Billy May

William E. May, better known as Billy May (10 November, 1916 – 22 January, 2004) was an American composer, arranger and musician. He died of heart failure at the age of 87 in his home in San Juan Capistrano, California.

One of May's most popular compositions was the theme music of the Naked City television series in the early 1960s, "Somewhere in the Night". Along with Nelson Riddle, he was also involved in scoring the television series, Emergency!

Early life

May was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He played trumpet professionally in big bands such as those of Charlie Barnet starting in 1939, but became best known as a talented arranger. His arrangement of the Ray Noble composition Cherokee became a major hit of the swing music era. During the Barnet days, May revealed a significant flair for satire on a composition titled The Wrong Idea that ridiculed the bland Mickey Mouse style of safe big band music with specific musical mockery of bandleader Sammy Kaye, known for his swing and sway trademark. May's caustic lyrics to the song called it swing and sweat with Charlie Barnet.

May worked as an arranger for the bands of Glenn Miller and Les Brown before being hired as staff arranger first for the NBC radio network, then for Capitol Records.

With Capitol Records

At Capitol, May wrote arrangements for many top artists. These included Frank Sinatra on the albums Come Fly With Me, Come Dance With Me and Come Swing With Me; Nat King Cole on the albums Just One Of Those Things and Let's Face the Music!, as well as numerous singles (all his work with Cole being packaged later on the 2CD set The Billy May Sessions); Stan Freberg, with whom he was a longtime collaborator, featuring on many of the artist's comedy recordings; Peggy Lee on the album Pretty Eyes; Sue Raney on her second album Songs for a Raney Day; Vic Damone on the albums The Lively Ones and Strange Enchantment; Jeri Southern on the album Jeri Southern Meets Cole Porter; Keely Smith on the album Politely and on a duet single, "Nothing In Common"/"How Are Ya Fixed For Love?", with Sinatra; Bobby Darin on the album Oh! Look At Me Now; Nancy Wilson on the albums Like In Love, Something Wonderful, Tender Loving Care, Nancy - Naturally! and various tracks from the albums Just For Now and Lush Life; Matt Monro on several tracks from the album These Years; Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney on the album That Travelin' Two-Beat; and Sir George Shearing on the albums Satin Affair and Burnished Brass, co-arranged with Shearing (May also conducted Shearing's album Concerto For My Love, on which Shearing had sole credit for the arrangements).

Additionally, May's orchestra was featured on many Capitol Records children's projects. He also worked closely with early 1950s satirist Stan Freberg, using his arranging skills to help Freberg create his spoofs of current hits by creating musical backing often stunningly close to the original hit single. On Freberg's Wunnerful! Wunnerful! a lacerating spoof of bandleader Lawrence Welk, May hired some of the best jazz musicians in Hollywood for his recording sessions, and they relished the idea of mocking the musically awful (if financially successful) Welk sound. The result was a note-perfect recreation of Welk's sound as Freberg and a group of vocalists created parodies of Welk's musical family. Freberg has recounted that Welk was less than amused by the results, which he could not have achieved without May.

In 1959, May won the Grammy Award for Best Performance by an Orchestra.

With other record labels

The Crosby-Clooney collaboration was a sequel to their earlier album on RCA Records, Fancy Meeting You Here, also arranged by May.

May’s other non-Capitol work included another Bing Crosby duet album, this time with Louis Armstrong, entitled Bing & Satchmo; a further duet album twinning Bobby Darin with Johnny Mercer, called Two Of A Kind; the sixth in Ella Fitzgerald's acclaimed series of Song Books for Verve Records, Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Harold Arlen Songbook; a similar dip into the Rodgers and Hart opus with Anita O'Day, entitled Anita O'Day and Billy May Swing Rodgers and Hart; Mel Tormé’s Latin-flavoured album ¡Olé Tormé!: Mel Tormé Goes South of the Border with Billy May; early albums by Jack Jones (Shall We Dance?) and Petula Clark (In Hollywood); one solitary session with Sarah Vaughan for Roulette Records in 1960, to record the single The Green Leaves of Summer and three other tracks; and two more albums with Keely Smith, recorded nearly forty years apart – CheroKeely Swings from 1962 and Keely Sings Sinatra, one of May’s last pieces of work, from 2001.

After Sinatra left Capitol to start his own label, Reprise Records, May continued to provide arrangements for him, off and on, for nearly thirty more years, working on the albums Sinatra Swings, Francis A. & Edward K. (with Duke Ellington) and Trilogy 1: The Past, as well as the chart for what is thought to be Sinatra's last ever solo recording, "Cry Me a River" (1988), which was eventually released on the 20 CD Box Set Frank Sinatra - The Complete Reprise Studio Recordings. In addition, May was the natural choice to arrange Sinatra's knockabout duet with Sammy Davis Jr., Me And My Shadow, which was a hit single on both sides of the Atlantic in 1962, whilst he also contributed to Sinatra's ambitious "Reprise Musical Repertory Theatre" project, providing a few arrangements for three of its four albums, South Pacific, Kiss Me, Kate and Guys and Dolls, May's charts being variously performed by Sinatra, Davis, Crosby, Dean Martin, Jo Stafford and Lou Monte and yielding a perennial Sinatra concert favourite, "Luck Be A Lady" from Guys and Dolls.

In 1958 May arranged a holiday album on Warner Bros. Records featuring the Jimmy Joyce Singers, titled A Christmas to Remember.

Musical style

May's charts often featured brisk tempos and intricate brass parts. One distinctive feature of his style is his frequent use of trumpet mute devices; another, a saxophone glissando, is widely known as his "slurping saxes". However, May was also an accomplished writer in slower tempos, sometimes using string arrangements. Good examples of this aspect of his work include his brass chart for "These Foolish Things" on the Cole album Just One Of Those Things and his string arrangement of "April In Paris" on Sinatra's Come Fly With Me album.

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