Bill Pursell
Bill Pursell (born June 9, 1926 in Oakland , California as William Whitney Pursell) is an American pianist and arranger who reached a place in the US charts in 1963 with a country song.
Life
Pursell grew up in Tulare and studied composition in Baltimore and did his military service in a US Air Force band during World War II . After the war he finished his studies in classical composition with Howard Hanson at the Eastman School of Music and obtained a master’s degree in the mid-1950s. He later played with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra . In 1962 he recorded a full album entitled Our Winter Love on Columbia Records . The album reached number 15 on the Billboard 200, the single reached number 9 on the US charts.
The follow-up single Loved reached Billboard position 121. Pursell later recorded with Epic Records and Dot Records , but could no longer achieve any chart placement. He played piano on several of Johnny Cash's albums in the 1960s and worked as a session musician and arranger for Patsy Cline , Johnny Paycheck , Joan Baez , Eric Andersen , Scotty Moore , JJ Cale , Willie Nelson , Dan Fogelberg, and others. In 1985, Pursell was named Composer of the Year by the Tennessee Music Teachers Association.
Pursell was a faculty member of the School of Music at Belmont University from 1980. In 1996 he received his PhD in Musical Arts (DMA) from the Eastman School of Music / University of Rochester.
Discography
|
Chart positions Explanation of the data |
||||||||||||
| Singles | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
Albums
- 1963: Our Winter Love
- 1963: Chasing A Dream
- 1974: Try A Little Kindness (The Young Church Singers & Bill Pursell)
- 1977: The Sweat Sound (Bill Pursell & The Nashville Sweat Band)
Singles
- 1963: Our Winter Love
literature
- Julia Edenhofer : The Great Oldie Lexicon . Bastei-Lübbe 1991, ISBN 3-404-60288-9 .
- David Dicaire: The First Generation of Country Music Stars: Biographies of 50 Artists Born Before 1940. McFarland 2007, ISBN 0-7864-8558-2 .
Web links
- Bill Pursell at Discogs (English)
- Bill Pursell at worldcat , accessed November 11, 2014
Individual evidence
- ^ Julia Edenhofer: The Great Oldie Lexicon . P. 489
- ^ Belmont University. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on November 11, 2014 ; Retrieved November 11, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Chart sources: US
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Pursell, Bill |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Pursell, William Whitney |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American pianist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 9, 1926 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Oakland , California |