I was at Warner Bros. Publications from 1977 as a freelancer, 1979 as a staff educational music editor, and was editorial director at the time the Secaucus, NJ facility closed in 1994. Educational music comprised band, orchestra, marching band, jazz band, easy piano, easy guitar, choral and other configurations. Warners sold off its ensemble publications to Jenson Publications when the bosses were convinced by Art Jenson that we didn’t know as much about those kinds of publications as he did, which was of course a lie. Jenson later sold his operation to Hal Leonard Publications.
Eventually the chief pop editor was let go, and the operation was one group of editors who prepared everything. I corrected old sheet music of Gershwin, Cole Porter and other classic song composers, edited textbooks, and arranged for various ensembles such as string quartets, brass quintets, full orchestra….whatever was needed at a given time, plus took on special projects such as making xeroxs of some of the music rediscovered high on warehouse shelves from Broadway shows from as early as 1915 (looking at a Frank Saddler orchestration with a personal note from Jerome Kern can change your life). When I was asked to assemble a C.V. of my life work when I was teaching at Five Towns College, there was no way I could reconstruct all the projects I worked on or even looked at to approve. It had to be many hundreds, perhaps over a thousand (to give some perspective, I’ve been senior editor at Jazz Lines Publications since the early 2000s, and we have published well over 1000 pieces of ensemble music, of which I’ve seen about 98%).
There were many experiences and projects at Warners which I remember vividly, and many I’d rather forget. But Andrew Homzy reminded me of a project in which I have very fond memories - he wrote in appreciation about a matching folio of the three Linda Ronstadt ‘standards’ albums, which were originally published as individual folios with beautiful color photos. To be clear, all of the arrangements had to not only be taken down, but arranged so that they were playable on the piano, and had to include the melody line; this was challenging work and harder than most people think until you are trained to do it. I don’t think Andrew knew that I’d worked on them, and have decided to write sharing my memories of those projects (all of the arrangements we transcribed are still available).
Warners had agreements with artists and groups for music print, individual deals that often ran for years. When they ended, we were usually allowed to ‘sell off’ whatever printed materials we had until stock was exhausted. On a few occasions, we were told to destroy what we had left, but we sometimes shipped the stock to the print company that now administered the artist’s music. The two operations at that time besides us were Alfred Music and Hal Leonard. Ronstradt was one of many artists who were with us for a long time; other artists and groups were Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Peter, Paul and Mary, Prince, Bon Jovi, Burt Bacharach, Queen, Whitney Houston, Christopher Cross, The Knack, The Eagles (and when they split up, Don Henley and Glenn Frey; I arranged the sheet music of “You Belong to the City”), Frank Sinatra and many others. We also picked up deals for song catalogs - I communicated directly with Doc Pomus and Neal Hefti, and Ethan Neuburg worked with Mike Stoller of Lieber and Stoller (we did all new arrangements for print, and Mike reviewed them extensively). There was also a buyout deal for the Philadelphia International song copyrights, such as “Me and Mrs. Jones,” but these didn’t sell very well in print. Deals I also remember were the old Bregman, Vocco & Conn catalog (early Basie, Tadd Dameron) and Fox Music, which included John Williams’s scores for the “Star Wars” franchises.
We would sometimes get a tape of an album that was about to be released (Jeff Rosen at Bob Dylan’s office would call us ahead of time), but most of the time, we would get a copy of the LP for personality folios, and one day the first Ronstadt album came in. My boss was Anthony Esposito, a very talented arranger and a fabulous boss from whom I learned so much. We were thrilled that Nelson Riddle was the arranger and that we were going to work on this. We all listened to the album together and collectively realized that this was going to be a challenging project.
Some background - Everyone in Ronstadt’s professional life didn’t really want her to do this album, but she pressed on until everyone had to. Riddle was originally approached to do individual tracks. He said that he did entire albums, not tracks. Eventually three albums were produced; all of them sold well and still receive a lot of airplay.
At that time, the only way to transcribe an album properly was to record it onto a 7 1/2 IPS copy on open-reel tape, primarily to get the bass line when the recording was played back at 15 IPS; sometimes it would be less than prominent in the mix and would be hard to hear (Prince used to mix his basslines pretty low; rarely would we get lead sheets for pop and rock albums from the artists). Today with computer technology and software packages, transcribing is much easier. There should be a course on it in colleges and conservatories.
Obviously we had the original sheet music for these songs, but listening to the album, the orchestral backgrounds were not as prominent in the mix as we would have liked. I later discovered that in fact Ronstadt told the sound engineer that she wanted the mixdown exactly like an old Capitol Sinatra album, the ones she listened to repeatedly as a young girl. When the mix was submitted, she said that the orchestra was too far forward and had to be brought down. It was sometimes difficult to hear subtle things, especially when there were piano fills by the underrated Don Grolnick. Ironically, the first album was mixed in 5.1 surround for DVD-Audio when that format and SACD were being actively marketed. The mix balance orchestra vs. vocal is exactly the same, but you do hear more details. Too bad we didn’t have this back in the vinyl era.
