Al Viola

Al Viola

Al Viola (born June 16, 1919 in Brooklyn , New York City , † February 21, 2007 in Los Angeles ) was an American musician . He was best known for his mandolin solos in the soundtrack of the film The Godfather and as the guitarist of Frank Sinatra for decades .

Life

Viola came from a large and very musical family of Italian immigrants in Brooklyn, where he worked as a guitarist as a teenager. During his military service from 1942 to 1945 he met the pianist Page Cavanaugh and the bassist Lloyd Pratt , with whom he founded the Page Cavanaugh Trio , recorded a number of records and went on extensive tours in the United States and Europe.

Viola left the trio in 1949 and since then has worked as an independent musician for the orchestras of Ray Anthony , Les Brown , Harry James and Nelson Riddle as well as for various jazz formations by Buddy Collette , Plas Johnson , Shelly Manne , André Previn and Bobby Troup . He also performed regularly under his own name in jazz clubs in the USA and Europe.

In 1945 he met Frank Sinatra as a member of the Cavanaugh Trio and in 1946 he accompanied him on two studio recordings and several concert tours. From 1956 Viola was part of Sinatra's regular orchestra as a guitarist and until 1980 he played with the Capitol and Reprise in hundreds of studio recordings as well as numerous concerts alongside him, including as part of the Bill Miller sextet. The two best-known duets from this period include versions of Night And Day (1962), Autumn Leaves (1962), Try A Little Tenderness (first time 1971), If (first time 1974) and A Foggy Day (first time 1977). In the spring of 1980, Viola withdrew from Sinatra's ensemble.

As an accompanying musician, Viola played on more than 500 albums for a wide variety of artists, including Sinatra June Christy , Natalie Cole , Beryl Davis , Neil Diamond , Ella Fitzgerald , Marvin Gaye , Steve Lawrence , Julie London , Anita O'Day , Linda Ronstadt and Joe Williams .

He has also appeared as a soloist on the soundtracks of numerous television series and films, including West Side Story (1961) and Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) belong. His solos in the film music for The Godfather (1972) became particularly well known .

Viola, who had already perfected the range of his repertoire in the early 1950s through studies at the "California Academy Of Music" in Torrance , also released a number of albums under his own name, including Solo Guitar (1957), Guitar Lament (1961) and Alone Again (1973) were most successful.

To old age Viola performed regularly in Europe recently in 2004, where he previously at the Jazz Festival in Switzerland Ascona had recorded another live album of 2002. In the USA, Viola could still be seen on stage at the end of January 2007. A few weeks later he succumbed to cancer.

Albums under your own name

• Solo Guitar (Mode, 1957)
• Guitar Lament (World Pacific, 1961)
• Guitars (Liberty)
• Guitars Volume 2 (Liberty)
• Imagination (Liberty)
• Alone Again (Legend, 1973)
• Salutations For Frank Sinatra (Legend, 1974)
• Mellow As A Cello (Starline, 1994)
• The Memory Of All That: The Chairman's Board Salutes Sinatra (Avanti, 1998)
• Stringin'The Blues (Jazzology, recorded at the Ascona Jazz Festival 2002)

Web links

• Official website (English)