Milt Gabler

Milt Gabler (left), Herbie Hill, Lou Blum, Jack Crystal. Commodore Record Shop, August 1947.
Photograph by William P. Gottlieb .

Milton Gabler (* 20th May 1911 in New York City ; † 20th July 2001 ) was an American jazz - producer of the 1940s and 1950s. From April 1954, through his arrangements with Bill Haley , and later also with Buddy Holly and Brenda Lee, he played a decisive role in the worldwide establishment of a new music genre, which heralded the beginning of a new music era as rock 'n' roll from the end of 1955 .

Life

In 1926 Gabler began working at the Commodore Music Shop , his father's record store in New York. In 1937, in addition to the store, he founded the record label Commodore Records . In a nearby jazz club, Jimmy Ryan’s , he recorded jam sessions with the most important jazz musicians of the era, including Billie Holiday , Lester Young , Coleman Hawkins , Jelly Roll Morton and Eddie Condon . Disappointed, Billie Holiday switched from Columbia Records to Gabler's new label Commodore in 1939, where her real career began ( The Complete Commodore Recordings ). For this label Gabler recorded their single Strange Fruit on April 20, 1939 .

The time at Decca Records

First productions were Love Is Just Around the Corner for Eddie Condon And His Windy City Seven (recorded on January 17, 1938) and Them There Eyes for the Kansas City Six on September 27, 1938.

Due to these successes, the major label Decca Records offered him the job of producer in 1941, while his brother-in-law Jack Crystal took over the function of label boss at Commodore until the end of 1954. At Decca, Milt Gabler then produced Jimmie Lunceford's Blues in the Night (July 1942), in the same month Lionel Hampton's signature song Flying Home , the Calypso Rum And Coca Cola by the Andrews Sisters (December 1944), Billie Holidays Lover Man (May 1945) and Lucky Millinders Who Threw the Whiskey in the Well? (June 1945; with Wynonie Harris as vocalist). With Rum and Coca-Cola , a Gabler production reached # 1 on the US pop charts for the first time. He was the first producer to duet Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald in April 1946 . Gabler also produced the record debut for entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. with Hey There in August 1954 .

Louis Jordan - Choo Choo Ch'Boogie

Meanwhile, he has risen to the position of Vice President, and Decca left him the musical supervision of the Coral Records subsidiary . Here he produced the first single of the later country & western legend Red Foley ( Smoke on the Water ; August 1944), which settled at # 1 on the country charts for 13 weeks. Then Gabler turned to jump boogie specialist Louis Jordan , whose biggest hit Choo Choo Ch'Boogie (June 1946) was produced and co-composed by Gabler. Jordan was the most successful performer of the label, which he left in 1954. Over time, the self-taught musician Gabler developed a keen sense of talent and hits: Guy Lombardo's Enjoy Yourself (January 1950), Pearl Bailey's Takes Two to Tango (September 1952), Peggy Lee's Millionseller Lover (June 1952), the million-seller The Glow -Worm by the Mills Brothers (September 1952), the classic Three Coins in the Fountain by the Four Aces (May 1954), all of which were signed to Decca Records.

Then his instinct for success led him to a white group that had already made a name for itself with several regional record labels around Philadelphia and was able to place itself in the Nation's Top Twenty Charts with the title Crazy, Man, Crazy in the summer of 1953 . Although Bill Haley and his comets still had country and western swing in their repertoire , they had already focused since 1951 on a synthesis of country, jazz and rhythm & blues , a mixture that was only called rock and roll 4 years later.

On April 12, 1954, Bill Haley & His Comets began the first Decca recording session at the Pythian Temple Studios in New York . Milt Gabler chose the title Thirteen Women for this first studio recording . Gabler's idea of ​​presenting the Haley band for Decca in a different, less aggressive rhythm system in order to make the band and its Decca singles appealing to the label's predominantly white regular customers was the only wrong decision made by the successful jazz producer in the five years of successful collaboration with Bill Haley that is now beginning. Because it was not his elaborately rehearsed title, which was recorded with six takes , that became a hit, but a song brought by Bill Haley, which he and his comets recorded in just 40 minutes and two takes at the end of the recording day in the previously accustomed heavy backbeat rhythm. Thirteen Women only managed a # 23 before the B-side, entitled Rock Around The Clock, was used as the score in the youth revolt movie Blackboard Jungle . The film as a vehicle brought Rock Around the Clock to # 1 on the pop charts and made it one of the top-selling single hits of all time, with over 25 million records sold. For Gabler and Decca the song became the most important record and the subsequent collaboration with Bill Haley, with over 60 million Decca records sold in the 50s, became one of the most successful partnerships between a label and an American music band.

