, starting in January 1965 with E.S.P., followed by Miles Smiles (1967 Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Small Group or Soloist with Small Group [7 or Fewer]), Sorcerer, Nefertiti, Miles in the Sky (1968 Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Small Group or Soloist with Small Group), and Filles de Kilimanjaro. By the time of Miles in the Sky, the group had begun to turn to electric instruments, presaging Davis' next stylistic turn. By the final sessions for Filles de Kilimanjaro in September 1968, Hancock had been replaced by Chick Corea and Carter by Dave Holland. But Hancock, along with pianist Joe Zawinul and guitarist John McLaughlin, participated on Davis' next album, In a Silent Way (1969), which returned the trumpeter to the pop charts for the first time in four years and earned him another small-group jazz performance Grammy nomination. With his next album, Bitches Brew, Davis turned more overtly to a jazz-rock style. Though certainly not conventional rock music, Davis' electrified sound attracted a young, non-jazz audience while putting off traditional jazz fans. Bitches Brew, released in March 1970, reached the pop Top 40 and became Davis' first album to be certified gold. It also earned a Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Arrangement and won the Grammy for large-group jazz performance. He followed it with such similar efforts as Miles Davis at Fillmore East (1971 Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Performance by a Group), A Tribute to Jack Johnson, Live-Evil, On the Corner, and In Concert, all of which reached the pop charts. Meanwhile, Davis' former sidemen became his disciples in a series of fusion groups: Corea formed Return to Forever, Shorter and Zawinul led Weather Report, and McLaughlin and former Davis drummer Billy Cobham organized the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Starting in October 1972, when he broke his ankles in a car accident, Davis became less active in the early '70s, and in 1975 he gave up recording entirely due to illness, undergoing surgery for hip replacement later in the year. Five years passed before he returned to action by recording The Man With the Horn in 1980 and going back to touring in 1981. By now, he was an elder statesman of jazz, and his innovations had been incorporated into the music, at least by those who supported his eclectic approach. He was also a celebrity whose appeal extended far beyond the basic jazz audience. He performed on the worldwide jazz festival circuit and recorded a series of albums that made the pop charts, including We Want Miles (1982 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance by a Soloist), Star People, Decoy, and You're Under Arrest. In 1986, after 30 years with Columbia, he switched to Warner Bros. Records and released Tutu, which won him his fourth Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance. Aura, an album he had recorded in 1984, was released by Columbia in 1989 and brought him his fifth Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance by a Soloist (on a Jazz Recording). Davis surprised jazz fans when, on July 8, 1991, he joined an orchestra led by Quincy Jones at the Montreux Jazz Festival to perform some of the arrangements written for him in the late '50s by Gil Evans; he had never previously looked back at an aspect of his career. He died of pneumonia, respiratory failure, and a stroke within months. Doo-Bop, his last studio album, appeared in 1992. It was a collaboration with rapper Easy Mo Bee, and it won a Grammy for Best Rhythm & Blues Instrumental Performance, with the track "Fantasy" nominated for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo. Released in 1993, Miles & Quincy Live at Montreux won Davis his seventh Grammy for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance.

Miles Davis took an all-inclusive, constantly restless approach to jazz that had begun to fall out of favor by the time of his death, even as it earned him controversy during his lifetime. It was hard to recognize the bebop acolyte of Charlie Parker in the flamboyantly dressed leader with the hair extensions who seemed to keep one foot on a wah-wah pedal and one hand on an electric keyboard in his later years. But he did much to popularize jazz, reversing the trend away from commercial appeal that bebop began. And whatever the fripperies and explorations, he retained an ability to play moving solos that endeared him to audiences and demonstrated his affinity with tradition. At a time when jazz is inclining toward academia and repertory orchestras rather than moving forward, he is a reminder of the music's essential quality of boundless invention, using all available means. 

(by William Ruhlmann from allmusic.com)