Bill Challis

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William H. "Bill" Challis (* 9. July 1904 in Wilkes-Barre , Pennsylvania , † 4. October 1994 in Luzerne , Pennsylvania) was an American arranger and composer , who with the leading musicians and bandleaders of the early Jazz worked . He shaped the sound of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra with the formation of the saxophone and brass sections in the early days of the big band era.

Live and act

Challis was largely self-taught and initially played the piano and saxophone. From September 1926 he worked as arranger and composer for Jean Goldkette (" In My Merry Oldsmobile ") and from 1928 for Paul Whiteman ; his best-known arrangements for his dance orchestra included “San”, “Changes”, “Lonely Melody”, “Dardanella”, “Sugar”, “'Tain't So, Honey,' Tain't So” and “Swet Sue”.

Challis also arranged for Bix Beiderbecke ("Baby Face", "In a Mist" and "Three Blind Mice"), Frankie Trumbauer ("Singin 'the Blues", with Bee Palmer , 1929), Fletcher Henderson ("D Natural Blues" , 1928), Artie Shaw (" Blues in the Night ") and in the 30s for the Casa Loma Orchestra , for which he wrote "Blues Rhapsody" (with Rickey Paulin ). In 1936 the first recordings were made for the radio in New York under his own name; for this he recorded pop songs of the time such as " Great Day " or " Let Yourself Go ". In his studio orchestra played u. a. Charlie Margulis , Mannie Klein , Jack Jenney , Will Bradley , Artie Shaw, Frank Signorelli , Dick McDonough , Artie Bernstein and Chauncey Morehouse . In the following decade he arranged for the swing orchestras of Jerry Wald and Glen Gray . In 1946 he arranged a studio session for trumpeter Bobby Hackett ( Trumpet Solos ). In the field of jazz, he was involved in 135 recording sessions between 1926 and 1986. He worked until the 1960s (including for Lennie Hayton , Claude Hopkins ); In 1986 a selection of his arrangements of titles such as " Tiger Rag ", " Sometimes I'm Happy " or " Blue Room " were re-recorded by Vince Giordano 's Nighthawks and Tom Pletcher ( The Goldkette Project ). Bucky Pizzarelli related Challis' arrangements on his album Challis in Wonderland ( Arbors Records ).

Appreciation

With his arrangements, Challis was responsible for some of the most important early jazz recordings of the 1920s, such as Beiderbecke's In a Mist . His Beiderbecke-inspired harmonic and rhythmic innovations marked the music of the bands of Jean Goldkette, McKinney's Cotton Pickers , Fletcher Henderson and Paul Whiteman, according to Gene Lees , who praised Bill Challis as “one of the most overlooked and underrated men in jazz history ”.

Discographic notes

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b John Robert Brown: A Concise History of Jazz . 2010, p. 63
  2. ^ Entry in Oxford Reference
  3. James Ciment: Encyclopedia of the Jazz Age: From the End of World War I to the Great Crash, Volumes 1-2 . 2015, p. 197
  4. Discographic information on Challis' recordings with a gold chain and Whiteman
  5. ^ Appeared on the Beiderbecke compilation Volume 1: Singin 'the Blues
  6. Challis met Henderson when he lived in Greenwich, Connecticut and played Henderson at Connie's Inn . See Sacred Biography: Saints and Their Biographers in the Middle Ages by Thomas J. Heffernan, 1992, p. 154
  7. Tom Lord : The Jazz Discography (online, accessed October 24, 2016)
  8. Review of the album (2012) in JazzTimes
  9. Steve Sullivan: Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, Volume 1 , 2013, p. 273
  10. Jack Sohmer: Review of the book Arranging the Score: Portraits of the Great Arrangers by Gene Lees (2000) in JazzTimes