At the time, I was editing Nelson’s arranging book, and having an incredible blast doing so. I went to Anthony and asked him why we simply didn’t call Nelson to get copies of the scores. He would have been honored that we were doing this. At this point, Nelson and I had a great relationship; I’d met him earlier when he conducted a concert in Teaneck, NJ, and he’d been very generous with his time and was very encouraging knowing that I was actually in the business and was a professional, and particularly that I was the protege of Jerry Graff, whom he worked with in Las Vegas and had great respect for. I would’ve been happy to make the call. I was pissed later on that our bosses told us not to call him. We were on our own.
The arrangers/editors who worked on the books were Anthony, David Jessie, Ethan Neuburg and myself. I remember arranging “Sophisticated Lady” and perhaps a couple of other titles. For each album, we would gather the manuscripts and sit in a closed office with a real piano and play each bar checking it against the recording. I remember we argued over things like flatted 9ths and raised 5ths, which were buried and often hard to hear. While it was hard work since these sessions would last hours, I remember telling people that it was the most incredible ear-training refresher course I could have imagined. Once again, I heard music in a new way. I remember some of those sessions vividly.
A trivia question - What was the only track that was not included in the folios? I’ll give you a hint - it was an Irving Berlin song, since Berlin would not license his songs for such folios (we tried). Ironically, “What’ll I Do” is now in the Public Domain, and could be added. I wonder why some editor at Alfred hasn’t done it (Alfred bought Warner Music some years ago).
Ronstadt drove Riddle up a wall in the studio (the vocals took close to a year to complete, with individual phrases repeated over and over), but he came to deeply care for her. It didn’t hurt that she gave him a monetary piece of the albums, which made him a rich man (he never got royalties for the many recordings we now consider classics, and had a big family to support). Of course the other end result of that album was a major tour, which Riddle conducted; he became a celebrity all over again, and basked in the glory of his new musical adventures.
Ronstadt of course surprised nearly everyone with her performances, and they improved once she got in front of audiences. However, Riddle’s arrangements were criticized by critic/historian Will Friedwald among others. I’ll only say that Friedwald didn’t understand what he was hearing; most arrangers I knew understood immediately. Riddle was already ill with cirrhosis when he made these sessions, and the arrangements are the work of an older, reflective, unhappy creative artist. Riddle had divorced his wife and married his secretary, who tried to alienate him from his children, whom he adored. He was still working when he was approached to do the arrangements, but was generally forgotten; his relationship with Sinatra was in tatters, and he couldn’t relate to much of the music around him. These arrangements are deeper emotionally and are quite beautiful. Are they his best work? I would have to say no, but when I hear them, to me they reflect who he was as a person then. He was rather a dour personality to begin with.
We started working on the folios from our office at Rockefeller Center in New York City, and finished them from our new offices at our warehouse in Secaucus, NJ. We had a final meeting with Nelson in Secaucus to go over the plates of the arranging book, which he was very happy to see. Then we surprised him - we gave him a copy of that first Ronstadt folio. Riffling through it looking at all of his musical notes, he said, “You guys took all this shit down? I would have given you the scores.” Of course he would have, I thought, now truly embarrassed. Anthony quickly said that we didn’t want to bother him as he stared at the folio openmouthed. I remember telling him that it was a pleasure to study his work so closely, but I don’t think it registered.
I’ve always been happy that he was very proud of the work we did on his arranging book, which he thought was one of his most important projects (“This is my big chance,” he told me). He was happy for the work that started to come in to arrange for important artists (although he wasn’t happy with the album he made with Kiri Te Kanawa). Later it was revealed that he and Sinatra were planning to record again, but Nelson died soon after.
One day, I asked Anthony if he thought we’d hear from him about the Ronstadt folio. “Only if he found something,” he said. We never did hear anything. Maybe he looked at it, maybe he didn’t. That wasn’t the point. No one had ever taken down his arrangements and adapted them for piano. Point made.
The folio and subsequent follow-ups were immediate best-sellers. Music print sells a fraction of the actual albums, but the folio with the contents of all three of the albums paid back its cost many times over. One night a pianist in a bar was talking to me and the folio came up in the conversation. She thanked me for my part in producing it, and told me what I hadn’t suspected but made perfect sense. She told me that these songs were finally available in keys that worked for female singers, and the arrangements were ready-made. We probably generated a lot of work for such performers. I truthfully didn’t even think that there would be musicians who would take those arrangements and re-create them for orchestration homework.
That’s pretty neat. I have to remember that for my own arranging classes. Thanks much, Andrew!!!!
They are indeed. One of the 'perks' about being a musician and an historian was that when I met many of my heroes, whether they were arrangers or instrumentalists, I would ask them questions about obscure things in their musical lives. The great majority immediately opened up, delighted to talk about things no one asked them about. We would bond immediately. More than one musician was delighted that a project was heard and loved that he/she thought had disappeared and no one heard.
Thank you for this. I’m not a musician but I like to think music is part of my DNA. I eat this stuff up and never stop appreciating that I’m privileged to read about the first hand experiences of someone *who was there*…whether it’s writing, arranging, publishing, or playing. They’re all history lessons.