In an interview about working with Haley, Gabler later said: “ All the tricks I used on Louis Jordan worked on Haley too. The only difference was the rhythm, because with Jordan we used the swing era, while Haley was underlaid with a heavy backbeat ”. With this finding, Gabler elegantly overplayed his original intention to give the successful Haley sound a new image. During the second recording session on June 7, 1954, Haley was able to record his title Shake, Rattle and Roll in the usual rhythm style as the A-side and thus achieved his first million seller . From then on Gabler produced all Haley sessions up to the last day of recording, September 24, 1959, when Haley recorded his last five songs for Decca and then changed labels. His complete disappointment with Haley's decision and the end of this joint success series can be seen in Gabler's statement in an interview: "The band became increasingly musically weaker, which was perhaps due to the extensive tours and the inadequate music rehearsals". But after the disappointment about the separation, Haley and Gabler got closer after a few years and buried the quarrel. So for Bill Haley the doors to the Decca Studios in New York opened again on June 16, 1964 and he took part with the musicians Johnny Kay (lead guitar), Nick Masters (steel guitar), Rudy Pompilli (saxophone), Joey Welz (Piano), Al Rappa (bass guitar) and Dave Halley (drums) released his final two records, The Green Door and Yeah, She's Evil, for the Decca label.

But other interpreters of the new music era from the mid-1950s onwards were also produced by Gabler for Decca. His Buddy Holly arrangements from 1956 initially did not have the expected success, which then prompted Holly to switch to the Coral label. It was only after Buddy Holly's death in 1959 that Gabler brought these recordings onto the market again with significantly better sales results.

With the then 11-year-old Brenda Lee , he started on July 7, 1956 with the title Jambalaya, an extraordinary five-year series of hits with numerous hits, which from 1959 also placed in the Top Twenty charts. His greatest success with the petite young pop singer came in 1960 with two # 1 hits in the US charts. The song I'm Sorry , produced by Gabler in May 1960 , became a global hit, followed in September of the same year with I Want to Be Wanted, her second number one hit .

In 1956 Gabler brought 26-year-old Caterina Valente to New York. In the local studio of the Decca, under the direction of the band leader Sy Oliver with Plenty Valente! the up-and-coming artist's first English-language studio album.

Bert Kämpfert

The German big band leader Bert Kämpfert already had moderate, non-hit parade records in Germany before he tried to gain a foothold in the USA. The Kämpferts' interlocutor in New York was Milt Gabler, who has long since been promoted to A&R Director of Decca. The production professional recognized the talent of the German, who also composed instrumental recordings himself. Gabler had Wunderland published as Wonderland By Night and made Berthold Kämpfert “Bert Kaempfert and his Orchestra”. Kaempfert's first single in the US was released in November 1960 and reached # 1 on the pop charts, the first US top hit by a German artist. The instrumental title quickly established itself at the top of all relevant international charts. From then on, the Hamburg-based orchestra was also known in the USA. Milt Gabler has also registered as composer for many of his compositions: Danke Schoen by Wayne Newton (July 1963), LOVE by Nat King Cole (September 1964), Wiedersehn or Candlelight Cafe .

retreat

Gabler was still working for Decca Records until 1971 , now at the age of 60, and was thus able to demonstrate an uninterrupted 30 years of experience with this record company. In 1993 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Non-Performers category. He died on July 20, 2001 in his native New York.

Web links

• Entry on Milt Gabler in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (English)
• Milt Gabler ( Allmusic biography entry written by Scott Yanow ; English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ German title Saat der Macht ; the US version was released on March 19, 1955.
2. ^ Milt Gabler in Fred Bronson, The Billboard Book of Number One Hits , 1985, p. 1
3. ^ John Swenson, Bill Haley: The Daddy Of Rock And Roll , 1983, p. 184