Topic: MILESTONES
Pete Candoli began playing lead and jazz for Sonny Dunham's Orchestra in 1941, followed by a long string of other name bands, including Woody Herman's famed “First Herd." He settled into the studio scene in the 1950s after tenures with Herman, Tex Beneke, Jerry Gray and Stan Kenton, among others. He and his trumpeter brother Conte, four years his junior, also co-led a band from 1957 to 1962. As a preeminent lead trumpeter, he played for the orchestras of Alex Stordahl, Gordon Jenkins, Nelson Riddle, Don Costa, Michel LeGrand and Henry Mancini, as well as Frank Sinatra. He also played lead with the Shorty Rogers Big Band. Candoli's association with top bands reads like a “Who's Who" of jazz. He was featured with Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Les Brown, Count Basie, Freddy Slack and Charlie Barnet. He was born Walter Joseph Candoli in Mishawaka, Indiana on June 28, 1923, and was most recently a resident of Studio City, California. Equally expert with classical music and pop, he conducted music seminars and concerts at some 30 universities and colleges when not playing a jazz festival, concert or nightclub somewhere. He worked over 5,000 record dates. Candoli composed and arranged music and conducted for Judy Garland, Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee, among others. Having played first trumpet for Igor Stravinsky's “Ebony Concerto," written for the Woody Herman Orchestra, he received much acclaim for his versatility as a solo trumpeter. 
Irene Reid, who sang with the Count Basie band and recorded on her own for more than 30 years, died January 4, 2008 after a long illness. She was 77. Born in 1930 in New York, Reid received her first break in 1948 when she won the talent contest at the famed Apollo Theatre in Harlem. She then joined the band of Dick Vance, with which she stayed for two years, playing regularly at the Savoy Ballroom. In 1961 she joined Basie’s band, touring and recording with them before striking out on her own, calling her group Irene Reid & Co. She recorded albums for MGM, Verve and Polydor in the ’60s and early ’70s and was still performing in the ’80s, although her recording output ceased until 1989, when she cut a new album. That would be followed by several for the Savant label during the 1990s and early ’00s. She continued to perform occasionally until shortly before her death.
Renowned songwriter and producer Clyde Otis was pronounced dead at Englewood Hospital on January 8, 2008. He was 83 years old. Best-known for his long and enormously successful collaboration with singer Brook Benton, Clyde Otis was among the most prolific songwriters and producers of the post-war era, making music business history as the first African American A&R executive for a major label.
The Massachusetts-born Goulet, who spent much of his youth in Canada, gained stardom in 1960 with "Camelot," the Lerner and Loewe musical that starred Richard Burton as King Arthur and Julie Andrews as his Queen Guenevere. 
Teresa Brewer, one of the most popular US pop singers of the 1950s, has died in New York at the age of 76. Born in Toledo, Ohio in 1931, Brewer topped the charts with such hits as Gonna Get Along Without Ya Now and Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall.
Top banana in show business as a singer and band leader, then as a talk show host and developer of game shows for television. Griffin's career as a television talk show host was associated from the beginning with that of Johnny Carson, ...Merv Griffin, RIP (Part II)
Three years later the nationally known big band leader Freddy Martin came north from the famous Coconut Grove in Los Angeles to play at the St. Francis in San Francisco. Martin was urged to listen to Merv Griffin's radio show-and he ...
...more... ...more... | Google Griffin Links
Lee Hazlewood has died at the age of 78 after a three year struggle with renal cancer. A songwriter, singer, and producer for over 40 years, Hazlewood was most famous for writing Nancy Sinatra's 1966 hit "These Boots Are Made For Walking." The pair continued to work together for many years creating such hits as "Some Velvet Morning." Hazelwood was discovered by a new generation of fans after his solo albums were reissued by Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley in the '90s. Hazlewood's influence even extended to Phil Spector who visited his studio in the 1950's to study his taping techniques. The son of an oil man, Hazlewood was born in Mannford, Oklahoma in 1929 and spent his teenage years in Port Neches, Texas. Hazlewood enrolled at SMU in Dallas, planning to study medicine but was drafted into the Army for the Korean War. Diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2005, Hazlewood gave away his gold and platinum discs to friends outside the music industry and released his final album, Cake Or Death, in 2006. Hazlewood's family have asked that people wishing to honor his memory make donations to The Salvation Army. GOOGLE LINKS | Hazelwood at Amazon.com
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